


Names

by rvltn909



Series: Blends!verse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, References to Depression, Slice of Life, split POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2020-10-12 19:31:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 546,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20569688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvltn909/pseuds/rvltn909
Summary: Sirius’s throat gains second life and the most pathetic noise comes out of it and by mercy Remus doesn’t hold it against him. A sobering thought creeps up his spine as he wonders why he'd ever think otherwise; if there was one person who would wholly understand that words can fall short, it'd be Remus.-companion to Blends.





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> there are a bajill excuses for why this took forever to come together, but pls take my humble offerings as a peace offering. 
> 
> if you haven't read blends I highly suggest you do that first otherwise this thing is going to lose you pretty quickly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this fic will be bookended by Remus, and those of you who were around during the early days of blends might remember teases of Sirius' pov being in this one, and believe me it's coming. we just gotta get there and then you'll have so much Sirius on your hands you won't know what to do with him.

Over the course of his twenty-three years, Remus had slowly come to the realization that bad news had a tendency to be delivered on good days. As it was, he had been having a morning that fell on the certifiably splendid side of things, and for that it seemed the universe simply had decided some evening out was in order. It was a fair play in a sense, but not an entirely welcomed one. 

His morning began early as per his agreeing to trade shifts with Bridget and work her opening shift, and despite the variance to his sleep schedule as of late he surprisingly didn’t find himself scorned by the sound of his alarm going off at the wee hour of five am, if anything it felt as if he had been in a deep sleep one moment and wide awake the next. 

He rolled over to swipe his phone screen to turn his alarm off, made sense of the dark room around him, and got himself out of bed without calling on too much effort to pull it off. He left his room and crossed over to the kitchen, bringing out the kettle to start himself a cup. He filled it at the sink, moved onto weighing his options for breakfast as he waited for the kettle to heat, and after a short debate it became quite obvious to him that practicality ought to be his main goal and decided on cereal. He poured himself a bowl and went for the fridge, but paused with his hand on the handle as he zoned in on the message scrawled on the whiteboard in far too visually appealing handwriting.

_the five times I left you the last of the milk, and the one time I didn't. _

Remus reworked his mouth around a smile, not able to find it in himself to feel scorned when his amusement outweighed any sense of betrayal he might have felt on a different morning. He uncapped the marker clipped onto the board under the note intended for him and scrawled a quick note of dismissal under it before he resolved to tip his dry cereal back into the box for a later, more milk-filled time. 

He answered the whistle of the kettle before he gathered the fixings for a tea, thinking he’d be pushing the leisure time he had if he tried to finish a full pot and opting for his single-serve one. He sat down at the island and got himself set up, holding his tea below his mouth and blowing on it while he fired up his laptop.

He pulled up his online banking to ensure his paycheck had come in overnight and reeled a bit at his balance for a moment; having worked his first solid pay period on a full time schedule he found he had quite a bit more to work with than he was accustomed to during the school year, and he took a quick moment to relish in the atypical feeling before he got down to business. 

He opened a separate tab and checked the going rates for a pair of train tickets on a return trip. He lined up the dates he had been given the go-ahead for, checked for embarking times available, and after a few more clicks he brought up a total. The absence of a sharp bang of loss as he clicked to confirm the purchase and parted with a small chunk of his pay was, in truth, even better than the feeling he’d gotten just from staring at his paystub. 

Remus made a hefty dent in his tea while he waited for the confirmation email to come in and as soon as it turned up in his inbox he got the same feeling he thought he might if he had the tips of his toes hanging off of a cliff. 

He quickly forced that down staggering feeling down and readjusted his feet on the footrest of his stool, giving himself the feeling that he were, in fact, quite balanced. He finished off his tea as he checked whether his last grade had come in since the last time he’d went in to look, but the answer was a frank no on that front. He washed his teapot and mug before leaving them in the drying rack to put away later on, made a stop off at the bathroom, and headed back into his room to find something to wear to work. 

He managed fairly well in the dark, even with the light shimmy he had to take to in order to get his trousers on and not make a ton of noise in the process. Once he was dressed he had a look at the time displayed on his clock on his bedside table and there was something to be said about living a short walk from his workplace; pleased he had some time to spare before he would have to head out, he went back to bed to spend that time comfortably. 

One of the things Remus quite liked about Sirius was that he tended not to be all that put off about being roused from sleep — if, that is, he had ample time to doze thereafter, which he would today. Waking at the crack of dawn because he had no other choice in the matter was a different story entirely and Remus knew in his bones he would have a lot of explaining to do once Sirius found out the time Remus set their travels for, but that was a problem for future Remus to deal with. Today Remus didn’t have any qualms about burrowing up on Sirius’ left and spurring him awake in the process. 

As he'd had been absolutely hoping for, Sirius gave great yawn, reached his left arm around Remus, and cozied up close. In the sleepy quiet of the room Remus found he could feel his heartbeat a lot more than he could outside the room, and with his head still reeling from the whirlwind of the past few days he found himself feeling both emboldened and content in the same beat. 

“Tickets are bought,” he said, hoping it wasn’t too early for speech or the weight of the words to sink in. 

Sirius rolled toward him at once, tangling his legs with Remus’ and promptly taking Remus’ entire head captive in his arms. He pressed four kisses to the top of Remus’ head in the span of a few quick seconds and Remus shut his eyes, basking. 

“How long have you got?” Sirius checked, his voice the sort of deliciously hoarse that left Remus a little weak on a typical morning, let alone today. 

“About twenty now,” he supplied. 

Sirius shifted his arms down from around Remus’ head. “Should call out,” he suggested, leaving a trail of kisses along the curve of Remus’ jaw. “Stay here and celebrate some more.” 

“I can’t do that,” he said, though now that he was this warm it was a bit more difficult to remain decent. 

“Nheh, it was worth a shot,” Sirius said, pausing his kissing for a beat. “Twenty whole minutes, did you say?”

The right corner of Remus’ mouth curled up. “If you’re quick about it.” 

He waited all of three seconds before he got wrangled, flattened, and covered by Sirius. He huffed a laugh and kneaded Sirius’ shoulders as he shifted down the bed, dragging kisses over his midriff on his way. 

Sirius made well on his word and went for Remus’ trousers without too much sightseeing along the way. “This is very counterproductive, I only just got them on,” Remus said all while lifting his hips to help Sirius out a little.

Sirius worked them past his knees, pausing for a moment to pat Remus’ left one briskly. “When I’m done I’ll even put them back on you,” he offered before going right back in.

Remus had a reply ready but he didn’t bother with it for the first slide of Sirius’ mouth took it right out of his head. He gave up on coherent words altogether once Sirius took to tracing rather intricate shapes against the crown of Remus’ cock at each drawback, clearly taking their time constraint to heart, but Remus could hardly say he minded when it was over before he knew it if it meant he could use the rest of the time to return the favour. 

Minutes later saw them flipped, Sirius gripping tight at the back of Remus’ head as his knees curled up on either side of Remus before he rode through his release. Remus waited until Sirius’ hips stilled completely before he pulled his mouth off of him, lay his head down on Sirius’ navel and smiled against it, feeling rather accomplished in a myriad of ways just then. 

He felt a tap on his head and pushed himself onto his knees, smiling down at Sirius, who lifted off of the bed to meet him in the middle. He whisking his right hand over Remus’ cheek and under his jaw before he pulled Remus’ lips against his own and, all things considered, there were far, far worse ways to start a day. 

Dressed and walking on tingling legs, Remus made a quick stop out onto his perch to gauge the temperature and decided a light layer overtop of his shirt would probably suffice for a crisp, mid-May day. He quietly let himself back into his room to grab a cardigan to pull on, but Sirius was already out like a light. Remus smirked and left the room again, put some food in the cat’s bowl before strolled over and he ran his hand overtop Mestophales’ head where she sat perched directly on his laptop. 

Remus gave her a pointed look but didn’t move her, forgoing that battle in favour of footing his shoes on. The walk to work was pleasant, if a bit chilly but Remus hoped it would warm up once the day got underway. His shift was busier than he was used to having mostly worked evenings and brought an entirely different crowd of would-be regulars if the morning’s were his repertoire, but it led to the morning passing quickly. 

Working an open also came with the opportunity to work with Emmeline, who worked a strict three mornings a week during school and therefore rarely did their schedules line up. Remus didn’t know too many people who self-identified as a morning person, but he found her energy infectious working alongside it, spurring his already cheerful mood to even higher percentiles.

He finished at two and made a stop to pick up milk, then while he was at the shop he thought he ought to grab a few more items he’d been meaning to get but hadn’t had the time to spare. He carried his shopping bags the short walk back to his flat and found it Sirius-less, though he left an overflowing cat bowl in his wake. To combat the huff rising up in him, he traded it for a smirk, thinking if he were ever in need of a sign as to whether Sirius had been by his flat he would only have to look at the cat’s dish to find it. 

Remus went to stick his shopping bags on the island, thinking he ought to put the milk away before anything else. He plucked the two bottles out of the bag and held one in hand and the other against his side as he opened his fridge only to find four bottles of milk lined up in a row. Remus took a moment to laugh; a quick, easy burst before he resigned himself to playing an intense game of Tetris in order to fit all six bottles inside the fridge comfortably along with everything else in it. 

He weighed his options as he put away the rest of his shopping, thinking there was really only one thing he could do, and that was to dig up a few recipes that called for gallons of milk but he would need his mum’s wisdom on that front.

He checked the time displayed on the stove, thought it would be too early to ring just yet, and found himself tempted by the chance of a kip. He didn’t have to head out again for some time, not until Dorcas rang later on, so he set himself an alarm as a precaution, giving himself just short of an hour to avoid coming out the other end feeling sluggish. 

He supposed he could have gone and slept in his bed, but the couch was a fine option. He stretched out over the length of it, pulling his quilt off of the back of it, and shifted the throw pillow to better suit his head. Not allowing his indulgence to run too long, Remus woke to the sound of his alarm feeling rested and justified in his decision. 

He gave a stretch, came out from under his quilt, and started himself a full pot while he decided on what to do for a late lunch. He decided to have the bowl of cereal he intended to have that morning and took his bowl and tea back to the island where he looked up his grades again, and this time his efforts proved fruitful. He perked when he saw the alert, brought up the page, and stared at a harsh B on screen. 

He didn’t even really have it in him to go in and find out just what caused the drop, instead he took to stewing while he ate, finding the B sticking out amongst the rest of his grades like a sore thumb and trying to replace his frustration with something like gratitude; the rest of his marks were top notch, it was just one B, and he was having too good a day to start nitpicking now. 

Tomorrow, maybe. Not today. 

He finished eating, shut his laptop with one last reminder that he’d done quite well with his term overall, and went to the sink to wash out his bowl. He picked up both his mug and teapot and relocated to the couch, deciding that given the circumstances and without assigned readings or a paper to outline, it was more than fair to get a little reading for pleasure in while he had the chance. He went to the bookshelf on the other side of the living room and picked out the novel he’d set aside at the start of term and flipped to the dog-eared page he’d last left off as he returned to the couch, wrapping himself up in his quilt and settling in the left corner with his feet propped up on the coffee table. 

At the start of the new year, Remus made a pact with himself that in the event of any contented silences come his way he ought to not only try to notice them but spend a few moments truly immersed in it. He thought it might help him feel more appreciative, that was one reason, another was that it would remind him that he could have contented silences, and that it might allow for him to look back on moments like this one when things weren’t so calm, help him remember that at one point he was there and odds were he’d be there again eventually. 

Remus chose this silence, thinking he liked the image of it and wouldn’t mind looking back on this one on some dreary day in the future and remember he was here once; settled, accomplished, with a couple of free hours before he would be expected anywhere and time to genuinely enjoy it.

He wasn’t too sure how long he’d been reading for when he was spurred out of his reading by Mestophales batting at a bird on the other side of the window, but when he checked the time he was momentarily shocked to read it was past five. He flipped down the top corner of the page he was on and shut his book, patting around for his mobile until he found it squeezed between his left leg and the couch cushion. He thumbed through to his mum’s mobile, giving it a shot considering the time, and stuck his mobile against his ear as the dial tone sang back at him. 

“Hallo,” she greeted, though there was a fair bit of bustle in the background. 

“Where are you?” Remus asked, his curiosity piqued. 

“I thought I’d stop in at the grocery off work, but it’s very clear I’m not the only one who had that idea,” his mum said. “It’s a madhouse in here.” 

“Well, I’ll be here a little longer if you’d rather talk when you’ve finished there,” Remus offered. 

“Where are you heading?” his mum asked, not really taking his offer. 

“Dorcas is back and we’ve dinner plans eventually,” Remus said. 

His mum gave a small trill. “Oh, that’ll be nice.” 

Remus nodded, quite looking forward to it. “Her plane touched down last night but we figured we’d let her settle and get some unpacking done, so I’ll be here for a little while yet if you’d rather shop first.”

“How about I shop and talk to you,” his mum raised. “I’m currently comparing two nearly identical slabs of beef to see which one has more to offer, so there’s nothing stimulating happening over here.”

Remus breathed out a laugh, sticking his chin in his hand. “OK, two quick things in case you’re seized by conversation again,” he prefaced. “My last grade came in—“

“Mm! And?” his mum probed. “Are you happy with it?” 

“So happy with it,” Remus said, sticking his mouth behind his hand. 

He blinked when his mum let out an appraised sound. “Oh — I’ll just.. turn down here,” she said quickly, then dropped to a whisper. “I frightened a gent.” 

Remus dropped his hand from his mouth, smirking. “Can’t imagine how.” 

“Oh, honey, that’s wonderful,” she said, either not hearing his quip or moving right on past it. “I ought to get you something while I’m here, do you need anything?” 

Remus snorted. “Sure, surprise me,” he said, playing along. “Oh — no milk, I beg of you.” 

“Have you given it up?” his mum asked. 

Remus gave a laugh. “Not at all, only I was foolish enough not to remember that when Sirius finishes off something of yours he typically repays you in bounds,” he said. “And I mean bounds.” 

“Oh dear,” his mum said weightily. “How much milk do you now have?” 

“Six bottles,” Remus chimed. 

His mum let out a snort. “I can’t even say I’m surprised.” 

“I shouldn’t be, and yet?” Remus returned. “If you’ve any recipes that call for a gallon of milk, I’ll take just about anything right about now.” 

“Let me have a look around and I’ll send you what I come up with, how’s that?” his mum returned. 

“Incredible, thank you,” Remus said. He crossed his toes in his socks and took a quick, deep breath away from the receiver for a moment before he brought it back to his mouth. “OK, second thing; the tickets are booked, so I can forward the itinerary to you so you have the dates and times on hand if you’d like?” 

“That was quick,” his mum observed. “You got the approval already?” 

“I know, I expected to have to wait until Lily was back,” Remus said candidly. “I made her swear to keep away from her mobile while they’re gone, but she absolutely didn’t do that and responded straight away -- and obviously she can’t do anything from all the way over there, but she still said it was as good as approved so I’d better book them now, and then I did do that.” 

His mum let out a little laugh. “Thank you for that last bit, I really feel as if I was there to see it.” 

“Anytime,” Remus said easily. “It’s not until July, mind, but I wanted to have a bit more saved for the trip, and then there’s the fall to consider, but I got the tickets early so they’re taken care of and out of the way.” 

His mum gave an agreeing hum. “Good thinking,” she said. “What did they add up to in the end?” 

“Oh, no no,” Remus denied. “Nice try, but no.”

“Remus,” she said lightly. 

“Hope,” he returned. “We had a deal.” 

“Well, we could call it a birthday gift?” his mum offered. 

“I’m wrapped in yours,” Remus said of the astonishingly bright quilt wrapped around him. 

“Oh, that was just a little something,” his mum insisted. 

“Really, mum,” Remus said. “I’m on full time, I’ll make it back in a day or two. I don’t even need you to cover his ticket but I know a dead horse when I see one.”

His mum let out a light sigh. Too light. “Alright, then, you may show him the Welsh countryside from up close,” she said. “Make sure to pack a tent, it’ll get chilly if you don’t have a place to squat at for the nights.” 

Remus frowned. “You’re far too good at this.” 

“Send me the receipt, please,” his mum finished, putting a dead horse right between them. 

Remus sighed, dragging his free hand over his face once. “OK, fine, but that is it,” he conditioned. “You’re to take care of nothing else while we’re there, and I want that in writing.” 

His mum laughed, which didn’t bode well, and then she cut off quickly. “One second,” she said. 

Remus half-listened to the words exchanged between his mum and another dinnertime shopper, but he couldn’t really hear much aside from his mum’s responses and leaned forward to pour himself a little more tea in her absence. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, her voice much clearer now. “It’s a church function without the steeple in here.” 

Remus stuck the teapot back down on the coffee table and settled in again. “That’s alright,” he excused. 

“So, is anyone else coming along?” his mum asked. 

Remus hummed a no, his right knee jiggling. “Lily and James won’t get time off for a little while yet, and as far as I’m aware it’s not the best time for Pete, either,” he said, his knee going like a sewing machine. 

“No one else?” his mum checked. 

Remus looked left then right. “No?” 

“There’s plenty of room here,” his mum said. “Be a shame not to bring her with.”

“She’s got to work through the summer anyway,” Remus said, feeling as if he’d been picked up and flung backwards to the tender, grisly age of seventeen. 

“OK, well, I thought I’d offer,” his mum said. “Oh — just a second, sorry.”

Remus was rather grateful for his mum getting pounced on again for it gave him time for himself; he dropped the receiver away from his mouth in order to take in a full breath and let it out before she dragged herself away from whoever had spotted her. 

“You’ll never guess who that was,” his mum said. 

Remus hummed, though it was a little blank even for him. “Who?” 

“Your teacher for, oh, level nine? No, Ten,” she said, and Remus was certain his entire stomach took to a roll and left his body behind. “Really kind, I know it starts with an S; I didn’t want him to know I couldn’t remember so I avoided having to say it, but I knew the face.”

Remus’ stomach went and did an impressive flip; a solid nine out of ten at least. “I’ve got the other line going, mum,” he said, pushing to sound a bit torn between two choices. 

“Oh,” his mum said quickly. “OK, sorry hon; go, have fun.” 

“I will, thanks,” Remus nodded. 

“Send me that itinerary.” 

“I will.” 

“Talk to you soon.” 

“Course, yeah.” 

Remus pulled his mobile away from his ear as he pressed to end the call, sitting in the silence of his flat for a few moments and ultimately deciding the whole room looked different than it did before. He looked to his mobile again for the time, wasn’t sure he would get Sirius at a good time when he was already well into his shift, but Remus went into his recent calls and hovered his thumb over Sirius’ name anyway, pressing it after a quick moment’s hesitation. 

Two rings and a barking laugh came through on the other end, and Remus dropped his mobile away from his mouth one more time, simply basking in feeling glad that he’d given into his impulse if it meant that was the first sound he heard from him. 

“There’s a girl in the dumpster,” Sirius delivered, sounding rather charmed by the fact. 

Remus blinked, his lips quirking. “Oh?” 

“Well, I tossed two bags in and got a yelp in return,” Sirius added. “And when I say tossed, I mean I really wound up before I shot them in there.” 

Remus’ shoulders shook as he attempted to hold his laughter in, but eventually a snort escaped and gave him away. “How certain are you of whether she was in there out of necessity or choice?” he asked. “It’ll help me decide which layer of hell I’m slated for.” 

“Not as if I stopped to ask, but I’ll play,” Sirius said. “If it’d been necessity, then my best guess is you’re in for the fourth or fifth, but you could absolutely argue in front of the council that it’s likely she’s had a few bombs dropped on her in her day already.” 

“Now I have a defense for trial,” Remus said. “Thank you.”

“But only the first layer if it had been by choice,” Sirius tacked on. “If that’s the case I really should have thrown them harder.” 

“You’ll be on trial with me, glad to hear it,” Remus said, hiding his twisted smile underneath the edge of his quilt, but he heard the sound of the back door shutting and wondered if he’d called at an inopportune time. “Are you able to take a few or were you just heading in and out?” 

“I sure can, I’m just _purelling_ before I go back out,” Sirius replied, rather airily at that. 

Remus clicked his tongue into the receiver so that Sirius would really hear it. “It’s as if you want the lecture at this point.” 

“Seems that way, doesn’t it,” Sirius said mildly. 

Remus spared him the one Sirius well knew by heart, went for another sip of tea, and heard the back door shut again, assuming Sirius was out back again. “Careful,” he cautioned. “Your friend could still be out there.” 

“She can’t say for certain it was me,” Sirius returned, mid-stretch, and Remus had the image of him reclined and leaning against the building. 

“Pretty sure she’ll just assume it was, but I digress,” Remus said, feeling himself settling into the couch more just hearing Sirius relaxing. “Good shift so far?” 

He heard the flick of a lighter before an easy, affirming hum. “Yours?” 

“Good,” Remus replied. “Bit busier than I’m used to, but that made it pass quicker. My fridge is starting to bare an uncanny resemblance to one of the ones at work, though.” 

“I’m sure you’ll go through those before they pass,” Sirius said, unfazed. 

“I picked up two on my way home,” Remus tacked on. 

Sirius let out a quick bark. “We’re going to have to get creative.”

“I’ve already begun gathering recipes,” Remus said. 

“Great minds,” Sirius said before a pause, drawing in a haul. “You and Dorcas still on for tonight?” 

Remus hummed a yes. “I don’t know when yet; I told her to take the day to unwind and she can ring me whenever—“ he said, trailing off when he heard a second voice added to the mix. 

He kept quiet for a few beats, pinning the voice as Mary’s. “That’s the most ominous thing you’ve ever said to me and I’ve no choice but to take that as a threat,” Sirius declared, his voice a little farther away from the receiver. 

Remus looked up and around as he kept an ear out for some context clues he was greatly lacking from his end of the phone. Mary carried on too quickly to get much more than continued phonetics, so Remus leaned forward to reach for his mug, had a bit more of his tea even though it was quite a bit cooler now, and a minute or so later he heard the sound of the back door shutting again. 

“Mary says you look good today,” Sirius said. 

Remus swallowed a gulp of tea. “That’s very kind but how can she know that?”

“I don't have to see you to know it either, why should she?” Sirius raised. 

Remus stuck his mug back on the coffee table, feeling warm all over. “I'd return the gesture but I hear she threatened you.”

“She certainly did,” Sirius said. “Came out here telling me how much I’m really going to like one of the new kids which I have no choice but to assume means I’m definitely not going to like the new kid.”

Remus smirked a laugh. “No other conclusion to make, clearly,” he said. “Have the new ones started already?”

Sirius gave a non-committal hum around a haul. “I don’t know when the other’s starting, but the one she’s talking about starts next week,” he provided amidst holding in his haul, then let it out in one-go two beats later. “A rehire and a piece of work, says her; covered a shift at his old store a while back and he had her sitting face-down on the table in the back at the worst of it.”

Remus frowned, moving his left hand to scratch at the same hip and giving a mild hum. “Let’s hope it was just a bad first impression.” 

Sirius replied with a skeptical hum. “Mary can get along with just about anyone, so this doesn’t look good.” 

Remus tilted his head evenly for that, but remained on point. “I still say you should give it a fair chance,” he said.

Sirius let out a light noise of offense. “What sort of person do you think I am?”

Remus made a thoughtful hum. “The sort that’ll go into this readily prepared for it to fail off the bat?” he raised.

Sirius let out a scoff. “She ought to get some of the blame when she’s the one who lay the foundation,” he defended.

“I’ll sprinkle some in her direction, then,” Remus allowed.

“Besides, we’re getting one more along with him, and odds are if he’s as bad as she claims then the other can’t be nearly as,” Sirius decided, and then paused for a haul, and Remus marveled at Sirius’ rather shiny impression of probability. “Did you ring to distract me from my incredible work ethic?”

It was more like a distraction for himself, but yes, technically Remus had done that. “That depends if it's working or not,” he said. 

Sirius paused, the sound of him exhaling a quick haul filtering through the phone. “Like a charm,” he returned at the end of it.

“You don’t need to head back in soon?” he checked.

“Need is a strong word,” Sirius deemed it. “I could just accidentally spark this other one I happened to bring out with me; and then I’d have to finish it so not to be wasteful and I know you don’t much like that sort of thing.”

Remus stuck his mouth under his quilt again, smiling. “You’re right, I don’t,” he said. “I won’t keep you long after that, I just needed to hear your voice for a bit.”

“You good?” Sirius asked after a beat.

Remus breathed in quietly, catching the scent of his quilt’s edge that was sitting just over his nose. “Yeah, I think I’m just a schmooze today,” he said. “I must still be on a high; I blame the cobblestones and all that wine, got me feeling sentimental.”

“Not that I don’t like it when you’re a schmooze, but you said 'needed', and I don’t know you to be particularly grandiose with your phrasing,” Sirius kept on with it. “That’s more my thing.”

Remus ran his right pinky finger up and back down the side of his phone. “I picked the wrong word.”

“Mm, doubt you did.”

“I’ll just bring the entire mood down.”

“You won’t; what’s going on?”

Sensing no end in sight, Remus pulled the entire quilt tighter around him, wishing Sirius were in the room so he would be able to see him. He reached his left hand up and dragged it down his face, changing his tune completely when it reached his neck. “I don’t know what I’m even saying--”

“Yes, you do,” Sirius replied. “Take a minute, sort it out, start again.”

Remus pulled his feet off the coffee table and brought his legs in, curling them at the knee, definitely wishing he had anything to do with his hands now. “I rang my mum to tell her the trip’s on, and don’t know why I let myself think that this would go over smoothly,” he said, rubbing his free hand at the back of his neck. “Now when we go it’ll be less about me sharing you with them and more about me having this whole other area of my life that they didn’t know about, and I completely screwed this up for us even before I knew there’d be an us to screw up—”

“Oi,” Sirius returned the next beat. “Quit ragging on my man right now, you hear me?”

Remus was grateful for the first time since starting the call that Sirius wasn’t in the room so he couldn’t see the verklempt pout he gave into. “I did, Sirius,” he sighed. “To the point where my mum thinks I’m seeing Dorcas, that’s how badly I managed to screw this up.”

There was a bit of a pause before Sirius’ voice came through rather pointedly. “How could you possibly know that?”

“She asked if anyone else was coming with—”

“Great. _Scot_,” Sirius sent out. “Fuck it, then; the whole plan’s ruined.” 

“Would you shush?” Remus implored. He got a breathy laugh for it, but it came with silence and that would have to do. “She thinks this is just a couple of blokes going on a trip.”

Sirius chose to speak there. “Right, and she would seeing as it was pitched as a couple of blokes going on a trip,” he put in. 

Remus huffed, dragging his free hand over his face. “Right, I’m making a big deal out of nothing,” he said flatly. "Thank you for such hands on support." 

“I didn't say that,” Sirius said. “I’m sorry, go.”

Remus breathed in once, out once. “I thought she’d been asking about James and everyone else, but she wasn’t,” he said. “She meant her and singled her out specifically—”

“Right, but does that really mean—”

“It was the way she said it, Sirius,” Remus said. “I know seems harmless to you, but it was the tone she used, and if you knew her like I do then there’d be no other way to spin it.”

“OK, but you still haven’t even gotten to what she actually said, which is sort of important here,” Sirius pointed out. 

Remus sighed through his nose. “She said it would be a shame not to take her with,” he said. “As if I was leaving my girlfriend behind while I go on some buddy-buddy trip with you.”

Sirius hummed, but it was neither positive or negative as far as Remus could hear. “I don’t know why she thinks it,” Remus added, just in case it had been negative. “I really don’t. It’s not as if I talk about her any more than anyone else.”

Sirius smacked his lips there. “Only single girl you talk about,” he raised.

“Oh, so we skyped a lot while she was away so that must mean we’ve exchanged rings obviously,” Remus returned, souring at the image of his mum miles away grinning like a fool every time he’d even said Dorcas’ name in passing. “I hate the idea of you feeling like you’re playing second fiddle—”

Sirius laughed, for some reason. “I don’t,” he said. “Believe me, I’m taking it as a supreme compliment you got caught up in the glitz and glamour of the entire idea not to stop to think about all the ways it could possibly go wrong until today. I’ll be strutting about for days, you’ll see.” 

Remus fought a reluctant smile from forming. “I should have just told them years ago and then we wouldn’t even have this problem,” he said. “I should have corrected her years ago—" 

Sirius clicked his tongue on the other end of the line. “You couldn't tell them then and beating yourself up about it now won’t help anything when you’re literally planning to do something about it as we speak,” he said plainly. 

“How are you being so good about this?” Remus asked. “You should be upset that I didn’t set this up properly.” 

“I’m not going to shit on all the reasons you never felt free enough to say the words to them,” Sirius returned. “You had a constant devil on your shoulder telling you that it had to be kept a secret and if you were calling to get a quick and easy reprimand for not getting this over with sooner, you’re not going to get it from me and you know better than that.”

Remus pulled his quilt right up over his head and wormed his way onto his right side, curling up in the corner of the couch. “Could you go a little easier on me?” he implored. “I’m not doing so good right now.”

“I really think I was going easy on you, personally,” Sirius said frankly, “and I’m working on it; what about your dad, then? Is he holding onto the same theory that she's got?” 

Remus gave a flat noise. “Last we even discussed my love life he made sure to suggest I couldn’t get a date, but that’s my dad for you.”

Sirius gave out a profound ‘pfft.’ “If he knew how many people I have to beat off of you with a stick he’d change his tune right quick.”

“Alright; he was kidding around and I would have thought you’d catch onto that since you’re rather familiar with exaggerating for comedic effect, case in point.”

“I’m not even exaggerating,” Sirius returned. “_That’s_ the funny part.” 

Remus gave a sigh. “The point is he mostly just reamed me on it and we went onto something else,” he said. “That’s fairly regular for us.”

“Were pronouns even mentioned?” Sirius asked. 

Remus shook his head. “Not a one.” 

“Then maybe it all lies with him,” Sirius said. “Did I tell you I ascended to the heavens the moment he reamed me? I was honoured, truly.”

Remus felt the corners of his lips lift. “You took it so well,” he let him have. “It takes a few good ones for some to realize he’s just being a shit, but you caught on straight away.”

“Takes one shit to recognize another,” Sirius said easily. “Far as I’m concerned I’ve already got his approval in a sense, I just need to seal the deal.”

Remus gave a considered nod. “You’ll at least stay in his good books if you keep bringing up Live Aid,” he said, smiling. 

“What, as if I could ever forget?” Sirius returned. “I plan on asking him plenty more questions so he best be ready for it.”

Remus’ small smile formed a grin before he touched rubbed at his eyes in turn with his free hand. “I don’t know; if my mum’s convinced then he may hop on board, too,” he said, dread bubbling back up in him. “It could go either way.”

“Ah, but she already loves me, she just doesn’t know how much yet but she’ll see,” Sirius said. “In the end not much has really changed, has it?”

Remus gave a frown. No, it really hadn’t and not all of it in a good sense, but he stopped himself short of saying it when he couldn’t keep on lodging complaints, not with Sirius.

“You with me?” Sirius asked, pulling Remus back. 

“I’m here.”

“It’s not as if we weren’t expecting an adjustment period, and at worst, I think that’s all we’re in for,” Sirius pressed on. “Not much we can do until we’re there, but I say our plan is in full motion.”

“Mm?” 

“Forget what coming out stories you’ve seen, heard,” Sirius asserted, “whether they’ve ended terribly or they hit out of the park; we don’t need them because we’re making our own, yes?”

“Yes."

“That’s right, we say ‘fuck those stories, they’re old news,’” Sirius championed. “We just have to do what we do best; let them see how great we work together; we frame it around us as planned, we tell it like it is, and they’ll see that it makes all the sense in the world when you look at it properly—”

Sirius cut off quickly, speaking away from the receiver. “What?” he asked someone else, Mary likely. “_Now_?”

Remus barely registered anything past the exclamation, taking the moment Sirius seemed distracted and using it for himself. He dropped his phone away from his mouth for a shaky breath, shutting his eyes as they continued welling up. 

“Rosmerta’s here,” Sirius said onto the phone, both words in a split second.

A few tears got away from Remus when he opened his eyes, and he’d never been more grateful for their district manager’s sense of timing. He swallowed hard and brought the phone back up by his mouth, pushing to sound steady until Sirius went on his way. “Best look alive.”

“She never drops in this late -- I haven’t been living my life like she’d be coming in today,” Sirius insisted, and for a moment Remus got an image of a somewhat less than picturesque café. “This may be the last we speak, and if so it’s been an honour servicing you.”

“Well, with a mouth like that I’m sure you’ll charm her in no time,” Remus sent him. 

“I’ll bring out the big guns, but only because you said I could,” Sirius vowed, the sound of the back door shutting in the background of the call before his voice dropped to a fast-paced whisper. “Come over when you’re done there?”

Remus nodded. “Yeah,” he confirmed. 

“Love you,” Sirius added right before the line went dead and Remus dropped his phone altogether.

A week’s worth of running on high caught up to him in one blow, knocking Remus from every angle, and he couldn’t do much more than shift himself down onto his side and simply let it happen. 

If it could sink in soon he’d love it to get a move on, but some of it just wouldn’t line up no matter how much he wished he could flip a switch and make it happen. For Sirius to be so willing to go along with the hassle he came with, to be so steadfast, or to want to be apart of this section of his life even at all, or and or, on and on until Remus was back where he started once again. He didn’t know the steps backwards or forwards in that moment, or how he tripped into something so much bigger than him, or how he managed to trick Sirius into falling into it with him; or and or, and on and on.

The flattened feeling never did catch him at a good time, but he was grateful he’d been able to hold out until Sirius was off the phone. He’d take being curled up and shaking under a chaotically colourful quilt while alone in his flat if it meant he wouldn't have someone staring at him as if he’d never catch up, and maybe he never fucking would. He hated this part more than any of it, but these moments never came with pride, so why, he wondered, did he expect to feel any different this time around? One heady week couldn't change months, and months couldn’t change years, and if he was going to feel it he needed to without the pitying look that came along with him welling up at every bit of the newness of it all. 

The couch dipped behind him, a weight settled against his lower back, and a sequence of purring told him plainly that he wasn’t alone, not quite. Remus breathed out, pulled the quilt down off his head, and made the effort to shift onto his back, then to his left side. He slung his right arm over the cat’s body, and she must have sensed that he needed this a bit if she allowed him to remain draped over her. 

Minutes later he clued into her tail intermittently whipping against his stomach and wiped his eyes one by one with his left hand, feeling a bit silly on the other end of it. He lay still for a little while longer, running his right hand along the cat’s fur and actively trying to remember the important theme threading through his entire week; Sirius wanted this, too. It should give him heart palpitations in some hokey way, have him reciting haikus about springtime and new beginnings just as he’d done that morning, not render him useless and holding onto his cat for support. Sirius was up for taking this step with him, he was going to come with just to see it through, and in that moment Remus told himself what he had to if he had any hope of getting off his couch; that just because he wasn’t ahead of the game in a lot of areas, it didn't have to mean he was that far behind either.

He let out a long sigh, pushed himself up, and leaned his weight on his left elbow, glancing over the surface of the coffee table for his tin. When he didn't see he pulled himself off the couch and went into his room, finding it lying on his bedside table, and snatched it up. He went back to the couch and picked the opposite corner so he was closer to the window, slid it open fully, and packed himself a bowl. He lay stretched his legs out across the couch and was mid-way through his haul when his mobile rang again. 

He let out a stream in one long sigh, hoping it was someone bringing him something he could handle. He leaned forward to squint at his phone on the other end of the couch and read Dorcas lit up on his screen.

He cleared his throat a few times, swiped the screen, and said hello, prompting Dorcas’ distinctly animated voice. “Well, this is a real disappointment; I was hoping you’d come back with an accent I could then completely make fun of you for.” 

Remus smirked, feeling a bit better already. “After three days there?” he raised. 

“Only takes one for some,” Dorcas returned.

“Then I could really say the same for you since you had four months on me to develop one of your own,” Remus said. 

“We really have to work on being more pretentious,” Dorcas said. 

“I’ll put one on the next time I come back, how’s that?” Remus offered.

“That’s more like it,” Dorcas said. “Only you’ll have to start turning your nose up at every cheese platter you come across, insisting that you can’t even look at our sad excuse for cheese when you had the real stuff.”

“First of all, I love that that gives the impression I come across a lot of cheese platters in my day to day,” Remus said. “And second, I did try some of the cheese and they’re not making it up — it is better there. If you get a free day in the fall, come visit, I’ll take you where we went, and you’ll see what I mean.” 

“Deal,” Dorcas returned. “My only amendment is that we have to go to one of those fancy wine tastings so I can put my pinky up and chortle the whole time.” 

“What, like you don’t do that already?” Remus said.

“Can’t have them sniff me out as a tourist, can I?” she said. “I’ll just have to hope they don’t ask me to sniff and name whatever wine it is.” 

“Right, that’s when they’ll know you’re not one of them,” Remus said evenly. 

Dorcas snorted. “Alright, I'm home, settled enough, and I want dinner,” she declared. 

“Where do you want to do this?” Remus asked. 

“Raining out there, isn’t it?” she observed. 

Remus leaned his head back to have an upside down look at the window and saw that a drizzle had indeed started at some point over the course of the afternoon, which was fitting to say the least. “Right, I’ll come to you, then?” 

Dorcas spoke through what sounded like a mild stretch. “Great idea.” 

Remus smiled, thinking the fresh air might do him some good even with the drizzle involved. “Give me a bit to get myself sorted and I’ll head over,” he said. 

Remus finished off his bowl before much else, then thought it might be on to roll a pinner to bring along in case Dorcas wanted to partake later on. He stuffed the joint away in his tin and stuck it in his pocket, heading into his room to swap his cardigan out for something to better cover him from the rain and ended up picking one of Sirius’ on account that it smelled like him and had a proper hood.

He stopped at the entryway to foot his shoes on, then remembered his earbuds were plugged into his laptop on the island and went to grab them. He detangled them on the way through the stairwell and thumbed through to find a tune he even felt like hearing at the moment and ultimately hit shuffle and stuffed his mobile into the pocket of Sirius’ hoodie before stepping out of the lobby door. 

His shuffle picked 'The Revivalists' _Wish I Knew You_ and after a pointed frown Remus resolved to leave it playing, deciding he wasn’t interested in assigning that particular choice with any deeper meaning and called on a bit of Sirius' level of flipping a scene to better suit himself;  
his mobile simply knew he could use a jaunty bassline to accompany him on his travels, that's all. He continued talking himself up as he rode the tube and by the time he made it to Dorcas’ block he’d managed to put some of the spring back in his step, thinking the rest would fall together once he got upstairs. 

He wasn’t wrong about that for the moment Dorcas opened the door to let him inside Remus instantly felt better.

“I may have ordered food but in my defense, I really didn’t feel like standing over the stove,” she said, stepping back to let Remus in.

“That’s fine with me,” Remus said, slipping inside and moving to foot his shoes off on the matt. 

The two of them ended up in eating on the couch, where Dorcas took the reigns of the conversation, which Remus hardly minded when they had a lot of catching up to do. He got a run down of Dorcas’ last week in Milan, her mad dash to fit as many visits with mates as she could squeeze in, and a few of the finer details about her final day which he learned mainly consisted of a bed and the bloke she’d taken up with while there, and not all that much else. From there he got quite another detailed tale of her flight, complete with some pleasant highlights and a lot more gruelling anecdotes; having never done it himself, flying had always been a bit of a blind spot where Remus was concerned, but he found himself amused hearing from someone who so evidently hated the finer details of flying as much as Dorcas clearly seemed to. 

By the time the two of them were mostly finished their plates Dorcas had made it to the actual flying part of the tale, which included being seated next to a woman who proceeded to show her many pictures of her rock collection.

“Was it impressive at least?” Remus asked, feeling the need to interject right about there. 

“One was a shocking, shimmery blue, but that didn’t mean I need to see it, or the thousand others,” Dorcas returned. “It’s my face, I swear; it’s too polite and screams ‘tell me all about your rock collection,’ and I don’t know how to train it to stop.”

“Apparently mine’s the same way, but especially at work,” Remus said. “Sirius claims it’s the baby deer eyes that give customers the impression I’m absolutely there to hear about who got what in the divorce.”

Dorcas gestured at him with her free hand. “See? We’re doomed, we can’t change our faces,” she said. Remus gave an attempt at a gruff expression that got her snickering behind her glass. “Needs work.” 

Remus snorted and traded the face for a smile, feeling warm and fed and contented. Before he could truly snapshot the moment to save for later a door opened down the hall and a bit of whistling floated back their way. Remus didn’t really think much of it past the sudden understanding that Dorcas’ roommate had to have been home, but Dorcas’ bland expression as his footsteps approached was a bit difficult to miss. Her roommate came into view as he passed by the open doorway to the living room, tossing a vacant nod to Remus before he was out of view again and heading into the kitchen. Remus trained his gaze on Dorcas just as she raised her hands to her temples as her roommate continued his jaunty tune while he dug out whatever he was getting out of the fridge. She shut her eyes after about fifteen seconds in, where she began to look a little of what Remus had a hunch he had to look like when he was trying to ward off a particularly punchy migraine.

Remus lasted about all of a minute through the rather tense atmosphere before he reached into his right pocket for his tin, plucked out the pinner he’d rolled ahead of time, and poked her on the arm with the point of it. 

Dorcas opened her eyes and dropped both her hands from the sides of her head. “You’re a good man,” she forwarded, pushing off of the couch.

Remus stifled a laugh and followed her out onto her balcony which was a surprisingly spacious area where two people didn’t have to squeeze to fit on it, but Remus wasn’t envious about that at all. Dorcas went ahead and took the deck chair on the left while Remus shut the sliding glass door behind him and sat down in the other chair, sticking his mobile on the small plasticine table between the two of them. 

“I’m going to fucking sock him one day,” Dorcas said. 

Remus fished out his lighter and handed both it and the pinner off for Dorcas to start. “What did I miss?” he asked. 

Dorcas reached over and took both off of him. “I always kept to my area when he had his mates over, but when I clearly have company he decides it’s completely on to just waltz on out and kill the vibe with his fucking whistling,” she returned, sticking the end of the joint in her mouth, speaking while she flicked the lighter. “He _knows_ I hate it, too, which is the worst part about it.” 

Remus bit the side of his lower lip out of mirth as he reached to cup his hands around the end of the joint so it’d have a chance to light, but seconds after Dorcas pulled a haul off of it she promptly erupted into an coughing fit that Remus tried vigorously not to snicker at. “Strong shit,” she said hoarsely, thumping her fist against her chest a few times. 

Remus rearranged his expression. “Yeah, I probably should have warned you, Sirius’ stuff is no joke,” he said. 

“I’m learning,” Dorcas returned before taking a resounding breath and immediately lifting the lighter to try again.

Remus fully gave into his amusement there, not feeling all that bad about it when Dorcas successfully exhaled without another eruption a few moments later. She handed it off to him and gestured toward him with a hand. “What about you?” she asked. “What’s been going on here?” 

Remus let his haul out in a quick stream. “I booked another trip this morning.” 

Dorcas’ eyes lit up. “You’re going back already?” she asked. 

Remus shook his head, shifting his gaze onto the theatre front across the road from Dorcas’ building. “It’s going on two years since I moved so I thought I’d make the trip home now that I can wrangle the time and money to do it,” he said, hovering just at the cusp of the rest of it. “And I thought it was high time that my mum and dad got to know Sirius properly, too.”

Remus made the effort to look at her then, but he got maybe a split-seconds warning before she reached across the table and socked him right in the arm. “Why am I only hearing this now?” she demanded. 

Remus reached up to ward off another go at him. “I did want to hear about you,” he defended, pulling another haul off of the joint.

Dorcas shook her head. “But this is huge,” she said, gesturing her hand at him in prompt, and it helped then, just to hear it being called what Remus certainly felt it was. 

“It’s all very soppy stuff,” he prefaced through the exhale. “You really ought to know that ahead of time.”

“Even better,” Dorcas said, draping herself back in her seat. “Lay it on me.” 

Remus’ lips quirked as he handed the joint back to her. “There are two major points where I realized I really fucking owed it to him,” he said. “One was when he helped me make the payment — after I forced myself to get past the fact that I had to let him do it in order to even try to get in, let’s be clear on that.” 

Dorcas paused her haul and let out a very small cloud. “Crystal.” 

Remus tipped his head toward her for it. “And the other was him taking me there just to have a look,” he said, then ended up huffing out a laugh. “He was such a sneak about it, too; just told me to pack for two nights and he wouldn’t even tell me a thing of where we were going until we were already on our way and I caught onto his plan, but why would he tell me?”

Dorcas burst out a quick laugh, tapping the joint to ash it. “No reason to.”

“Just useless information,” Remus said, passing the joint along. 

“Bet the face you made was worth it,” Dorcas stuck in. 

“Allegedly,” Remus said, but smirked all the same. “First day he took me to as many sights as we could squeeze in, all the spots you’re supposed to. Never got into the Louvre because the line was unbelievable, but I did stand at the top of the tower, so it’s fair.”

“Can’t have it all,” Dorcas afforded him, reaching to pluck the joint out from between his two fingers. 

“But the second day he brought me to all sorts of hidden spots that he knew about,” Remus said while she took a haul. “All these back road shops and little hole-in-the-wall pubs that he insisted that people miss while they get caught up in the typical attractions, and he wanted me to know all these little secrets of the city so I’d know where they were beforehand. He was just glowing that day, and that was it. I knew I really needed to start thinking about it.”

He stopped, registering Dorcas’ lower lip held in paired with her openly turmoiled expression, and she let go of her lip when his smile faded. “I’m trying to let you finish before I scream,” she said in a quick burst, waving her hand erratically. 

“He’s so happy that I got in, just ecstatic about it,” Remus said.

Dorcas handed the joint over for Remus to take, smiling at that. “He looked it when we were on skype,” she tacked on. 

“Yes, but that — that didn't happen to me,” Remus insisted, pointing at her with the joint before taking a haul and adding to it once he exhaled. “It was never been about what good opportunities I’d managed to get, it was always who I was leaving behind if I were to take any of them, except for this time. He wants me to go, _for me_, and that’s— it's...”

He meant for the words to sound as important as they were, but he wasn’t sure he really worded any of it properly. He saw Dorcas’ smile drop off a bit before she gave a small nod, and he knew that she knew what he was saying. 

Remus breathed out his nose and worked to explain it. “At first I wasn’t sure why he kept pressing me to try for it so much, but he listens—” he paused there, tilting his head evenly, “—not all the time, but one thing I can say is that this was one of our problems from even before we started up, but if Sirius mucks up he works twice as hard not to do it again and I think that’s what he was doing here, and I don’t know— seeing that, and being there with him, and seeing him so happy at the thought of me going there; I wanted my parents to know what he actually is to me.”

It felt right to say, in the same way it felt right that his brain replay proposing the initial idea to Sirius, and then all the details he’d focused on since they'd been back; how Sirius sat eagerly, cross-legged in front of him on the hotel room bed, how bright his eyes went, how hard he kissed him afterward, and that helped solidify it all. He thought it best not to relive the memory of the lively sex that ensued rather soon after; it was decidedly not a scene he thought he should replay snapshots of just then. 

He shifted forward in his seat, crossing his legs and sticking his chin in his hand, working to meet Dorcas’ eyes with levity in order to hopefully come off rather wholesome instead, but Dorcas hardly noticed it when she simply followed his altogether grandiose monologue with a deep groan and clutched at her chest.

“Bury me at sea,” she requested. Remus eyed her amusedly and Dorcas reached out and drummed on the table between them. “Deets, deets! When are you off?”

“It’s not until July,” Remus provided from behind his hand. 

Dorcas snorted, taking a pull off the joint. “Always have to plan ahead, don’t you."

Remus gave a conceding head tilt and moved his hand aside, resting his chin in his hand. “I’d have liked it to have been sooner, but -- money.”

Dorcas clicked her tongue. "Hate that stuff,” she said. “Are you nervous?”

“No, never me,” Remus returned airily. 

Dorcas breathed a laugh through her nose. “I wouldn’t be if I were you,” she said, offering the joint back to him. “He’s a good boy; If I brought that one home mine would begin the wedding preparations that very same day.”

Yes, he thought around a haul, but that would be very different. It came to him so quickly, but he kicked himself a beat later. It might have been a picturesque image compared to his own, and an idealistic outcome to expect, but he knew she was only trying to ease his nerves.

He stared out at passersby on the street below them, thinking he should leave it alone. Some didn’t have parents around to presume things about them. Some didn’t have secrets collecting years worth of dust that put them positions where assumptions can be made about them. Some didn’t hide, some were brave, some had it worse. 

And yet he heard himself speak anyway. “Do your parents ever have a phrase, or even just a tone that just sends you right back to being seventeen?” 

Dorcas gave a loaded laugh that brought Remus’ startled gaze back on her. “Take your pick,” she said. “You couldn't pay me enough to be seventeen again, but I take that trip for free every other time I ring home.”

“Hm?” Remus prompted, not wanting to lose the opportunity.

Dorcas gave an amused breath through her nose, nodding. “I just about blew my dad’s head apart when I picked my major, and two years on he’s still getting his shots in whenever he can,” she detailed. “He just can’t help himself.”

Remus made a bit of a face at that. “Your program sounds incredible.”

Dorcas leaned in, putting her chin in her hand as she reached to pluck the joint out of Remus’ hand and gestured to him with it. “And it is, but I had the grades for Sciences, and I took a gap year and felt things out a little, and finally chose film,” she said, punctuating it with a quick toke. “He’ll never let me live it down; he’s asked ‘how’s the hobby?’ more times than I can count, as if it’s clever at all this far in.”

Remus thought that was a frankly dismal overview of a degree in film. “I’m sorry, did you not just finish up a term in Milan?” he raised. 

Dorcas gave a loaded laugh. “Frivolous degrees are frivolous degrees whether I got to spend a term on Italian soil or not,” she said. 

Remus blinked a few times, looked around the room, and with his own parents throwing near parties when it came to his schooling he drummed his hands on the table twice. “Right, well, that’s so disheartening, and my entire point crashed and burned so I’ll take that as my cue here and bow out,” he said frankly.

Dorcas burst out a laugh. “No no, now I’ve got to know what yours was,” she said, holding the joint outstretched.

Remus took a quick haul and held it in, thinking of how to articulate it without specific details, and decided that perhaps he could cover a fair amount of ground but refrain from giving the entire picture. “This morning I finished arranging a trip solely based on bringing my boyfriend home to my parents, only to find out twelve hours later that my mum thinks I’m dating a lass,” he relayed, popping an enthusiastic smile on the end of it. 

He watched as Dorca’s face went through an impressive series of emotions before finally landing on a heavy frown, and though he felt strange under her sympathetic gaze but it was difficult not to need it. Here he could process it aloud, without stomping all over Sirius’ spirit while doing so.

“I’d been on such a high for days, and hearing that just took the wind right out of my sail,” Remus said, shaking his head and handing what was left of the joint back to her.

“Yeah, ‘course it did,” Dorcas extended, reaching to take hold of it. 

“It was the exact same tone she’d use back in high school,” he said. “She would put it on when she wanted me to know that she’d sussed out I was seeing someone, but she always thought I was avoiding bringing her home to meet them because I didn’t want a giant production or the embarrassment, which -- is more real than she even knows, but that’s not really the point. I know she means well and I know I can’t blame her; I never did anything about it then, but the second I heard it again I felt so young, and in the worst way.”

Remus bit the inside of his lip, staring out at the face of the theatre across the street from them. “It’s not as if none of my reasons aren’t reason enough to go through with it; they are and it’s rich of me to expect things to be different now that I want them to be,” he said. 

Dorcas turned her head to shoot a quick stream of smoke out of her mouth and turned it back before holding the joint out to him in offering. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. 

Remus took a haul, sorting the words out before trying again. “Once Sirius and I actually started getting along I’d catch myself telling them so many stories with him in them— because I had so many of them, I saw him three nights a week just at work, and when I realized I was doing it I started sticking in stories about the rest of you to balance it out, and I kept doing it all through literally today,” he said. “Back in the early days it was self-preservation, I know it was; I never saw him and I happening and the last thing I’d have wanted was either of them to pick me out over some unrequited love situation, that’d have been awful.”

Dorcas let out a small, reluctant laugh at the face he pulled. “But now, since you and him did end up together, maybe a little part of you hoped she already sort of knew?” she raised.

Remus froze for a moment, feeling sussed out. “It doesn’t even make sense,” he insisted, lifting his free hand. “Truly it doesn’t; if she’d said, ‘great, what time are you and your boyfriend getting in?’ my stomach would have dropped out of my body— and why would she have done it? I backed Tom up as a mate for eons, I backed Sirius up as one this whole time, and now I want her to catch on? It’s ridiculous, _I’m_ ridiculous.”

Dorcas gave him a plain look. “Right, but, none of this is simple, so why should your reaction be either?” Remus sat blinking at her for a few beats and Dorcas breathed out a weak laugh through her nose. “I’m saying you get to be annoyed here,” she reiterated. “Take the rest of it away, you were still gearing up to impending reveal, so maybe you tested the waters a bit and then got your foot snapped at. If you want to talk about disheartening, it’s what I’d call that.” 

Remus felt a wave of appreciation for her just letting him pull apart bits of worries and thoughts that would otherwise go nowhere but in. “So fucking disheartening,” he said. “And, not three minutes later, she runs into the rather male professor I had the biggest thing for in year ten, and tells me it chipper as all hell as if the piece of the puzzle isn’t _right there.”_

He let out a tired laugh, frowning at Dorcas’ own frown. His opportunity for absolution didn’t last long, it never really did, and in the next moment his stomach churned and he felt certain he should cut his mum some slack. “There’s really not much that can be done about it now,” he said, straightening up in his chair and handing the joint off to Dorcas to finish off. “Sirius isn’t deterred at all, if that’s even a surprise, and it does help that they’re quite fond of him already. It's better I turn up with the bloke who was very generous with them as opposed to one who’s got, I don’t know, a head tattoo or something.” 

Dorcas let out a long snort at that, setting her head down on her raised knee for a moment as she got a hold of herself. “Helps that he's a babe, too,” she said, lifting her head to relight the joint. 

"I’m not sure they’re going to think that?” Remus returned, but a small smile broke through anyway. 

“Well, alright, maybe not, but he’s got such a good presence about him,” Dorcas said after an exhale. “No tense or awkward silences to be seen if you’ve landed someone who simply doesn’t let them happen.” 

Remus blinked. “That’s— that’s fair,” he said candidly, feeling one less thorn poking at his side from the sentiment alone. "He really doesn't." 

“Are you telling them straight away?” Dorcas asked, reaching to stub the joint out. 

That Remus smiled fully at. “Imagine we waited until the last moment?” 

Dorcas bit her lip out of sudden mirth before reciting, “'Mother, father, I am dating a man,' and then you dive onto the train before it leaves the station.” 

“Quick, easy, strong exit,” Remus observed. 

“Call it from the window as the train pulls out,” Dorcas offered. 

Remus narrowed his eyes in feigned thought. “Seems too personal, somehow?” 

Dorcas gave a heavy nod. “Right, right, right,” she said. “So what you do is, ring them five minutes after you leave and go, ‘shit, I forgot some potentially life altering news I need to tell you both, put me on speaker?’” 

“That’s it, new plan,” Remus said. 

“So, you’ll tell them early on?” Dorcas presumed. 

“First night,” Remus confirmed. 

“Atta boy,” Dorcas said. “Good thing you’re doing this before term starts, too, otherwise you’d be waiting a full year, and that’d be some news, hm.” 

Remus nodded, but if he thought five months was difficult to wrap his head around, projecting to a full year felt like he’d jumped right off the cliff he was inching on. “Do you know the worst part about the fall?” he said, steering them away. 

“No, but tell me,” Dorcas prompted. 

“I have to start looking for a sublet,” Remus delivered, pairing it with a flat frown. 

Possibly because she’d gone through a similar process the fall past, Dorcas didn’t seem all that phased. “Some of it’s a hassle, yeah, but you’ve time to find a good one.” 

Remus hummed. “In theory, but rest assured I’ve come up with potential horror stories already,” he said. 

Dorcas smirked. “Oh, please, I need to know,” she said. 

Remus let out a puff of breath. “I get a response from someone who’s interested; they’re moving out of student housing, sick of getting gouged, and think I like the sound of that," he said evenly, "but they show up to see the place and they’ve got the shifty-eyes.” 

“Oh no,” Dorcas tossed out, just barely humouring him, “not those.” 

Remus ducked his head, breaking into a laugh. “And then, they’re touching all of my things and I hate that idea more than the shifty eyes,” he said. “Or, here’s another good one — a variation of the same scenario wherein I turn up back at my flat in December only to find the place has been emptied.” 

He huffed a laugh as Dorcas dissolved into her own fit. “That would happen to you,” she sent him. 

Remus burst out a laugh of his own, lifting a hand in agreement. “I’m already exhausted by the process and I haven’t even begun it.” 

Dorcas straightened up quite suddenly in her seat and levelled him with a sly look. “Listen, I’m right sick of this place,” she said. 

Remus succumbed to a fit of his own. “You just got back,” he returned. 

“Yeah, but these last few months have been full of the best sleep I’ve had since moving here, and that's because I didn't have him whistling around everywhere,” she said. “I don’t mean whistling while you work, I mean he strolls about at two in the morning whistling like a miner and I don’t want this for myself, Remus; I deserve better than this. ” 

And that had Remus shaking. “James and Sirius just got a new neighbour who practices the bagpipes deep into the night, for some reason, so whistling sounds good right about now.” 

“OK, first, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, and second, he’s also a fucking dick,” Dorcas went on, holding onto her stomach. “I should have just taken the time to find a new place.” 

“Alright, but you have so much space here,” Remus insisted before gesturing around them. “A dick’s a dick, but you have room to be nowhere near him.” 

“Space, sure, but you talked about being gouged before and that hit home,” she said. “Plus, I like yours; all quaint and cozy, with that little kitchen alcove and it can’t be more than what I’m paying here.” 

Remus stared at her, feeling one of the many knots in his stomach asking for expressed permission to loosen. “Honestly that would be such a relief,” he said. “Are you on a lease?” 

“It’s month to month, thank God,” Dorcas said. “And, I’ll get to look after your cat.” 

Remus sucked in a quick breath through his teeth. “No cat, I’m afraid,” he said, but then Dorcas let out a loud gasp and he quickly backtracked. “No no, there’s still a cat, don’t worry, but Sirius laid claim on her already.” 

Beat me to the punch,” she said, pitching herself back in her chair disappointedly. 

“He all but insisted,” Remus said, giving into a grin. “It really is out of my hands.”

“I suppose he’s got the right,” Dorcas said, though she heaved a sigh for good measure. Remus’ phone chimed not a moment later from where it lay halfway across the table from him. “Speaking of. You can look, you know.” 

Remus gave a quick, sheepish smile, and shook his head. It was nearing the time Sirius would have gotten off shift, so either he was checking to see if they were still on for later, or he sneezed and had the feeling he was being talked about and wanted to investigate, but either way Remus didn’t really want to be glued to his mobile. 

“You’ll hate the washer and dryer situation in the building,” he brought up. “Sirius calls it highway robbery, but there’s a laundromat a few blocks away, and it works. Just, as a facility, it certainly washes and dries your clothing.” 

Dorcas heaved out a tight laugh. “You’re really selling this,” she said. “If this teaching thing doesn't work out, I think you've a shot in real estate.” 

Remus was still laughing when he answered his phone on the first ring. “Hello?” 

“Are you with him?” 

Remus blinked, caught off guard by the speed at which James’ voice came through. “No, he was working tonight,” he gave him. “Is everything ok?” 

“Have you heard from him today?” 

“Earlier,” Remus said before a pause, apprehensive now. “What’s happened?” 

“Walburga’s in the obit,” James provided, and it was as if Remus’ stomach returned to his body solely to leave it once again. “There isn’t a chance in hell he'd have gotten a word about it personally, but there are a lot of papers scattered about there, and I don't want him without one of us if he decided to take a gander while tidying up. Can you get to him?” 

Remus nodded before remembering vocal chords were an important part of a strictly verbal conversation. “Of course,” he said quickly to make up for the lag. 

"It’s shit fucking timing, otherwise I’d be there in a second,” James insisted. 

“I know,” Remus said, the image of James stuck in the way out on the outskirts of London flooding his brain instantly. "I've got it, OK?" 

“What’s happened?” Dorcas asked the moment Remus ended the call and pressed to call Sirius. 

Remus put his phone to his ear. “Sirius’s mother passed.” 

Dorcas’ expression dropped to one of full of dismay. “Tell him I’m sorry.” 

Remus nodded, giving a tight sort of smile as the second ring came through for the would-be kind sentiment. He pulled the phone down for a quick second to catch a glimpse of the time and found out he’d undershot the time, Sirius should have left work at least half an hour ago. He ran his right thumbnail over his index finger through to the third ring, taking up an intense staring contest with the surface of the table between the two of them down as voicemail picked up, and Sirius’ voice rang through the phone, bright and clashing terribly with the situation. 

He told himself he’d just try again and he’d get him, but then it dawned on him in the span of a beat. Sirius rode Priscilla to Remus’ place the night before, if he decided just to snag clothes out of Remus’ drawer and headed to work straight from his flat then he’d have to drive the bike back to his own flat, and if he didn't drive all that carefully on a good day— 

“Sirius, please call me back,” he said as soon as the tone chimed. 

He set his phone back down on the table and tried to shake his head clear, realizing then he’d answered James’ favour so quickly that he now had a mate he would have to bail on. 

He looked to her apologetically. “Dorcas—” 

“Go on,” Docas said, nodding once in the vicinity of the door. 

Remus sighed gratefully. “Thank you,” he said, moving to stand. 

She nodded, followed in behind him, and remained in the balcony doorway while he went for their plates. “Nevermind those,” she said. "Go." 

Remus paused mid-reach for their plates and gave her another appreciative look before he made his way down the hall. “Next week?” he called as he footed his shoes on. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” Dorcas said from the other room. 

Remus infused a little more life into his voice. “Great, good, I’ll call you.” 

He pulled out his phone the moment he shut the door behind him and opened his messages as he made for the stairwell. It couldn’t hurt to cover all corners; if Sirius missed his and James’ calls then perhaps he left his phone on the other end of the flat and didn’t hear the rings. Sirius left that thing everywhere; it could be sitting in the backroom at work for all he knew. 

He opened up their message thread and blinked down the complete lyrics of _Sex on Fire_ copied, pasted, and sent to Remus the evening prior. He did everything in his power not to succumb to the typical wave of amusement he felt whenever Sirius decided that was the best way of communicating his particular mood for it seemed quite inappropriate for the morbidity of the situation. Remus shot him a quick text with the same request his voicemail contained, took the stairs, and pushed through the lobby door out onto the sidewalk. 

He debated the choice between a taxi or a bus, and Remus cursed himself, wishing he’d sprang for a cheap car once settling in London, or that he wasn't too much of a nervous ninny to drive in the city for he’d be at Sirius’s in no time at all if he’d sucked it up and tried giving it a shot. He decided a taxi would get him there quicker when the chances of a bus coming along right as he got to the stop were far smaller than he needed them to be. 

His ride showed up within mere minutes, something that he hoped for but certainly didn't bank on, and Remus thanked his lucky stars for it. The ride felt longer than it needed to when Dorcas lived much closer to Sirius’ than he did but he waited until the halfway mark to try again, and that truly was the most difficult thing he’d done all day. He got Sirius’ voicemail once again but didn’t bother leaving another, partly because of the driver up front and partly because he would have rathered Sirius simply call him back when he noticed the missed calls without bothering to check his voicemail. 

He set his phone in his lap and breathed. It could mean anything. Sirius could be out, could have missed the paper completely, or flipped straight to the crossword and hadn’t even given the obituary a second glance, but even as he told himself this, the image of Sirius lying in a heap at the foot of his bed flooded in, the red on his hand, the red on him, and Remus tried to keep from pulling off his thumbnail altogether for his brain took him to far more unsettling places from there. 

To put his active mind to use he picked pulled out his mobile and looked the obituary up, satisfying a morbid curiosity that really didn't help in the least, not when one particular family member’s name didn't appear alongside the list of surviving family members; all of them distant and not as deserving a mention, and a horribly familiar feeling welled up in him. 

Miraculously, the next time he looked up from his mobile the cabbie was turning down Sirius’s street. Remus shifted and pulled his bank card out a block from the flat, forced himself to be polite as he waited for the driver to boot up the interac machine and not be too irritated that it wasn't already raring to go. He tossed a thank you over his shoulder and climbed out of the backseat, took the stairs briskly, and didn’t bother with the spare key hidden under a frog statue by the front door as James and Sirius rarely bothered to lock it anyway. 

Remus opened the door and nearly tripped over Sirius’ docs lying scattered in the entrance, and didn't curse their existence this time for they meant Sirius had to be in there somewhere. He toed his own shoes off even though the owners of the flat couldn’t care less if he did or didn’t, it was habitual and he still couldn’t shake it. He checked Sirius’ room first to no avail, headed down the hall, through the empty living room, and straight on into the kitchen to find Sirius in his usual spot by the window, stone-faced and holding a cigarette in his right hand, and Remus knew Sirius already knew. 

Sirius looked up by the time Remus cleared the room, looking right startled. “I summoned you.” 

Remus knelt down, taking a glance over Sirius for marks or signs, anything, but his t-shirt showed his hands and arms bare, and that should have quelled him more than it did. He looked up at Sirius, his whole expression completely flipped, but he couldn’t take that at face value. 

Remus shook his head clear and lifted his right hand to the side of Sirius neck. “Wait, what did you say?” 

“I pictured you and you appeared in my kitchen that same moment,” Sirius detailed, pressing his hands down Remus sides as though he were trying to prove he were truly in front of him, and that worried him even more. 

“Are you OK?” Remus said as Sirius’ hands roamed. “I’ve been trying to call you— James, too; we’ve both been trying.” 

Sirius blinked at that, shifting in his seat to pull his phone out of his back pocket and Remus head almost imploded on the spot. Sirius looked up from what no doubt had to be a collection of missed calls and gave a rather tight smile. “I left on silent." 

Remus breathed out then in, grateful Sirius’ silence hadn’t meant anything terrible but he had no control over the irritation burrowing in his gut. “Why’s it on silent?” 

“Have you met Rosmerta?” Sirius returned. 

Remus bit back a retort, breathing out then in. “How long have you known?” he asked, thinking he might have deserved a gold statue for how well he managed to sound calm. 

Sirius glanced past Remus toward the clock on the stove. “Hour, little more,” he said, and nevermind; Sirius stole that statue right out of Remus' hands by sounding much more at ease than him, but his casual tone and simple shrug weren't well received when Remus spent the last half hour in a state. 

“And you didn't call either of us?” he asked. 

Sirius squinted. “I thought of the both of you plenty of times since I got off, on opposite ends of the city and with other people,” he said with a bit of a bite to it, “so you’ll excuse me if I left you both to it.” 

Remus’ breath hitched, his face reddening. “You didn't have to do that,” he insisted. “I'd have come -- I _did_, I came right away. James would have flapped his arms until he figured out how to fly here if he could have--” 

Sirius spoke on, pitching his voice louder to get the words out over Remus'. “And I appreciate that, but contrary to what they like to think the world doesn’t stop spinning because another Black family member got picked off, and yours shouldn’t either,” he said, as if it were washed and done. 

Remus dropped his head in an instant, set his forehead against Sirius’ collar, and closed his eyes for a few moments, forcing white hot rage down and replacing it a few longer moments later with something else. “Have you eaten?” he asked. He felt Sirius shake his head and he was glad for it if only for the chance to put his hands to good use. “I’ll make you something, then, OK?” 

Sirius gave a nod and Remus straightened up and moved to stand, instinctively pressing a kiss to Sirius’ forehead along the way, and before he got to his feet, Sirius leaned in to press one of his own to Remus’ neck and the small gesture was enough to send Remus’ stomach into a tizzy even now. 


	2. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for so much love and sweet words.

Remus forced himself to turn away from Sirius and set to task, rinsing his hands off at the sink while on a mental hunt for something that would be a good idea to make for him. He wished he knew how to make a casserole or soufflé just on principle, but that was too far out of his repertoire or time frame to even consider; one day perhaps, but not today when the goal was really just to fill Sirius’ stomach. 

He decided on a sandwich for simplicity’s sake and gathered the fixings together, bringing them to the counter to the left of the stove. He pulled a plate down from the cupboard and set two slices of bread on it before he realized he hadn’t told James he was there. He stopped to pull his mobile out of his back right pocket and typed a quick text. 

_He’s OK, with him now. _

He sent it off, set his mobile down on the counter, and resumed where he’d left off, picking up the butter knife beside the plate and spreading some dressing on the slices of bread. He heard the flick of a lighter from behind him where Sirius remained seated, but Remus was quite sure he’d seen a cigarette lit when he came in. He glanced over his shoulder, found Sirius indeed with the lasts of a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, idly lighting it and relighting it. 

Remus made it look like he’d simply been itching his chin on his shoulder while his hands were full and turned back to the task at hand. The sound of the lighter flicking was drowned out by three chimes from Remus’ mobile on the counter, one after the other echoing loudly in the room. 

“Someone’s popular,” Sirius piped up. 

“I’d say that’s you,” Remus said, pushing to sound mild as he broke off a piece of lettuce to fit onto one of the slices. “James is a little out of the loop over there.” 

Another flick echoed from behind him. “Do pass along that I’m not curled up in the corner.” 

Remus only managed to nod, not trusting himself to speak just then, and focused on finishing up. He picked up the plate once he was done and turned from the counter, walking it over to place it by Sirius, who reached for the sandwich and saluted Remus with it in thanks. Remus gave a tight smile before he went back to the counter to clean up, bringing the butterknife over to the sink across the room to give it a wash and setting it in the drying rack for the time being. He went to stick the sandwich fixings back into the fridge, but once he shut the door he rang out his hands behind Sirius, unsure of what to do with himself now that the lingering bit of worry under his skin suddenly had everything and nothing to latch onto. 

He had maybe three seconds worth of time before Sirius’ head started to turn his head to get a look at him, and then he stuck his arms at his sides and put on as easy a walk as he could manage, heading over to take the chair across the table from Sirius. He glanced up at him simply chowing down, looking a lot more at ease than Remus certainly felt considering there was some rather striking news that news that might need further addressing, but then, Sirius did have a sandwich; sometimes it was the small things with him, too.

Remus watched him a bit, looked out the window beside him for a little, moved his gaze down to the nails on his right hand, then back up at Sirius, who went for another bite, caught Remus’ eye on that one, and pulled the sandwich from his mouth altogether. 

“I don’t want to talk about her, Remus.” 

Remus tried not to visibly wilt in his chair over how imposed Sirius sounded. “We don’t have to,” he said, though he really wished Sirius would give him something.

Sirius kept hold of the sandwich but didn’t take another bite. “I’ve nothing to say.” 

Remus’ stomach took to somersault. Of course Sirius didn’t; Remus didn’t even know what to say and it wasn’t his mother in the obit, why would Sirius have anything prepared? “That’s OK,” he said. 

“There’s nothing _to_ say.” 

“That’s OK, too.” 

“Good fucking riddance.” 

And that, Remus didn’t speak to. Couldn’t really, not when he was much closer to that opinion than he’d imagined himself being even a year ago. He watched Sirius watch him in the silence that followed, hoping it was simply his mind on overdrive warning him that his silence was saying something he certainly wasn’t thinking, but the reset of Sirius’ jaw was enough for him to realize his well had run dry on that front. 

“Hm?” Sirius prompted. 

Sirius’ gaze was so striking that Remus couldn’t keep looking at it when he’d truly managed to forget how otherworldly Sirius managed to look so close to an eruption. Remus turned his hands in his lap, hating where they were headed even with how hard he was trying not to have them end up there. He thought of James’ earlier grievance and how right he’d been about it; it was utterly shit timing. Sirius hadn’t looked at him this way in months, not for months.

“I don’t know what to say, Sirius,” he said, wishing he’d prepared better on his way over, that he simply was better. 

“Oh, no?” Sirius checked plainly. “You’re not thinking, ‘how could someone say something so heartless?’” 

Remus felt a sharp pang of hurt this time, that Sirius had said it or even thought he could. He only had a few sordid memories of Walburga and the one that played on loop in his head more often than he liked to admit showcased the force she wracked up to lay a hand on Sirius, but even if he’d only seen it the once, he certainly never saw Sirius as the heartless one in the equation. 

“You know I’m not thinking that,” Remus said. “Why would I ever think that?”

“Then what are you thinking?” Sirius probed.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” he said, splaying his hands openly on the table.

“You don’t think it matters?” Sirius barked. Remus kept his eyes trained downward while his shoulders went up, but he could see in his peripheral that Sirius was waving the blasted sandwich about the air as he spoke, and that might’ve been a funny sight if his voice weren’t coming out so tightly caught between a laugh and a shout. “How have I not made it clear to you that it always matters what you think? Just say what it is so I don’t have to keep guessing whether you think I’m—” 

Remus spoke louder to compensate. “I’m not going to tell you how to feel about this, Sirius,” he returned. “Believe me, I learned my lesson last time.” 

Another silence hung between them and after a count of three Remus chanced a glance up, but Sirius wasn’t looking at him anymore. He wasn’t holding his jaw so tightly either, but he looked so miserable as he stared down at the table top that Remus had to fight the urge to go to him. He wasn’t sure his legs would get him there for one, and if he were honest with himself a part of him didn’t want to find out if Sirius would turn him away if he tried it. 

“It’s up to you,” Remus kept on, trying with words instead. “If you want to talk about this, then of course I’ll listen to you, and if you just want to talk about footy, then I’ll listen to that, too.” 

Sirius lifted his gaze to Remus and simply stared at him for a long moment. “When have we ever talked about footy?” he asked finally, tilting his head just a smidge to the right, but it was just enough.

Remus’ shoulders deflated the moment it happened and he ran a hand over his face, viscerally grateful for the familiarity of Sirius’ playful deadpan. “It might’ve been a bad example but there was a sentiment in there somewhere,” he said, his own lips quirking at the sides as he fiddled with the left sleeve of Sirius’ hoodie. 

“I mean, I haven’t been keeping up,” Sirius said with mock concern. 

“I’d let you make it up as you go along,” Remus mentioned, letting himself smile. 

Sirius lifted his coffee mug to cheers him before taking a swig, and Remus gave a half-sigh, half-laugh at how simple it felt suddenly, just to want to be close to Sirius in any way he could be. “I just want to be with you, Sirius,” he reiterated, feeling for the first time since he made it into the kitchen that he had this. 

Sirius set is mug down on the table with a solid clunk that hung between them much louder than ever their tense silences seemed to, and then Remus watched with his heart beating at double time as Sirius lifted out of his chair, rounded the table, and tugged Remus out of his seat and into a hug that Remus was so desperate to both give and get that he tripped on his way up to meet it properly. 

“I was so worried about you,” Remus blurted, clinging right to him now that he’d been given the chance to. 

It helped that Sirius spoke close, held him close, spoke so close. “I know you were.”

It was said so minutely that Remus probably should have left it, but words wouldn’t stop pouring out of him. “I just kept seeing you laying there looking so small on your bed last time, and your hand, and I couldn’t stop thinking that if I didn’t make it in time—”

Sirius pulled back to see Remus better, moving his hands up to hold Remus at his shoulders. “I’m fine, see?” he said. “Completely fine.” 

Remus shook his head, looking everywhere but at Sirius. “Don’t ever scare me like that again,” he implored. 

Sirius brought his hands up to the sides of Remus’ face so that Remus would hold his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Remus.”

And that, quite simply, felt like the two of them in a nutshell. Remus had slowly come to appreciate the taste of coffee over the past few months, but never more than he when he could taste it on Sirius, and he drank him in as if he’d never get enough of him. Sirius’ hands went everywhere and yet nowhere for very long; in his hair, on his neck, pressing over his waist and pulling him closer. Sirius had the zipper of his stolen hoodie down before Remus really had a handle on the buttons of Sirius’ work button-down, so Remus gave up on those for a moment, letting the hoodie get pushed off of his shoulders. 

He pulled his arms out of it and went right back to wrestling with the tiny buttons on Sirius’ shirt. “Hate these,” Remus mentioned. 

Sirius gave his crooked little grin as he reached up to help him out a little, and the rather lived in knowledge that sex wasn’t the first step to smoothing overa tenuous situation wasn’t one Remus cared for in that moment; if anything, he found it quite easy to ignore the strict voice in his head advising him against it when Sirius began working his mouth against Remus’ neck, yet again when Sirius pulled Remus flush against him and backed up as he tugged on him so that Remus would eventually put it together that he was now expected to help get Sirius to the floor without a scuffle on the way down. 

Again and again he pretended he couldn’t hear it; when Sirius’ hands moved whip-fast between them undoing Remus’ fly and shoving his trousers down past his hips, doubly so when Sirius’ own were completely off and flung somewhere out of Remus’ field of vision, and he certainly didn’t need that voice pestering him when he was dragging his mouth down Sirius’ body and Sirius’ navel fluttered underneath his tongue, thank you very much. Remus could practically taste the sounds he was pulling out of him, he wasn’t about to stop now, certainly not when Sirius went and made it quite explicit what he was gunning for specifically. 

Sirius tugged on Remus’ right arm until Remus let him have it, pulled Remus’ middle and forefinger into his mouth, and soon guided it down between his legs, and Remus pitched that nuisance of a voice so far out of his brain that he could barely hear it. He stayed right where he was, planting open mouthed kisses everywhere he could reach from as he held Sirius’ hips still with his left arm and worked on him with his right hand, enjoying a bit of the scenery along the way.

Minutes later saw Sirius tapping his head erratically in warning, and Remus stilled both mouth and his hand in favour of pushing himself up to a hover over Sirius, on his knees as he prepared himself for the mad dash he was in for, but Sirius went ahead and hitched his legs around Remus’ hips, and suddenly it was all a little too ambitious him.

“Two minutes, not even,” Remus breathed, reaching behind his back to unhook Sirius’ ankles from each other. 

“I’m good,” Sirius gave him, quite set on where his ankles were at the moment. 

Remus eyed him pointedly before he managed to wrangle Sirius’ ankles apart. “Not even two minutes,” he reiterated, pushing his hips back so he could unwind from Sirius’ legs. 

He was up and off of the floor before Sirius got his scoff out, which Remus thought was a little much considering he was only going to the bathroom and back. He sent him a mock-scoff of his own over his shoulder and padded out of the room, heading into the bathroom to reach past the shower curtain to catch hold of the bottle of lube they’d left in there for convenience sake, and booked it back to the kitchen. Coming back into a room that had a supremely naked Sirius solely biding his time for Remus to get back to him perhaps ought to have brought him right back into it quite obligingly, but it also forced him to stop and look at the bigger picture for a moment. 

Remus tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather move anywhere with some cushioning?” 

Sirius shook his head. “I would not,” he returned, some amusement showing through now. “Get down here and rail me.”

Remus dropped down to his knees over him. “I don’t know where your manners have gone to,” he tutted, popping the cap of the lube for a dot of punctuation, and Sirius simply laughed beneath him, bright and alert and bare. 

Remus gave himself a little more to tome work with than entirely necessary, but in his defense watching Sirius squirm underneath him was a little difficult to push past. Eventually he could hardly hold out himself and put Sirius’ legs back around him where they’d just been and reached down between the two of them to guide himself in, at the prime vantage point to feel Sirius take in a full breath just as much as he heard it. 

He felt Sirius’ hands on his arms and his nails dig in, and Remus moved his hips slowly to let Sirius adjust to the stretch. “I assume you're now glad I didn't just go right on in?” he put out there.

Sirius gave a tight laugh. “Oh, fuck off,” he said before leaning up to catch Remus’ lips. 

The cautionary voice petered the farthest away yet and Remus didn't reach to pull it back in the slightest, not when Sirius felt this good, not when Sirius took to responding so openly, dragging his nails over every inch of Remus’ back that he could reach, and certainly not when all of the tension and worry and irritation of the past hour were quickly becoming equally fleeting thoughts at the back of his mind. Remus read the signs Sirius was giving him, braced the floor with both his hands on either side of Sirius’ body as picked up his pace, and Sirius gave enough urgings that only made Remus move faster still. Sirius let out a curse because of the pace switch, then repeated the word tightly again and again as Remus angled his hips and aimed each one with purpose just to get him to repeat it. Sirius’ left hand grappled at Remus’ shoulder first, his arm second, and then shot out shakily and gripped at the nearby table leg for purchase as Remus kept it up; the surface of the table knocked against the wall a few good, hard times because of it and Sirius’ laptop went from sitting on the far edge of the table straight to the ground with a thud. 

Remus looked up, alarmed at it for it might not have been their first casualty but it was the first that cost many many pounds, but the laptop might well have been a throwaway dish for all Sirius seemed to care, and that suspicion was confirmed seconds later when the plate on the table followed suit and shattered and Sirius only grabbed at Remus’ arse and urged him right on as if that hadn’t happened either. 

Remus, on the other hand, shot his hands up to shield Sirius’ face from any wayward shards. “It’s all the way over there,” Sirius huffed from underneath his hands. 

Remus clicked his tongue, stilled his hips, and reached down to grab a good hold of Sirius’ in order to drag him away from ground zero and any more potential injury, but the sound of Sirius’ back sliding across the floor set off an inside his head. 

He stalled his hips completely and curled over Sirius, looking him over carefully while Sirius only blinked up at him and splayed his hands open at the pause. “I’m not going to break, Remus,” he implored. 

“As if I don't know that,” Remus returned. ”You’re still going on top and you’re going to be a lot more careful, yes?”

Sirius wiped his imposed expression clean off and took his lower lip into his mouth as he nodded emphatically. He stayed quite still while Remus pulled out and backed off of him, but Remus barely had a chance to situate himself against the cupboards under the counter before Sirius sprang on him in seconds, straddling his lap and reaching behind his own back to guide Remus cock back in.

Remus had a knob sticking right into his back and he’d have said as much if Sirius hadn’t reached up and braced the edge of the counter above their heads for leverage, rocking back on Remus’ cock in hard snaps and taking most of the air Remus had left to work with. Instead he tipped his head forward into the crook of Sirius’ neck, gasping against his skin as he reached up shakily to get a hold of Sirius’ hips, driving them down against him as he kept up with Sirius’ extreme pace. He got his wits about him much closer to finishing than he would have liked to admit, but he reached his right hand in between them to pump Sirius in time with their thrusts in the knick of time, and through the haze of his release Sirius somehow managed to call on the presence of mind necessary to budge Remus’ head out of the crook of his neck to watch him follow him over the edge. 

Sirius went in for a kiss at the last moment and Remus held Sirius’ hips that much tighter as he shook and rolled them through the last of it, letting out a weak breath against Sirius’ lips. Sirius let go of the counter in favour of grabbing onto him, sagging down into Remus’ lap and kissing him full, and Remus tried to enjoy being blanketed by him, truly he gave an honest go of it but he couldn’t keep himself from vocalizing that damned voice’s opinion on the matter when it veritably slammed into him. 

Remus broke the kiss, blurting, “that shouldn’t have been the first thing we did.”

Sirius blinked before giving out a loud and lengthy ‘pfft,’ and dropping his head against Remus’ collar. “I'd say you worry too much but that's a little on the nose.”

Remus frowned and flicked Sirius’s arse for that one. “It’s not exactly healthy, is it.”

“I can think of at least ten health benefits to what we just did — more if you give me a minute,” Sirius said, puffs of his breath tickling Remus’ neck. “I think it makes perfect sense. A brush with our mortality followed by a desperate shag on the kitchen floor; we’re a regular cliché.” 

Remus couldn’t fight the small laugh that he muffled in Sirius’s hair. “The list of clichés we fall under is getting a bit ridiculous.”

“Not from where I'm sitting,” Sirius chimed, in Remus’ lap and quite settled if his nestling his head in said anything about it, and after so much time logged away with him, Remus still found himself perplexed at how tender Sirius managed to be even after the plowing of the century. 

The cupboards felt chilly against Remus’ back not to mention there was a knob sticking into it, and it didn’t take very long for Remus to start wondering about the state of Sirius’ back after driving him into the floor and dragging him all over it. 

He flushed at his behaviour and pressed his hands over Sirius’ back gingerly. “How is it?” he asked, straining his neck to try to get a peek at it from over Sirius’ head.

“It’s on fire,” Sirius provided, quite jovially at that. Remus inspected Sirius further with a frown etched on, trailing his hands lower down, and Sirius jolted the moment Remus reached his arse, lifting his head and leaning his hips up and to the left. “Oi, would you like a closer look?” 

“I'm only checking,” Remus defended, giving him a pointed frown. “You have a lot of explaining to do, so I’m not sure why you’re so relaxed.”

Sirius blinked. “Really?" he said dryly. "You’ve no idea how I’m relaxed right now.” 

Remus gave him another pointed look. “Since when do we spit and go?” he raised and didn’t much appreciate it when Sirius’ let go of him in favour of giving out a vagiue 'ehnnh' paired with an even gesture with his hands. “No, that’s not the answer, and no scenario should be so urgent that we can't pause for five seconds so I don't impale you—”

“Now, see, that was the goal,” Sirius cut in. “Just so we’re on the same page here; I wanted you to fuck my brains out.”

“If the roles were reversed you wouldn't have agreed to that even if I’d begged for it,” Remus returned, then spoke right over Sirius’ objection. “You’d have put your trousers right back on and had me wait there quaking in my boots while you went ‘round to the shop if we hadn’t had any left, thank you very much, and it’s more than fair that I ask that it go both ways.”

“Fine, it won’t happen again,” Sirius heaved out, and Remus gave him a kiss on the forehead for his waving the white flag earlier than he anticipated. “How’s your back?”

“There’s a knob sticking into it,” Remus replied.

“Well, you could have said as much,” Sirius said, inching his hips up enough to pull off of Remus.

“Pretty sure I couldn’t get words out back there,” Remus mentioned. 

“Well,” Sirius began, moving out of his lap and seemingly coming up with responses on the spot, “you’re welcome for that.”

Remus huffed a reluctantly amused breath for all that Sirius’ counterpoint amounted to and made to push himself along the floor, but his body protested the movement and he simply lay down flat on his back, not far from the cupboards at all. Sirius snorted from where he knelt, then shifted toward him and slid in beside him on the floor, his left leg curling loosely over Remus’ left hip while his other stretched out along the length of Remus’ body. 

“Better?” Sirius asked. 

“Not by much,” Remus said. “Floor’s cold.” 

Sirius gave out a half-hearted hum. “Always something, hm.” 

Remus ignored that bit, more preoccupied with watching Sirius behave as if he’d won a race, and though he couldn’t say that he was necessarily surprised by it but it lost its charm in record time. Sirius was notorious for working to look and sound cheerful even if he wasn’t, and that put their tense first few minutes together back into perspective. As if in response Sirius yawned, stretched long, and shifted to send a beam up at him, and Remus made himself return a similar smile while his head was elsewhere.

He felt for Sirius, his situation in itself and the unruffled mask he felt he had to put on where his family was concerned, and Remus despised that his own blood ran quicker when Sirius took it off for all of a few seconds with him. He didn't know where Sirius’ head was now, but Remus thought of quite a few places he could imagine it being just then, and one in particular stood out above the rest. If Sirius wasn’t certain that had the room to say the words outright, then perhaps Remus would have to be the one to bite the bullet and let him off the hook.

“Sirius,” he started, “if you can’t come with me, I’d understand.” 

Sirius’ curious expression dropped off before he pushed himself up to lean on his right elbow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Remus stared at up at him a moment and for a moment he didn’t want to have to say it, but if Sirius was putting on an act then he saw no other way around it. “It could be hell on earth for you to have to sit around watching my parents and I star in some after-school special with all of this going on,” he said, lifting his shoulders listlessly. “We’re nauseating.”

Sirius sighed long, lifting his right hand to drag it over his face, and Remus’ right thumbnail found his index finger. “You’ve got to know by now that I'm fucking with you when I say that,” he said from under his hand. “I don’t hate happy families on sight, especially not yours.”

Remus hated that he could always feel so viscerally when he was beginning to get on someone’s nerves, and yet he still couldn’t seem to avoid it. “I’m concerned that it’ll be too much and if you don’t want to say it in case I’d take it badly, I really won’t—” 

He trailed off as Sirius shifted off of him to lay flat on his back; Remus couldn’t see his face so well anymore and he wondered if that was the whole point of it. “We’re all set,” Sirius said.

“I know,” Remus gave him, “but things come up, and I’d be a jerk if I didn't give you an out if you need one.”

Sirius’ shoulders did a substantial lift before a fall. “We’re just going to uproot the whole plan?”

“I’m still going to tell them,” Remus assured. “I know I had a low point earlier, but I've been dragging my feet too long—”

“You said you wanted me there for it,” Sirius tacked on.

Remus’ heart sank. “I do,” he insisted, reaching to brush Sirius’ hair out of his face. 

“Doesn't look like you do from how quick you were to write me out of it,” Sirius sent back.

Remus froze just before his hand got to Sirius’ head. “Or it’s that I’m so selfish it took everything I had to tell you that you didn't have to come,” he returned.

“_Be_ selfish for once, ‘cause this is a fuck of a lot worse than that would have been,” Sirius tossed at him.

Remus held his tongue on just how easier that was said than done, breathed in and out, and forced himself to do damage control. Taking a leaf out of Sirius’ own book, he shifted onto his side, moved down the floor so that their heads were level, and pushed Sirius’ legs apart, nestling himself in between them and being the blanket this time around.

Sirius set him with a wide-eyed, humbled expression that Remus hadn’t seen in months, and that tripped him up, seeing it now. It was as if Remus was taken straight back to Sirius’ bedroom, could practically feel Sirius dragging his forefinger over his lifeline repeatedly as if Sirius were doing so right then; he could see that version of the two of them so clearly that he was certain he could feel some of his past self’s stomach flutters right then and there. Remus couldn’t kiss Sirius then, but certainly he could now; he leaned down, did, and when he felt the shiver that ran through Sirius he was glad he read the moment properly, found himself hoping that Sirius might have been seeing that same scene, too. Sirius’ right hand came up to cup Remus’ jaw while their lips moved together slowly, as though the two having a rough shag not ten minutes ago hadn’t been them at all but two other people far away from them, and Remus didn't know if he’d ever get used to how the two of them kept shifting shape. 

Remus paused the kiss and took Sirius’ flustered silence as his golden opportunity. “I want you there more than anything, I just don’t want you feeling as though it’s being rubbed in your face the whole time,” he said. “This has to be difficult—” 

“No, Remus, do you know what’s the most difficult part about this?” Sirius said, his fully dilated pupils making him look five times more striking than he regularly did. “Having it assumed that I can't put my shit on the backburner for you, I’ve done it before and I can do it again.” 

Remus bit his lower lip, moved his right hand to place it on Sirius’ chest, where he could feel his heart beating as quickly as his own was. “You don't have to,” he said. “I don't want you to feel obligated to come just because you already said you would. You can say no, you should be able to say no.”

“I don't _want_ to say no,” Sirius returned. “Remus, I’m fine. I can admit it — rough end to a day and we both know that she got right into my head back there, but I’d rather think of the cosmic shift that’s just occurred, if you’ll join me; the spite that this one woman harboured in her has just been completely snuffed from the earth — that’s a gift to the masses. We’ll have to pick up champagne because I think a toast is in order.” 

Remus swallowed and spoke past the doubt that remained in his gut so no more stretches of silence could muck things up for him again. “Whatever you want,” he said, waving the white flag, “but if it somehow isn’t fine anymore, I’m here. I’m always here.”

Sirius reached to swipe his thumb over Remus’ cheek. “I’m not going to let her fuck around with you and me, and I suggest you don’t start letting her either,” he said. “Are you going to let me come with?” 

Remus nodded after a moment, breathing the same air between them. “If you feel that it’s too much, at any point, please know that it’s OK to take a break from them,” he said. “And from me.”

Sirius searched him, his mouth open slightly. “That’s not going to happen,” he said, sounding so assured that Remus didn’t know how to keep pressing it.

Instead he tried for levity, something he thought Sirius might appreciate now more than ever. “And really, look at you,” Remus said, reaching to circle his right hand around Sirius’ visage, “with a face like this smiling back at them you’re easily the best weapon I’ve got. I fucking need you there, Sirius.” 

“_You’re_ an actual cherub,” Sirius countered, reaching up to fluff out Remus’ fringe. “That alone is one thing, but a tag-team like us’ll be double the effect, so you’re right; it’s unavoidable, I have to come.”

Remus ducked his head, pressing his smile against Sirius’ chest, and breathed out. He slowly became aware over the course of the next minute or so of his trousers hanging loosely around his knees and the kitchen they were lying in. “We ought to get dressed," he brought up, "clean up a little, hm?” 

“You and clothes,” Sirius said lazily. “I happen to know you don’t even bother with them at all some days, and yet here you are, forcing me to assimilate.” 

Remus shifted onto his knees, pulled his trousers over his hips and redid the button for now, but Sirius simply kept on basking. “Come on,” Remus prompted, leaning over to grab both Sirius’ pants and trousers that somehow ended up in a heap near the stove, “you’re like a five year old I have to bribe to get a move on.” 

“And what do you plan to offer me?” Sirius asked, sticking his hands back behind his head. 

Remus pointedly placed both articles on Sirius’ chest. “I just fed you twice.” 

It took another thirty seconds at least for Sirius to finally sit up properly, but to his credit he was shaking with mirth and Remus had just taken him to town. Remus went off to fetch the broom and a roll of paper towels, brought both back to the kitchen and dropped the roll on the ground by Sirius, and kept the broom and the task of sweeping up for himself. Remus moved the chairs along with the table back from the wall while Sirius cleaned the mess up off of the floor and wandered off down the hall from there. 

Remus paused in the middle of moving the table back from the wall to watch him go, but the shower started up a few seconds later and answered his question as to where Sirius went off to quite plainly. He pushed the table back some more, stooped to pick up Sirius’ laptop, and spared a small prayer for it, breathing out with relief when it turned on a few seconds later. He stuck it on the windowsill for now, moved onto sweeping up the glass and last bites of the sandwich from there, and Sirius strolled back into the room by the time he was finished in nothing but his pants. 

Remus would have said a heartened thank you for him parading around like that if he hadn’t felt the need to let Sirius know that his laptop was still alive and kicking. Sirius hummed pleasantly in response, came up behind Remus as he was dumping the accumulated glass into the bin and reached his arms around him. He crossed his hand in a T over it with his right hand as if blessing the broken dish for it’s sacrifice, and Remus couldn’t help huffing a laugh and bowing his head to it in turn. 

Once the kitchen was back in its lived-in order, Sirius picked up his pack and started a cigarette for himself while Remus stole a quick haul before going for his own rinse. He aimed to keep it short, feeling that now that he had Sirius in his peripheral, he didn't want him out of it for very long. He towelled himself off, tied the towel around his waist and went out into the hall, and found Sirius draped along the length of the couch with Gilmore Girls on pause from where they last left off. Remus couldn’t have agreed more with that decision, grateful for something much more lighthearted to sink his brain into, and he could only imagine Sirius’ own need for something similar. He went on through the flat to Sirius’ room for something comfortable to lounge in, tugged on a pair of Sirius’ joggers and picked up the first t-shirt he saw in the top drawer, and made his way back to the living room while pulling the shirt on over his head. 

Sirius pushed himself up onto his left elbow and patted the couch, and Remus went in between it and the coffee table to take the spot where Sirius’ head had been. Sirius shifted down the couch a bit, stuck his head down on Remus’ lap, and reached out to unpause the show with the remote. Remus teased Sirius’ hair instinctively, marvelling at how eased he felt by the rote memory that came with it, as if their entire day hadn't taken place and they were living two days into the past. 

Sirius traded quips with him for another while, but by the start of the following episode Remus noted that he was fast asleep. More content than he had been in hours, Remus kept on teasing the hair above Sirius’ right ear as he continued watching as this must have been Sirius’ fifth run-through while he was still only on his first viewing. 

Just as the following episode started up Remus heard his mobile chime from the kitchen and fought not to scramble, remembering quite suddenly that he basically left James on read and shifting slowly out from under Sirius so as not to stir him. He booked it down the hall while hitting all the quiet spots on the floor to avoid unnecessary creaking, snatched his mobile off the counter by the stove and pressed to call James, waiting through one ring before he picked up. 

“Fuck me, I am so sorry,” he said off the bat, holding the elbow of his phone arm with his free hand and curling in on himself. “He’s OK, he's just sleeping and I didn't know if I should wake him. Do you want me to? Of course you do, I'll get him, just a minute—”

“Remus, woah,” James returned, sounding thrown off. “He’s good?” 

“Sorry, yeah, he’s—” Remus started before breathing in, sorting it out. “As good as he could be? It was touch and go for a bit, but once things settled he put Gilmore Girls on, so.” 

“Just what the doctor prescribes,” James finished for him. I know I'll sleep easier knowing you're there with him — and honestly so will he, let's be real.” 

Remus shut his eyes in relief over his unprovoked tone. “I didn't want to keep pressing him about it,” he said. “Should I have?” 

“Remus, you’re good,” James insisted. “This is where he needs to be reminded how much better off he is, and with you there he's already a step ahead. You’ve done all you can.” 

Remus leaned back against the counter, feeling an insurmountable amount of appreciation for James and holding himself a little less tightly. “Thank you,” he said earnestly. “How’s it over there?” 

James let out a groan that lasted a good ten seconds at least and Remus bit back a laugh. “You've been there four days, James.” 

“And tell me, why did I agree to a fortnight here again?” James raised. 

“Because you love their daughter and it's gorgeous there from what I've heard,” Remus offered. 

“Valid points,” James gave back. “Lily’s parents are fine, really, but Petunia? I’ll never know how she and Lily are related. And Vernon is just an absolute clod. I think he’s actually under the impression that he’s living this envied life, but if I have to hear him talk up the finer details of drill making one more time, I think I might just buy one of his just to use it to off him.” 

Remus stifled his laugh so it wouldn’t carry down the hall. “They won't be there the whole time, will they?” 

“They say they’re only stopping in for the weekend, but I wouldn't put it past them to stay longer just to fuck with me specifically,” James maintained. 

"For your sake, I hope it’s the first one,” Remus said, then tilted his head evenly. “And I’m sure you’ll be able to hold out if it’s the second.” 

“Your confidence in me is staggering,” James said, and Remus smiled to himself for he could have said the same thing about him. “Theoretically speaking, if I were to make a break for it on foot, how long do you think it would take for me to get back there?” 

“It would depend on how fast you’re going.” 

“I could do a bunch of barrel rolls on the way, save time.” 

“I mean, you always do, only now it’ll finally mean something.” 

“You’ll be around when we’re back?” 

“I’d think so.” 

“Good,” James said. “I should head in, or else Lily might think I did run off.” 

“She very well might,” Remus conceded. “Get back in there and say hello for me.” 

“Fine, I will,” James said. “Take care of our boy, and tell him he’s to call me tomorrow.” 

“I will,” Remus assured him. 

He pressed to end the call and set a somewhat arbitrary alarm for the morning as he went back down the hall. He reached to stick his mobile on the coffee table, glanced down at Sirius and ultimately deem him too picturesque to consider ushering him to his room, and decided that getting in behind him was the easier option what with Sirius taking up most of the couch in his absence. 

Remus gave Sirius a gentle shake and Sirius started awake and locked his lidded gaze on him. “Wassat?” 

“Scoot,” Remus said, gesturing with his hands. 

Sirius gave him a sleepy smile and did indeed scoot over, then he almost went off the side of the couch. Remus reached down to keep him on it and only just settled on his side between Sirius and the back of the couch before Sirius wormed up against him, sticking his head under his chin and his right leg between his, warm, right, and fitting like a glove. 

Remus held onto Sirius as he nodded off again, bringing his arms in to hold him even just a little bit tighter. 

\- 

Remus blinked his eyes open to the light of a new day, made sense of the near-silent living room save for the tick of the clock on the far wall and the lulled breathing beside him, and lifted his head to peer over Sirius’ body. He blinked at the telly, finding that the streaming service they'd chosen had paused the program sometime during the night and while that was thoughtful, it was ultimately a problem for Remus had no real sense of how much of it he slept through, but he slotted this predicament under the category of Future Remus Problems. 

With that observation out of the way, Remus looked down and clued into exactly how close Sirius was coming to a sprawl on the floor. He kept his touch light as he reached to steer him back from the edge a little bit, and after a few moments of that Sirius rolled toward him, giving out a string of French mutterings. Remus smiled and gave a bit of a stretch, feeling quite bleary eyed. He lay still for a time, letting his sleep brain catch up to his fully awake body, but a few more ticks of the clock passed before the loo called his name rather insistently. 

He glanced right and looked over Sirius’ frame for the best escape route, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to get out from between Sirius and the couch without causing a stir. He debated leaving it for a time, but that didn’t work for very long. He inched himself up, set his left palm down on the cushion under him, and lifted himself, swinging his right leg over Sirius’ body and miraculously landing it on the floor beside the couch without brushing him in the process. He wasn’t so lucky with the other leg, however, as he clipped Sirius’ thigh with his left foot as he tried to get it to join his right one and froze altogether, blinking down at Sirius to find his eyes open and his pupils set on him. 

“Hello sailor,” Sirius greeted, giving a little stretch underneath him. 

Remus smiled, reached down to swipe his hand under a lock of hair that hung over Sirius’ right cheek, and leaned down to place a quick kiss where the lock had been. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Sleep.” 

“Not sure I can with a wake up like that,” Sirius said, though his eyes were closed again. 

“Would you like some coffee in case?” Remus offered, pushing himself to his feet. 

He caught the right corner of Sirius’ mouth twitching up into a small, sleepy smile before he gave a hum in affirmation. Remus headed down the hall, making a stop off at the bathroom before anything else. In the kitchen he worked on Sirius’ morning cup first, scooping out a few spoonfuls of grounds for the French press before moving onto picking out a flavour of tea for himself, then dug out the kettle and went to fill it at the sink. He took up Sirius’ typical spot at the table while he waited for the kettle to boil, picked up a book sitting on the windowsill, and leafed through it, trying to decide on whether it belonged to Sirius, James, or was more a communal novel that wound up there for any and all flat guests to pick up for light entertainment. 

A little more flipping had Remus settling on option three before he flipped back to the first page and started from the top, making it to page three before the kettle chimed. He took the book with him to the counter, paused reading in favour of pouring the water into each of their cups, and went back to the book while he let both steep, leaning his elbows on the counter as he read a little more, and once the timing seemed right, Remus reached to push down on the French press, watching dark swirls blend in with light, murky water. 

He decided leaving it black was likely in Sirius’ best interests after being rudely awakened by a foot so he left his cup as is and did similarly with his own. He walked the book back to the windowsill for another time, went back to pluck both mugs off of the counter, and set off out of the kitchen. At the top of the hall he glanced up and saw that Sirius had managed to get himself half-reclined against the arm of the couch in Remus’ absence, his legs extended out the length of the couch and his mobile held just in front of his face. Remus walked down the hall, came up behind Sirius, and extended Sirius' mug out, hovering it just to the right of his mobile. 

Sirius gave an appreciative noise the moment he spotted it and pressed a quick peck to Remus’ forearm, settling his mobile down on his midriff in favour of grabbing onto the mug. He pulled his legs in and bent them at the knee, allowing room for Remus, who smiled behind his own mug as he blew on his tea and moved between the couch and the coffee table to get to the other end of it. 

Sirius placed his feet squarely in Remus’ lap the moment Remus settled in. “Piping hot tea,” Remus warned him, half a warning, half a tune. 

“Don’t burn me, then,” Sirius singsonged back to him, his attention back on his mobile as he held his mug under his chin. 

Remus huffed and lifted his mug a little higher, blowing on his tea some more as he held onto it with both of his hands. He dragged his socked right foot back and forth over the floorboards, quietly observing Sirius to gauge his overall mood. He appeared quite at ease if a bit blurry-eyed, the lower half of his face hidden by his mug as he took a mighty first sip of coffee, but the longer Remus looked at him the more he felt like it were a catch twenty-two; if he asked how he was doing he’d probably earn himself another wave-off, but if he didn’t he risked Sirius thinking he didn’t care to. 

He paused blowing on his tea to take a trial sip, swallowed that, and decided self-preservation wasn’t worth it. “Did you sleep OK?” he asked. 

"Like a log,” Sirius said, sticking his mobile back down again. He gave a bit of a hum there, leaned his head back against the arm of the couch, and gave a stretch of his neck as he gave into a substantial yawn, speaking all the while, “though, ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck.” 

Remus snorted through another mouthful of tea. “I take it I should have moved you at some point,” he said when he could. 

Sirius waved that off, straightening up some more. “I wasn’t going anywhere once I’d passed out,” he said before he went for another hefty gulp of coffee. 

Remus gave a considered head tilt for that; in some ways Sirius wasn’t all that difficult to work with and in others it took Remus two or three tries to guess right. “How’re you feeling?” he asked. “Aside from the crick in the neck, that is.” 

“Sore,” Sirius supplied, then clicked his tongue at the pointed frown that immediately made it onto Remus’ face. “Would you take that off? It’s the good kind of sore, means we worked hard for it.” 

Remus moved past that with an unimpressed blink. “I meant you, Sirius,” he said minutely. 

Sirius went for another gulp and at this rate he was going to be finished his cup before Remus even got halfway through his. “How’s this,” he said, lowering his mug, “if I’m not, I’ll let you know.” 

Remus forced himself to keep eye contact with him, though his body told him not to. “Would you, though?” he asked. “You didn’t even tell me when you found out.” 

Sirius gave him a plain look. “I feel like we went through this already.” 

Remus dropped his gaze there and picked at the goose imprint on his mug with his right thumbnail, getting the sense he understood what someone holding a piece of fine china and teetering all the while might feel. “I want us to be equal,” he said. “And I don’t want this to be so full of me that there isn’t any room for you.” 

Sirius stared openly at him from across the couch. “There’s plenty of room for me." 

Remus shook his head, holding onto his mug tightly. “Not if I’m ringing you at work in the middle of a breakdown, meanwhile you--” 

“What, like that happens everyday?” Sirius countered. 

"You know what I’m saying, Sirius,” Remus said. 

“I have plans, Remus,” Sirius said decidedly. “Good things coming my way and none of them have anything to do with her, and I’m not just talking about the trip.” 

“I know that,” Remus said. “I was there when you made most of these plans.” 

“Then actually listen to me right now, because I’m about to schmooze you right into the floor,” Sirius said. “These past few months have been the best of my life and it has a lot more to do with you than you’ll ever take full credit for, but I want spring to lead into summer and that won’t go so well if I’m weeping into my porridge over a woman who doesn’t deserve a single thought. So, if you want to help so you can at least feel like you’re helping, I’ve an idea of how you can do just that.” 

Remus let go of his lower lip caught between his teeth and nodded quickly. “I do,” he said. “I just want to help.” 

“Perfect,” Sirius said of it. “You can start by telling me what’s off about this place.” 

Sirius paired his request with a sweeping gesture with his free hand toward the room they were sitting in and Remus looked left, right, and back at Sirius in a quick second. “I don’t know what you mean.” 

“There’s something off about it, don’t you think?” Sirius reiterated. 

Remus had a look around, his eyes falling first on the ghastly puce flower pot on the coffee table that James had brought back to the flat sporting the biggest grin Remus had seen on him, next to the green inflatable armchair to the left of Sirius and the couch overall, before settling on Ludwig, the life-sized drawing mannequin Sirius ‘found’ somewhere and brought back to the place in the far corner of the living room, that was sporting a bowler hat and Sirius’ leather jacket until weather permitted its use again. 

Remus gave out a puff of breath, looking back at Sirius with a small head tilt. “I don’t really know where to begin.” 

Sirius snorted into his mug. “I meant this place is missing something.” 

Remus mulled the question over for all of two beats before his eyes widened. “What else do you plan on putting in here?” 

“Plan?” Sirius said sweetly. “Why, I don’t know the word.” 

Remus shot his right hand out, pointing directly across the room toward Ludwig. “That thing scared the living shit out of me,” he implored. 

“He can hear you?” Sirius put in. “And ask me in December and that'll still be the funniest thing I’d seen all year.” 

Remus, who’d gone and mistaken the looming figure in the corner for an intruder the first five seconds that he’d seen it, didn’t agree so much with that read of it nor had he appreciated Sirius dropping to the floor out of mirth over the sound he let out after spotting it. “I am not telling you what to do with your flat, but I reserve the right to know what I’m walking into,” he asserted. 

Sirius’ rolling laugh took a few moments to peter off, along with the roundabout questioning apparently. “This place needs a dog,” he said candidly. “That’s all I’m getting at here.” 

Remus gave a heavy sigh. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sirius,” he implored, running his free hand over his face, “couldn’t you have just led with that?” 

“So, you agree,” Sirius chimed with a smile. 

Remus gave him a plain look. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see this coming.” 

“Oh, was that right about when you broke our hearts?” Sirius returned. 

Remus gave a long sigh for that. Weeks back, James spotted a dust mop of a dog scurrying on the outskirts of the square nearby and jovially brought her back to the flat insisting on housing her for the night. Sirius all but combusted at the sight of her, and Remus did have to admit he took a lot of amusement out of seeing the two of them set up the living room as if they were throwing a slumber party so that she’d have company overnight. Unfortunately, as Remus had been a tad nervous about, one night blended into three before Remus resigned himself to being the villain of the tale, snapped a quick photo of her to put up on posts in and around the surrounding area around the town square, and Sasha the yorkie was picked up by her owner the following evening. 

“Somebody had to do it,” he defended. 

Sirius breezed right on past the truth. “I’m right, though; that’s exactly what this place is missing,” he said, pulling his knees in to pat the cushion between the two of them. “Just take a quick second and picture this exact scene: you, me, the morning cups, only there’s a dog right here.” 

Remus was altogether rather taken by the image, but he kept his smile small though Sirius’ eyes shone from across the couch. “And it would teach me a thing or two about responsibility, and I know how hot that gets you,” he added. 

Remus left that last tidbit alone. “Just,” he started, “one quick thing?” 

Sirius nodded. “I figured there’d be at least one.” 

Remus let that slide, too. “Only I imagine you’re more keen on getting a big one?” he checked. 

“Hi, this is me,” Sirius replied. “A giant woofer that lives life as if it’s a lapdog is the only kind for me.” 

“Right, and I agree,” Remus said, trying to remain somewhat authoritative, “but it’s still important to remember—“ 

“I’m going to walk the fucking dog, Remus,” Sirius sent him through a laugh. 

“I wasn’t going to say that, what's size got to do with that?” Remus raised. “Only with a big one, sometimes they don’t always know their own strength and with how worked up you get over them, that could only excite the dog more, and then it could cause damage without meaning to — specifically to the region of your face. Which I quite like.” 

Sirius exhaled through his nose, a resigned smile making it onto his face. “I’m not going to get my face chomped on,” he said. “You’ve seen my reflexes.” 

Remus clicked his tongue. “I’ve also seen you put your face in countless dog’s faces, too, so you really can’t say that and have this just be solved already.” 

“Haven’t been chomped on yet, have I?” Sirius raised. 

“That’s the defense you’re going with?” Remus asked, lifting his free hand. “I’ve never walked out into oncoming traffic but that doesn’t mean I might not be paying attention one day and do just that.” 

Sirius face contorted at once. “That’s a horrible analogy.” 

“Not my best,” Remus allowed, “but there’s still a point in there.” 

“Why would you ever put that image into my head?” Sirius asked, squinting at him from the other side of the couch. 

Remus hesitated for a moment. “My point is, I’m not planning to do that,” he said carefully, “just as you’re not planning on getting snapped at, but it could happen if neither of us are careful.” 

“If I’m to deny myself one of life’s simple pleasures then what’s the point?” Sirius gave out, waving his arms dramatically, and good; they’d made it to the interpretive dance part of the morning. 

“All I’m asking is that you indulge at a meter’s distance,” Remus reiterated, amused despite himself. “It’s like it is with Mestophales; she has her signals and if you don’t pay attention to them, then you’re in for a swat.” 

Sirius snorted. “You, maybe,” he said before another bit of coffee. 

“You won’t know the dog’s signals off the bat, so I better not catch you dropping to his level until you know them better,” Remus asserted. “That’s it, that’s my only concern with this and I think that’s pretty good as far as restrictions are concerned.” 

Sirius lifted his mobile again, thumbing through it idly. “I’ll hold off on any face-smushing early on,” he granted. 

“No, see, that’s not—” 

Sirius had his mobile turned toward Remus in a snap. “What do you think of him?” he asked. 

Remus gave Sirius a look for the interruption, but refocused his eyes to take in the canine on Sirius’ screen. “Nope,” he said plainly. 

“No?” Sirius repeated, his smile dropping off. “Look at him again.” 

Remus shook his head. “You can’t get a borzoi.” 

Sirius waggled his mobile at him. “His name is Tango,” he informed him longingly. 

Remus huffed a laugh despite himself. “You’re a mystical being all your own," he said. "Put you beside one of those and you will be unstoppable, and I can’t allow that. It's hard enough for the rest of us as is.” 

Sirius finished off his coffee with a swig and shimmied his shoulders. “I’m going to be one of those people who walks their dog off-leash and only has to whistle to get him to follow along,” he said, reaching to stick his empty mug on the coffee table. 

Remus shook his head more vigorously than before, his eyes widening. “You can’t do that either,” he said. “No one will be able to watch the road with a scene like that going on beside them, you’ll cause traffic accidents everywhere you go.” 

Sirius’ shoulders shook as he gave into one of his silent fits. “I’m going to get this guy,” he said when he could manage air intake, “and when I do, I’m going to have you snap a photo of me cradling him, and then I’ll make it black and white with a cursive ‘blessed’ at the bottom center, and it will be breathtaking.” 

Remus broke there, fizzling into less of a human and more of a blob that had the power to laugh. “There’s no stopping this, is there?” 

“Not a chance,” Sirius chimed, picking up his mobile and typing away on it. 

“I don’t really understand how he’s up for grabs,” Remus said candidly. 

“Their kid’s allergic,” Sirius responded after a beat. 

“That’s a shame,” Remus said, going for another sip of tea. 

“Isn’t it just,” Sirius said vaguely, his thumbs moving a mile a minute. 

Remus tried to swallow around a snort and ended up coughing because of it. “Don’t gloat, now." 

Sirius smirked, looking up at him with bright eyes. “It’s done,” he said, setting his mobile back down on his midriff with an air of finality. 

Remus blinked. “That’s it?” he asked. 

Sirius tilted his head evenly. “Well, I told him to name a price, so." 

Remus tapped his fingers against his mug. “One might’ve thought a bit more about it before dropping a hunk of money on this,” he said mildly. 

"I’ve thought of it for weeks, and true love has no price, Remus,” Sirius said, extending his right leg out the full length of the couch to prod Remus’ right knee with his big toe. “How was the rest of yesterday?” 

Remus blinked at the sudden left turn. “It was fine,” he said, letting the prior conversation fizzle out. 

“Nah, I’m interviewing you now,” Sirius informed him, lifting off of the arm of the couch. He crossed the length couch quicker than Remus could process that he was coming, settled in the crevice between Remus’ left side and the back of the couch, garnering Remus to hold his tea out over the edge of the couch for Sirius’ sake. “Hit a bit of a snag there in the middle, but apart from that. Did you get to see Dorcas for a bit at least?” 

Remus shifted a touch to give Sirius a little more room, not that he’d use it. “I did, yeah,” he offered, smiling a bit. “She says hello.” 

“Hi,” Sirius echoed. 

Remus had a bolt of remembrance strike him and he couldn’t help himself poking Sirius’ left shoulder many times. “She’s going to stay at my flat while I’m gone,” he said, grinning. 

Sirius blinked rapidly, at the sudden movement or perhaps the speed of the prodding, but he settled down after the words appeared to digest. “Hey, that’s an idea,” he returned before a pause. “What’s she going to do about hers?” 

Remus gave a loaded laugh. “She wants out, badly,” he insisted. “She’s only been back a full day and already her and her roommate are at odds, but this way saves us both a hassle.” 

“Now,” Sirius put in circumstantially, “if you still come home to an empty flat, it’s definitely me punking you — know that now.” 

Remus snorted. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he said. “Not even for a funny.” 

Sirius let out a groan that dripped with longing. “But the face you’d make,” he mused, shifting more onto his side to stretch his left leg out and drape it over the both of Remus’. 

Remus gave a half-grunt around his last sip of tea and swallowed. “You can imagine it all you like, but that’s all it’s going to ever be,” he returned, reaching his right arm out to deposit his newly empty mug on the coffee table. 

Sirius gave a put upon sigh and shifted to settle further over Remus’ frame, tossing a glance over Remus toward the telly. “How far did you get?” 

“I can’t say for sure,” Remus replied. “Last I saw Lorelai took Rory to visit Harvard, but who knows when it paused—” 

Sirius gave out a sputter. “And you didn’t wake me?” he heaved. “I love that one.” 

“How could I have known that?” Remus returned through a laugh, but Sirius only sent a grumble back to him. “I’m not opposed to rewatching it either.” 

Sirius seemed appeased by that addition, sticking his chin down on the side Remus’ chest as he stared up at him with a smirk on. “I live for that B&B subplot,” he mentioned. “The fucking lady at the front desk — LaDawn, that’s it.” 

Remus snorted. “That whole section was a lot.” 

“A good a lot,” Sirius built from there. “Fun fact: I’ve written ‘sat and forever am at work here’ in so many guest books that I’ve lost count.” 

Remus heard that and it was as if a lock clicked in his head. “Is that why you insist on signing them?” he raised, giving a laugh at some newfound clarity. “I always assumed it was lewd comments that I really didn’t want to look at to confirm either way.” 

Sirius smiled brightly. “No no, nothing lewd, just a reference to a bit part in a television show that’ll go right over some heads before the right sort of person comes along and gets a kick out of it,” he said. “A secret gift, really.” 

“I suppose you could call it that, yeah,” Remus allowed. 

Sirius itched his chin on the fabric of the shirt Remus borrowed. “I’m not even going to pretend that I’m not hoping your town is that quirky,” he said frankly. “I’ve been picturing a fantasy land full of quirk all week, so you best tell me right now if I’m to be disappointed.” 

Remus gave a thoughtful hum. “It has its own brand of quirk, I’d think.” 

“Yes, good,” Sirius said, asking for more with just his tone alone. 

A smile budded at the corners of Remus’ lips. “We haven’t got a town troubadour unfortunately, but we do have this fellow who enjoys riding about the town on rollerblades while strumming on his guitar, so that has to count as a close second.” 

Remus’ smile widened as Sirius’ entire face lit up with wonder. “What?” he said, nearly breathless. 

Remus breathed a laugh through his nose, nodding. “Sort of a staple once the weather gets a little warmer,” he said. “You’ll just be strolling about your day and he’ll ride by on the main, tipping his head to street folk and playing away while he goes.” 

Sirius flailed wildly. “Can we just go now?” he implored. 

“Soon soon,” Remus sing-singed, his stomach bubbling at the thought. 

In some ways July felt forever away, but putting himself through higher education gave him a quick but extensive lesson in how a few weeks can pass in the blink of an eye, and then they’d be there, at the cusp of something that made his insides twirl about. Sirius gave out a little, appraised sigh that rather emanated how Remus was feeling right about then, and then stretched long, his left hip bone poking out from under the waistband of his pants and making it a little difficult for Remus to keep his brain off of another activity they could have been doing. 

Remus shook his head clear. “I’ve e-tickets, by the way,” he said, prodding Sirius once on the cheek with his right forefinger. “Did you want me to send you a copy or would you like me to just show them once we’re there?” 

Sirius dropped his arms on the other end of his stretch and settled in again. “Hold onto them,” he said. “How much did they come to?” 

Remus brought his mug to his mouth. “Not telling,” he said before a quick sip. 

Sirius blinked once. “You want to play this game?” he asked. “I’ll play.” 

Remus sighed while he swallowed. “There is no game, it’s just taken care of.” 

Sirius narrowed his eyes to a squint. “Is this you or her?” he asked. 

“Bit of both if I’m honest,” Remus said, “but she did very much insist.” 

“I’m going to have a few words with her, trust,” Sirius said of it. 

“The only words you’re going to even think of saying to her will be ‘thank you’ and those are it,” Remus asserted. “You did this to yourself months ago, so just think about that if you have to.” 

Sirius stomped his right leg at the other end of the couch. “Let me cover your ticket, then." 

“It’s already paid for,” Remus returned. “The repayment period begins now, so you are just going to have to let this happen.” 

Sirius shut his eyes and appeared to call on earth and all her trimmings to restore calm. “July, then?” he asked finally, reopening his eyes. 

“We leave on the tenth,” Remus replied. 

Sirius reached to down to scratch at his left hip idly. “I think I’ll put in my two weeks just before then,” he said. “Bleed them dry while I can.” 

Remus chose to strive for a more pleasant perk about that plan. “By the time we’re back opening day will be coming up quickly, so there wouldn’t be much sense in keeping both going.” 

Sirius gave an agreeing noise to that. “Yeah, no thanks.” 

“The end of an era, though,” Remus mentioned, running his forefinger down the bridge of Sirius’ nose. 

“It went on long enough,” Sirius said of it, his bland choice of tone contrasting with his gentle kneading of Remus’ finger. His left arm came to curl around Remus’ waist as he kept his chin resting on Remus’ chest, and Remus still couldn’t figure out how such a sculpted one didn’t result in discomfort when placed squarely on any part of Remus’ body. “Are you going to introduce me to your squad when we’re there?” 

Remus blinked, realizing they’d gone back a step or two, and moving on from thoughts of Sirius’ sculpted visage for the time being. “I told you, I didn’t have one,” he said, linking his right leg in between Sirius’. “You had one.” 

“Didn’t,” Sirius returned. 

Remus nodded evenly. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “Troupe is a much better word for it.” 

Sirius snorted at that. “Not even,” he maintained. “The three of us flitted in and out of everyone else’s squads without committing full time to a single one. Better that way, more variety.” 

“Yes, well, that’s all well and good but that wasn’t what I did,” Remus said. “It was mostly one on ones, and I really haven’t kept up with that many of them.” 

"Right, and we did?” Sirius countered. 

“I can count at least,” Remus paused, “seven friends you’ve still got around from school. I’ve one I still talk to, so you can meet Angela if you’d like. She's great.” 

“Workmate, right?” Sirius checked. 

Remus gave an even nod. “Well, we had some classes together, but yeah, work was where we hit it off first,” he said, trailing off when his mobile rang from where he left it on the coffee table. 

Sirius heaved himself up onto his elbows to take a gander at it before reaching to snatch it. “Ta maman,” he relayed, handing it over. 

Remus felt his chest sink as held took hold of it. He wasn’t exactly interested for any kind of resurgence just then, once in twenty-four hours had been enough, and he was just beginning to feel as light as he had been all week; why did he have to lose that feeling now? Moreover, did he really have to answer it only to pretend he was in any way feeling up to pretending? He breathed in half-way, settled in his choice by the second ring, but he caught the time in the top right corner of his screen, and the oddity of it tossed out any of Remus’ reservations; she’d be well into her workday by now, it hardly made sense to call now, and by the time Remus coordinated his hand to be of any use he’d conjured up a horrid image and categorized the call as an omen he couldn’t ignore no matter his pride. 

“Mum?” he asked instead of hello. 

“Hi honey,” she said tentatively, and Remus’ stomach went for a pitfall. 

“What’s happened?” he asked, and Sirius shifted onto his elbows almost delicately, hovering there as if ready for anything. 

“Oh — no,” she said, sounding quite pained now. “He’s fine, don’t worry.” 

Without the weight of an anvil on his chest Remus took a moment or two for himself, breathing in and out once. He looked to Sirius with a quick shake of his head before Sirius slowly settled back down onto him, tucking himself back against the shape of Remus’ body, and if Remus were honest that was right where he wanted Sirius to be just then. 

"The time had me worried,” he said as a pardon, but the tone of her greeting sounded off when he replayed it in his head. “Is everything OK with you?” 

“Oh, now I just feel terrible,” his mum mused. 

“Mum, it’s fine; I’m here,” he said. “What is it?” 

“You’re busy — only I wanted to catch you before work, but it’s nothing that can’t wait a little longer,” she insisted. 

Remus deflated a little. “Mum, you’re not bothering me,” he said. “Did something happen at work?” 

He got little more than a delicate sigh from the other end of the line. “Was it the close-talker?” he probed. “Am I going to have to come up there myself?” 

It sounded as though his mum’s tiny laugh caught her off guard as much as the question seemed to. “No, nothing to do with him fortunately,” she said. 

Remus let out a low hum at that. “Well, you know who to call if he gets any ideas.” 

“You or HR?” his mum checked, sounding a bit brighter than before. 

"Both,” Remus said. “What’s going on?” 

“Well, Joy announced her retirement to the team this morning,” his mum began. 

“Good for her,” Remus extended. 

“Mhm, lovely,” his mum said. “That — that’s not the surprise really, she’s been talking about it all spring, this was just her official announcement.” 

“I mean, this is nice to know, but I’m sort of waiting for the punchline,” Remus mentioned. 

“Well, hold on a minute, would you?” his mum returned, and Remus smirked a laugh. “Next thing I know I’m being called into Don’s office and I’m thinking, ‘oh, what have I done,’ and after a pause — too long of a pause frankly — he up and offered her position to me, no warning at all—” 

“Mum,” Remus gave out, garnering Sirius to lift his head, startled. “Why did you make it sound like you were walking the fucking plank? This is a good thing.” 

“I didn’t mean for it to sound that way,” she said while Sirius shifted up Remus’ body a little, leaning his head in to get his right ear closer to the phone, and Remus hit the volume button on the side of it. “I was trying to find a quiet spot to call you but Joy and Carol where guffawing in the stairwell so I couldn’t stay there — and I was hardly prepared for the offer, Remus; some credit, please?” 

“Please tell me you didn’t decline it, mum,” Remus said. 

His mum didn’t respond straight away, but a gentle sigh came through a few moments later. “No,” she said, “but I didn’t jump to take it either, and I’ve got to tell you something’s very fishy about this.” 

Remus blinked, sharing a quick smirk with Sirius. “Is there, though?” 

“Why would he offer it to me?” she raised. 

"Why wouldn’t he?” he returned. 

His mum let out a loaded laugh as if Remus were about to get plenty of reasons for it and yet only gave him one. “All the time I’ve had to take off,” she said. 

Remus gave a flat expression and looked to Sirius’, who took one look at him and set his face down on Remus’ chest, muffling his snickers in his shirt. “And that’s a reason not to offer you a position when one opens up?” 

“I’ve taken years off cumulatively, Remus,” his mum said. “That doesn’t say much for reliability, does it?” 

“OK, you’re exaggerating that by a long shot, and you put in double the time elsewhere to make up for it,” he reminded her. “This one’s a wash, I’m afraid.” 

Sirius shifted a little so that his smile was visible and Remus whisked his free hand through his hair idly. “It still doesn’t add up, Remus,” his mum said. 

“Maybe the reason he offered it to you is you’ve been around there for eons and already do a bit of just about everything,” he raised, tousling the fine hairs just over Sirius’ left ear. 

His mum clicked her tongue. “Now who’s exaggerating.” 

“You know all the secrets around there,” Remus kept on. “Too many of them, I’d wager; could be that it’s in their best interests to keep you close by.” 

His mum didn’t accept that angle either. “It’s much more likely that they would rather hire from inside than out,” she said. 

“You’re right, it could be that,” Remus said. “Could be they love you, too.” 

His mum gave him a sardonic laugh for that. “I don’t think that’s it somehow.” 

"Why not, everybody else does,” Remus said, returning Sirius’ bright grin with a wry one of his own. 

His mum gave a weak sort of sound. “I wasn’t expecting this either.” 

Remus gave a light hum. “I think you might have been looking for a little of this, just a bit, and the secret’s safe with me,” he said, then glanced at Sirius, who smirked and lifted his hands above his head for a moment to signal he wouldn’t spill it either. 

“It’s not as if I was going anywhere if they didn’t offer me it,” she protested. “I like where I am; I like my department, I like my team, I know the work like the back of my hand, and maybe I ought to stick to what I’m good at.” 

Remus exhaled through his nose quietly. “Mum, you can stay exactly where you are if you’re not interested,” he said. “Only six months ago I was in a bit of a situation like this, and do you remember what you said to me?” 

“Remus,” she sent him, dripping with warning. 

“I remember you saying that either way I had a good thing,” Remus kept on. “And that was true; either way I knew I had something stable no matter which shop I picked. You were very practical about it, so let’s try some of that here. You could stay where you’re comfortable and that’d be fine, but you might be just as good at this and you won’t know it unless you take it, which, if I haven’t made it the least bit clear yet, I think you should. For all the reasons I just gave you.” 

His mum gave a conceding hum for that, but Remus knew he didn’t quite have her yet. “What did dad say?” he asked. 

His mum gave a laugh. “I’d be lucky if he could hear his mobile going at this time.” 

Remus gave a considered head tilt. “OK, well, I think it’d be safe if I spoke for him just for now,” he said, “and he’d want you to take it, mum.” 

“I know he would,” she said. “Immediately, without question, which is why you were my first stop.” 

Remus gave a circumstantial hum. “It must be just awful that I’m telling you the same thing he would, then.” 

“A bit,” she admitted outright, sounding so much more like herself that Remus thought he could reel her in. 

“Were you given time to think on it?” he asked. 

“I was,” she provided. “I’ve until the end of the day.” 

“Well, alright,” Remus said brightly. “I’d say take the day, ring dad and have a chat with him, and then tomorrow you go in there and say you’ll take it.” 

“Just like that, hm.” 

“Just like that.” 

Remus’ mobile took to a buzz in the background of the call and he pulled it away from his ear to check it, finding his first alarm displayed on his screen. “Mum, I do have to get ready for work,” he said. 

“That’s alright, my time’s almost up anyway,” she excused. “Thank you for letting me harp at you.” 

“There was none of that,” Remus said. “Do you need any else?” 

“No, you’ve done quite enough,” she said. “I’ll do as you said.” 

“All of it?” Remus checked. 

“We’ll see,” she said, more pointedly. 

“Right, well, let me know how the acceptance went,” Remus said cheerfully. 

“Now where’d you learn that trick?” 

“Couldn’t say,” Remus said, lifting his shoulders airily. 

Remus pressed to end the call after her farewell and as soon as he did it Sirius let out a sigh so large that it was as if he were given permission to breathe again. “I know,” he said, working his mouth around a pointed smile, reaching to set his mobile on the coffee table again before settling in again. “We’re a lot.” 

“A good a lot,” Sirius amended. “It’s sweet. Kind of like--” he looked up to the ceiling in thought, “--what I’d imagine it’d be like to have had a mum who values your opinion.” 

Remus got enough hold on his expression to make it a solid half-frown, but his stomach did a pitfall. “I’m sorry.” 

“I’m not,” Sirius said of it. 

Remus searched him for a few seconds but that yielded nothing still; nonchalance emanated straight out of Sirius’ pores and Remus so wanted even just some of it, have it tamp down on the doubt that continued to well up in him. “Hey,” Sirius said, leaning his head a smidge closer. “It looks as though you’re letting my mother’s inability to emote get to you, and you can’t be doing that sort of thing when it only gives her useless husk strength.” 

Remus didn’t know what expression he should have on, but Sirius spoke before he had to settle on one. “It wasn’t a dig; it’s good you two have that,” he said, reaching to push the corners of Remus’ mouth up to form a makeshift smile. “Do you think she’ll take it?” 

The corners of Remus’ lips tug up in a more genuine smile. “I think she will,” he admitted. “The position is a few steps higher than the one she’s at right now, and she’ll start thinking about longevity in a little while and that’ll take over from where the nerves left off.” 

“Good, she deserves it,” Sirius extended. He shifted out of the crevice he was in and set himself fully on top of Remus, crossing his arms over Remus’ chest and hooking his chin over them. “If I hadn’t already thought you were the sweetest, all that just now would have made it sink in.” 

Remus searched him and Sirius’ shoulders rose and fell easily. “You could have just let it ring,” he added. 

Remus let out a weighted sigh. “No, I couldn’t have.” 

“No, I know,” Sirius said commonly, “but there was a second there where I wasn’t even that sure anymore, but you picked up anyway.” 

Remus gave a plain look in regards to himself. “I know it’s been far too long to justify where my head went, but she doesn’t usually call midday—” 

“Who says?” Sirius cut in, his right eyebrow higher on his forehead than his left. 

Remus reworked his mouth around a circumstantial frown. “You did, sort of,” he said. “Six months was the cut off we kept referring to and we’re way past that point.” 

Sirius gave a tiny huff. “I only threw that time frame out so you’d stop reaming yourself on Christmas eve of all days, and I only went with it because you were the one who threw out that arbitrary timeframe in the first place,” he reminded him. “How’s this, ten years on? Might be time to call it quits in this particular issue, but there’ll be something else by then and you will still be allowed to worry about him.” 

Remus let out a loaded sigh. “If my heart’s still stopping over a strange call time in ten years, I’ll turn myself in,” he said. 

Sirius slipped his right arm out from underneath him and reached to flick Remus’ forehead. “Stop it,” he implored. “I was giving you a compliment before you took us on this detour—” he trailed off as he watched Remus’ expression go from softened to downturned in mere moments, “—why, why is it that you’ll only take a compliment when you’re starkers, hm?” 

Remus snapped out of it for long enough to tilt his head pointedly. “That’s how kinks work, Sirius,” he gave him through gritted teeth, “how the hell should I know?” 

Sirius looked as though he were trying immensely to hold a laugh in. “My point is, she called you, not her husband, while she was having this little moment of doubt and you stepped up,” he said. “Once you got over that initial fright, you could have rushed her off of the phone and left her to sort it out herself, but you slogged your own stuff aside in order to talk her through it, and I’m still living off the scraps that Good Boy Remus littered at my feet just now, so you’re just going to have to let me appreciate it.” 

Remus chewed on the side of his lower lip, working to simply let Sirius have his request without the white noise going on in the pit of his stomach. Sirius inched forward, placing a kiss right on Remus’ twisted up mouth. “I get that you have this give and take thing with them, but you can’t really talk about what’s been eating at you this past twenty-four hours with her, can you?” he raised. “No matter, that’s why I’m here.” 

“You don’t have to do this, Sirius,” Remus said, curling his arms around Sirius’ waist haltingly. “I’m OK, really.” 

Sirius shushed him once. “I did some thinking while my shift dragged on and on — and on, and I think this little moment I just got to see confirms what I already came to, and it’s that I really don’t think about what we’re planning is for naught,” he said. Remus swallowed around the lump in his throat and nodded so Sirius would keep going, but thankfully Sirius had woken up in a talkative mood and went right on with it. “Right, so she went and did some assuming with you, but you and I did some of that to each other, didn’t we? I know I did, I flip-flopped daily about you; thought you were straight as a board one day, gayer than a picnic basket the next, which is ridiculous of me when I know it’s not that clear cut, but did I think about that then?” 

Sirius shook his head once for emphasis. “That’s me assuming right there, and judging by the way your jaw hit the floor when you found out about me, I suspect you were doing a bit of flip-flopping on your end — which is a bit strange, when, hello,” he said, giving out a rather powerful cabaret note for so soon after waking up, bringing Remus’ mouth together in a firm line to keep his amusement under control. 

“Don’t know how you missed it, but that’s neither here nor there,” Sirius said of it. “I know hearing it from her again had to have hurt, and I know you’re getting knocked twice because you fall somewhere in the middle and that’s not even going to get a moment’s consideration, but if I made a similar mistake with you and you’re still looking at me like that—” he nodded toward Remus’ admittedly watery-eyed expression, “then I think it’s safe if we cut her just a little bit of slack here. Your opinion matters the most to her, that part’s clear to me now, so I doubt that she’s going to risk stomping all over what you have going, even if she gets a little whiplash from this.” 

Remus breathed out, taking a moment to enjoy the rolling of his stomach for it was the good kind this time; the kind that came around whenever he gave Sirius a portion only to have him turn around and make a meal with it. There marked the nth time since Christmas Eve that Remus felt he’d tripped and knocked over a pot of gold, and the nth time he got a visceral feeling that the leap of faith he’d taken the very next day might have been one of the best choices he’d made for himself to date. 

He crushed his body’s impulse to flea to call on a bit of gratitude instead, shut his eyes and put the scene to memory for a time he might need it more than now even, and pushed up to brace himself against the arm of the couch. He reached for Sirius’ chin, gave it a small tug, and breathed out with relief as Sirius took the gesture for what it was and crawled up the last few inches between them to meet him. 

“I love you,” Remus said after the first catch of their lips. 

A thread pulled tight in Remus’ chest at the small sound he both heard and felt at the back of Sirius’ throat, another pull at Sirius’ quick and avid response, and a third, very real pull when Remus was slid right back off of the arm of the couch and onto his back. Sirius hovered over him in a snap, putting their mouths on lock again. “You taste,” he said between kisses, “so good.” 

Remus breathed heavily, pausing for a quick moment. “It’s mandarin spice,” he offered, giving Sirius another quick taste. “Would you like a cup?” 

Sirius shook his head. “Better like this,” he breathed, moving in to kiss him harder. 

Remus smiled against him, pushing incessant thought out and letting feeling in. He ran his hands over Sirius’ sides, pressed his right hand in between the two of them, and splayed his fingers out over Sirius’ navel, and felt it twitch from his touch. Sirius moved his hands down to pry Remus’ legs apart, nestling his own hips where he made room for them, and Remus reached his hands around the back of Sirius, his hands dipping under the waistband of his pants to get himself a full feel and pull him that much closer. Sirius’ breathing caught against Remus’ lips as Sirius held the arm of the couch over Remus’ head and rolled his hips at downright blinding staccato, and right as they were meeting each other at just the right pace Remus’ second alarm rang out, warning him that if he hadn't started getting ready yet he really should. 

The two of them let out similar groans, but it was Remus who gave a relenting breath into their kiss for his second alarm was mainly for instances just like this one. Remus reached out blindly, hitting the button on the side of his mobile to cut the noise off, but Sirius went and grabbed for Remus’ free hand, guided it lower, and left it squarely under his crotch, rolling his hips up against it. 

Since his hand was there already, Remus took a few seconds to feel him from base to tip underneath the material of Sirius’ pants, hoping this might help in winning himself a compromise. “I have to shower,” he said, pulling back enough to breathe between their lips. “Come with?” 

Sirius gave a hum of protest. “We should reap the benefits of this empty flat while we still can.” 

“How would we not be doing that one room over?” Remus raised, letting go of Sirius’ cock to reach around and tap him twice on the arse. “Come on; time efficiency gets me hot, too.” 

Sirius huffed a laugh but cut off as Remus sat up and slid his right foot down onto the floor by the couch. Sirius went ahead and straddled him, bearing down to keep Remus in place, and Remus decided there was not much else for it; if they were resorting to tricks then they’d be resorting to tricks. Sirius being directly in his lap really only helped Remus out for he stuck his hands under Sirius’ hips, lifted him off of the couch, and managed to get his left foot down on the ground and stood to his full height with Sirius’ hanging off of him like a sloth. Sirius didn’t make another peep about it, a light flush dusting over his cheeks as he let himself be carried down the hall, though Remus had a hunch that it wasn’t all that self-sacrificial for Sirius anymore. 

There was a short fumble wherein Remus had to brace Sirius against the wall in order to kick the bathroom door open wider, but Remus managed to pull it off and Sirius certainly didn’t seem to mind where he was being pressed against. Remus moved into the bathroom and deposited Sirius on the counter, keen on running the taps and keeping to the timeframe he still had to work with, but Sirius didn’t let him get very far at all, clamping his legs around Remus’ hips in a vice grip and hoisting Remus right back against him. Remus thought about putting up a bit more of a fight before Sirius stuck his right hand down the front of the joggers Remus stole from his room and won himself a full feel of him, and then Remus decided that though a valiant effort had been made, it looked as if they wouldn’t be making it to the shower. 

Remus hooked his forefingers over the waistband of Sirius’ briefs, looking to even things out a little more while Sirius ran his hand over him with an expert twist of his wrist. He hitched Sirius’ pants down past his hips, and in turn Sirius set him free from the confines of his legs so Remus could get them the rest of the way off of him. Remus tossed them behind him, grabbed hold of Sirius’ hips and tugged him to the very edge of the countertop while Sirius’ hands moved wildly between them, pawing at the joggers to get them down around Remus’ hips before hoisting himself off of the counter to press them flush together, his legs hanging off of Remus’ hips as Remus took his cue and drove up against him. 

Remus had really been hoping the two of them were on the same page about how quick this one would need to be, but the faster Sirius met his hips, the quicker that hope became irrefutable fact, but then Remus went and looked down at Sirius’ forearms straining as he rocked himself back up against him and Remus knew there was nothing for it; this would be over in no time at all. 

Not really wanting to blow before Sirius did, Remus shoved his hand in between them and palmed the both of them as he spurred his hips on, dipping his head forward to nip Sirius’ right shoulder; Sirius stiffened and a whimper followed suit — the desired effect, really, but when Remus bit down a little harder Sirius to let go of the counter and cling fully to him instead. 

Remus pushed forward, knocked the hairdryer out from underneath Sirius, and leaned him back onto the counter to make up for a momentary fumble. He focused solely on getting Sirius there before him, stroking him fiercely between their bodies as he curled over him to keep his teeth bared down on his skin; Sirius’ left hand clutched at the back of his head, curing his fingers tightly in Remus’ hair as he writhed under him, his voice taut and taking up every bit of unused space around them as he hit his peak, French phrases on his lips and Remus’ name sprinkled in the middle of them. 

Remus unhinged his jaw from Sirius’ skin and pressed his lips to the spot he’d anchored to, and Sirius tugged on a bit of hair at the back of Remus’ head, pulling his face to meet his lips as he reached to curl his fingers around Remus’ cock, and while Remus relished in getting Sirius to come before him, this was going to be a close race. He thrust against Sirius’ hand around him with abandon, gasping as he felt the onset. It was going to take a few more trysts to feel free enough to take full advantage of the seldomly empty flat at their exposure, but he made the effort not to bite back the sounds at the back of his own throat as his orgasm peaked and subsided. 

Remus sort of slumped down against Sirius for a short time, simply catching his breath and regaining his tenacity for critical thinking. He lifted his head and glanced over the two of them, feeling rather guilty about the tangled position Sirius was stuck in, but the longer he looked at him the guilt slowly dissipated for Sirius looked as if he couldn’t care less about how much of a pretzel he was currently resembling, simply spent and breathing heavily under him. 

Remus quite suddenly remembered why they were in the loo at all and reached back to nudged at Sirius’ ankles. Sirius obliged him after a few more deep breaths, unhooked his legs hanging loosely at his hips, and let them slide off of him in one drop. Remus took a step back and gave a sweeping glance over Sirius and the mess over his stomach, then looked down the bit that hadn’t missed his own midriff. 

“If you’d waited just a few more seconds we’d already be halfway clean by now,” Remus mentioned, backing away toward the shower. 

Sirius stretched his legs down to the floor and tested his footing. “You’re actively ignoring the fine compromise we just made and that’s to your detriment, not mine,” he said, pushing off the counter to give a go at standing. 

“An incredible one, fine,” Remus allowed, pushing past the shower curtain to run the taps, “but not a single snog will be had once we’re in there; I’m cutting it close.” 

“Sure, sure,” Sirius returned, padding up behind him. “You only start a two; relax a bit and let me take you in.” 

“I’ve got to go by mine first,” Remus said, tugging his joggers off of his feet in turn. 

“How does that bit change my offer?” Sirius said, hoping right into the shower given that he was nude already. 

Remus followed him in, pressing a quick kiss to Sirius’ forehead in thanks, and there bodies were at least clean before any snogging could occur, and to Sirius’ credit it was Remus’ fault. Mid-way through rubbing shampoo into Sirius’ hair, he got caught up in Sirius’ smile, his eyes shut like a contented canine, and a small smile made its way onto Remus’ own lips before he leaned in to lock his in with Sirius’. The kiss wasn’t harried, in fact, the quiet slide of their lips gave the illusion neither of them were in any rush, but Remus had to put his foot down eventually to get them back on track. He finished up Sirius’ hair with much more attention to detail than he gave his own, but he had a lot less hair to work with than Sirius did. Once the suds were washed out he deemed the shower finished and turned to switch off the taps, pushing the curtain aside and reached for a towel for Sirius before he grabbed one for himself. 

Once his body was dry he took it to his hair, towelling it off as he made his way back to Sirius’ room. He put the towel in Sirius’ hamper, fished through the top and second drawers for clothes he could wear to work, an had undershorts on before Sirius padded into the room wearing all of nothing and moving up beside Remus to fish through the same drawers. 

Remus pulled his shirt on over his head, but it was Sirius’ reappearance that got him realizing that he may very well have had a shift to get to but Sirius did not. “Do you have plans for the rest of the day?” he asked, reaching for the trousers he’d picked out. 

“Marlene’s taking me to a thing later on,” Sirius announced, his voice muffled as he pulled a shirt on over his head. 

Remus perked, happy that Sirius wouldn’t be wandering about the flat looking for things to occupy himself, but Sirius pointed firmly at him the moment he looked over and caught his smile. “No no, take that off,” he instructed, circling his hand around Remus’ visage. “I finally let her talk me into going to an art installation with her, so while you're out there in the real world think of my struggle, would you?” 

“Don’t say that,” Remus said, moving to sit on the edge of the bed to pull on his trousers. “It could be fun.” 

Sirius let out a sigh and brushed a few strands of damp hair from his face. “Is the world really as happy-go-lucky as you make it out to be or is it all in your head?” 

“Said the pot to the kettle,” Remus returned, standing to fasten his fly. 

Sirius gave him a pointed look. “I blame you for this,” he informed him and Remus blinked at him expectantly. “Your grandiose gesture followed by a week of dazed frolicking; it had my defenses down and I couldn’t say no to anything when she asked me.” 

“Well, I really am sorry that I romanticized you right into an art installation, but have you seen this place?” Remus countered. “Maybe you’ll find a friend for Ludwig, but you will warn me if you do, you understand?” 

Sirius let out a scoff of a laugh. “If I were walking into something like that it’d be fine, but this is going to be too much, I can already tell,” he said. “I have a twinge, call it intuition.” 

“That might be from the bathroom acrobatics,” Remus put in. 

Sirius missed his first trouser leg because of the snort he let out. “I don't think that's the twinge I’m talking about,” he said, getting his foot inside the leg this time around. “How about this… you call out, come with us, and we can play another round of Avoid Remus’ Eye.” 

Remus put on a rueful sigh as he went for the entryway. “If only you'd said something earlier,” he called over his shoulder as he stooped to pick up his shoes. 

“As fucking if,” Sirius sent him. 

Remus’ mobile rang as he reached to grab his shoes and Remus went back to the living room to retrieve it, thinking it was a good thing when he was that close to leaving it behind, but he paused when he saw James’ name lit up on display. “Sirius,” he called out, “take your fucking mobile off silent.” 

Sirius’ voice came from the entryway. “Oi, I was a little busy.” 

Remus walked his mobile down the hall and held it out to him. “James.” 

Sirius paused with his right shoe on and left shoe off. “Tell him I’ll ring after take you.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Remus excused, not wanting James to think he’d been too caught up to remember his duty yet again. He swiped his thumb across the screen and put it to his ear. “He was just about to call you.” 

“Uh huh,” was all that came back to him, but thankfully without much of a tone. “Sorry to pry you two off each other for a second but I've an appointment.” 

Remus sniffed. “We weren’t on each other and he'll call you back on his,” he returned, keeping some form of dignity even if it was a bit of a lie. 

“In forty-five-ish,” Sirius said, loud enough that James would hear him on the other end of the line. 

Remus dropped the phone from his mouth. “I can still make it on time if I catch the bus on time, it’s fine.” 

“I said I'd take you,” Sirius insisted. 

Remus shook his head. “I have to leave right now and I’m going to need this,” he said of his mobile. 

“Who's gonna give in?” James stuck in on the other end of the line. “Council’s split right down the middle and I hear James can’t even pick a winner.” 

Remus ended the call and the debate altogether. “Call him back on yours,” he said, slipping his mobile into his back pocket. 

Sirius huffed. “Why can’t you just let me do nice things?” he asked, but Remus went on past him, nudging him out of the way of the door. 

“Go talk to James,” he said, leaning in to give him a quick peck, but the leaning only made it easier for Sirius to stuff a note in Remus’ front pocket. “Why?” 

“You could cab it,” Sirius said easily. 

“We have a deal,” Remus returned, pulling the note back out of his pocket and flapping it Sirius’ way. 

“What, that starts now?” Sirius said, feigning confusion, his hands behind his back. 

Remus huffed, stuck the note Sirius refused to take into one of Sirius’ docs, and wrenched the door open. “I have to go, but I’ll type up a clause if I have to, you just wait,” he manifested, shaking his mobile toward Sirius from the doorway. 

Sirius, looking quite like Remus’ huffy state was the destination all along, came right for Remus and pulled him in for frankly too long a farewell kiss and simultaneously too good a kiss for Remus to call on the diligence to cut it short. 

“Come back here after you’re done?” Sirius asked on the other end of it, and Remus’ breathed in and out slowly, nodding foggily as he forced himself out of the flat. 

\- 

Remus came through the same door a good eight hours later, kicked his shoes off, and stooped to stick them together on the matt. Every light in sight was on as per custom and the only sign that he should bypass Sirius’ room altogether and head straight for the living room was a call from that direction. 

“How were the gulags?” Remus let a weary sigh in reply, heading down the hall and into the living room to find Sirius with his feet propped up on the coffee table, a takeout container in his lap, and a spoon in one hand and his mobile in the other. “That good, hm?” 

Remus ran a hand through his hair as he made his way toward the couch, bent to place a kiss to the top of Sirius’ head, and settled in beside him, squinting to think of the best way to put it. “Long and strange,” he settled on, crossing his arms languidly over himself. 

Sirius stuck his mobile down on the cushion on the other side of him. “Mm,” he hummed, setting his newly free hand down on Remus’ left knee to give it a pat. “Plenty here to make yourself a stiff drink if that’s what you’re after.” 

“Haven’t ruled that out,” Remus said, leaning his head back against the couch. “How was your art date?” 

Sirius blew out a puff of breath, glancing at the ceiling for a moment. “Long and strange.” 

“All around, then, good,” Remus nodded, but very soon he found himself engrossed in figuring out exactly what was in Sirius’ take out container. 

Sirius took a spoonful of the substance. “It was mixed media.” 

“Oh, that'd be a treat,” Remus said distractedly. Whatever it was, it had to be spooned out. 

“In theory perhaps," Sirius gave, "but in practice I have to say it was a lot of hullabaloo—” 

“I’m sorry, but what are you eating?” Remus cut in, unable to help himself. 

Sirius stuck the takeout container under Remus’ chin. “Ice cream,” he said, as if Remus should have guessed that's what would go in there. 

“And you decided to forgo a bowl?” Remus asked, absolutely certain he hadn’t seen a full sink that morning. 

“This way I won’t have to wash it when I'm done,” Sirius said, tapping his right temple. 

Remus squinted at him. “Right, but you had to wash that out in order to use it, no?” 

Sirius made a series of nonsensical noises before pressing on. “I was in the middle of the best story of your life, if you remember.” 

Remus let this one go. “Sorry, mixed media,” he prompted. 

“Mm, a joy,” Sirius nodded, grabbing a quick spoonful before continuing. “It was in this complex with a thousand rooms in it, each one had a… I want to say theme, but I still haven't worked out how the rooms had been divvied out.” 

“I don’t understand how you wouldn’t absolutely thrive in this setting,” Remus put out there. 

“Well, hold the fuck on,” Sirius returned, pointing at him with his spoon. “You think I’m extra, wait and see.” 

“Sorry, go,” Remus allowed. 

“We’re moving from room to room, then we had to go down a floor so we hit a stairwell, and there’s a woman squatting in the middle of the stairs, in a white hazmat suit—” 

“Oh,” Remus said, blinking. “That took a turn.” 

“Do you remember in United States of Tara; Gimme?” Sirius raises. “The impish one?” 

The clarification wasn't all that necessary for it wasn’t difficult for Remus to think back to their screening in February. “Yeah,” he said hesitantly, his eyes widening. 

“She's just there, Gimme-ing on the stairs,” Sirius finished. “The stairs that we have to go down in order to keep going through this maze.” 

“No,” Remus said outright. “No no no. No, thank you.” 

Sirius reached his free hand over and slapped Remus knee in apparent, vivid agreement. “And by the time I digested that this was indeed what I was looking at, Marlene had already gone right on down the stairs and I realized that was the whole point, and all I'm thinking is, ‘Remus would hate this, Remus would hate this,’” he detailed, ending it off with a sigh-song. 

Remus nodded vigorously to validity of it. “Thank you for just knowing that.” 

“The whole time I'm walking down expecting her to include me in this piece; shout at me, jump out and latch onto me, and I know I’m going to kick her the moment she does,” Sirius kept on, “but I get past her and nothing’s happened; she’s just frozen in her pose and I just — was that the point of it, do you think?” 

“Do I think?” Remus repeated. 

Sirius waved the spoon around idly. “Do you think she was trying to suggest that, we, as a collective society, are too quick to jump to the worst case scenario?” he theorized loftily. 

Remus made a face at that. “Bit much.” 

A long, rolling laugh burst out of Sirius. “And there’s Remus’ review,” he said. 

Remus bit his lower lip out of amusement. “I just think there’d be other, less horrific ways to get the point across if you’re going to be making it,” he said. 

“Meanwhile Marlene is simply going with the motions, barely batting an eye,” Sirius said. 

Remus blinked, he considered it, and gave an even head tilt. “Her world, I suppose,” he said. “Probably felt right at home.” 

“Like she was back in with her flock,” Sirius built on that, scooping a spoonful of ice cream from the container. “And I tried, Remus, I did. She was so chuffed I finally agreed to go to one with her and I knew I’d have to reign it in and play nice, but then we hit a room with a film projection of a man chucking potatoes at a gong and I was in hell, Remus. I’ve been to hell.” 

Remus, who'd just leaned in to accept an outstretched spoonful, went and choked on it, laughing as he managed to swallow. “Well, that one I like,” he said. “What’s your theory there?” 

“There was certainly a conclusion to it, and strap in ‘cause it's a doozy,” Sirius prefaced and Remus made a show of settling in more. “He's pitching the gigantic taters over at it, sometimes they hit, other times they don’t get anywhere near the gong, and at this point I’m sure I’ve entered another realm. I start looking ‘round at everyone else because there is no way that I could possibly be the only one who finds this ridiculous but no one, not a one seemed phased.” 

Remus was already biting back a laugh at the sheer idea of projecting himself into that room. “Oh, I don't believe that,” he said. 

Sirius pointed at him with his spoon again. “I'm not shitting you, no one was even holding a smirk in. Maybe it was a blessing that you couldn't have made it because I know I’d have looked at you for help and immediately lost it, and the bark would have sounded out in the room, frightening the lot of them,” Sirius detailed, and Remus stuck his grin against Sirius’ right shoulder as his shoulders shook. “So, as it turns out, the answer to the puzzle had been in the same room all along, sitting on a little round table in the corner and lit up on display — the artiste, we’ll call him for now, had a bottle of vodka made from the potatoes that hit the gong.” 

Remus lifted his head quickly, reeling. “I—” he started, then ultimately shook his head clear. “What did he do with the ones that missed?” 

“Never said,” Sirius chimed. 

“That’s suspicious,” Remus called it. 

“He had a second piece,” Sirius tacked on. 

“Oh good, it sounds like he really needs an outlet,” Remus returned. 

Sirius pointed at him brazenly with a bright smile. “That’s more real than you even know,” he said, then set the same hand over the length of the two of them as if setting a scene. “Another projected image, this time a lone man standing at the top of a pier just shouting nonsense sounds into a megaphone.” 

Remus burst out a laugh. “Well, that’s right up your alley.” 

Sirius laughed, muffled around his spoon, and pulled the utensil out of his mouth with a pop. “It was probably the one I identified with the most out of any of them.” 

Remus sighed as if he’d just ran a mile and brought his hands up to rub at his eyes. “Is there more?” he asked hopefully. 

“I’ve so much more,” Sirius assured him. 

Remus dropped his hands to his lap. “Good, save some,” he said, and to Sirius’ quizzical look he added, “one day I'm going to need a pick-me-up and one of those is bound to do the trick." 

Sirius’ eyes positively shone. “I won't even tell you when one's coming,” he said. “I’ll just drop it on you without any notice and you'll have to process it wherever we are.” 

“Even better,” Remus said of it. Sirius scooped up another spoonful and held it out for Remus, who accepted it in kind and spoke when he could, nodding to him. “Well, you win. My day was not that strange.” 

“Tell,” Sirius prompted. 

Remus gave a hum, trying to find the best way to explain it. “I kept missing normal human communication by a hair,” he said after a moment or two. Sirius, mid-chew, lifted his right eyebrow only. “That or everyone else was on the fritz today.” 

“I’m going with column B,” Sirius informed him. “You’ve been hitting it out of the park ever since you got back.” 

“Well, yeah, I’m with you,” Remus said of it. “It was a bit of column a and b, I think. This bloke came up with a bottled drink and the bag of popcorn for the promo, right, and he said, ‘I get one of these if I buy this, right?’ and I meant to say ‘sure thing,’ but I only said ‘sure.’” 

Sirius coughed out a laugh, lifting his shoulders easily. “Take whatever you like, what do I care.” 

Remus nodded through a weak laugh, rubbing his reddened face. “Take the whole till drawer while you’re at it, fuck it,” he said, and Sirius leaned his head down on Remus’ left shoulder, succumbing to a silent fit. “Then there was just a bunch of people periodically ordering odd things, which is the name of the game, I know, but this one woman was just adamant that I make her a tall latte with room.” 

Sirius lifted his head, swiping a lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes and showcasing quite the squint. “What?” he said flatly. 

“Exactly,” Remus said, feeling frustration bubbling up in him again despite the situation happening hours earlier. “I thought she just meant she wanted it in the grande cup, but she insisted no; tall latte, no room, as she asked. So I made it for her as she asked and she was back five minutes later saying it was too strong — well, yeah, that would be because I had to put less milk to get that room you so badly wanted; what do you want me to do here, ma’am?” 

Sirius snorted. “Tell me you said that.” 

“With much, much less ‘tude,” Remus maintained. 

Sirius huffed. “It’s the only power you’ve got around there," he returned. "Use it well.” 

“Well, I managed to reign it in,” Remus said, garnering himself a boo for it. “Oh, and then, I’m working on this man’s soy latte, and he gets right, right up there by the bar to watch me make it so I should have seen this coming, but he sticks his hand over the counter—" Remus shoved his right forefinger right up against the take-out container in Sirius’ lap which resulted in a near growl from him; unsurprising when Remus had seen Sirius nearly bite off hand or two for that, “—and insists I just used the wrong spoon for it.” 

Sirius let out a quick bark. “Yeah, you.” 

“That’s what I’m saying,” Remus said, gesturing toward Sirius with his left hand. “If it had been you, I might have had to question it.” 

Sirius knocked his right leg against Remus’ left knee. “Cheeky bugger,” he said with a smile on all the same. 

“There was no way I'd done it, but it's not as if he was going to believe me,” Remus kept on, “so I had to remake it and dump a perfectly good drink because, of course, the next three I offered it to didn't take it.” 

“Well, could have drank it yourself,” Sirius put out there. 

Remus made a face. “Soy milk tastes like chalk.” 

“Oh?” Sirius quipped. “Had few pieces in your day to know that, did you?” 

“Chalky substances,” Remus corrected. 

“Oh, chalky substances,” Sirius nodded, his crooked grin on. 

“Listen, I had to take Milk of Magnesia for my ulcer and it was horrid,” Remus served him. “White, chalky-paste hybrid that managed to still have the consistency of goo that should never have medicinal properties.” 

“I love it when you're like this,” Sirius said, his eyes wide. 

“Well, it was,” Remus maintained, not as amused as Sirius evidently was. “I had to take it three times a day to even hope it’d do anything, and I used to weigh the options; the pain pain versus a spoonful of that horrid stuff, and unfortunately the pain won out, but only just.” 

Sirius took the last spoonful of ice cream before he leaned forward to set the container on the coffee table. “What’s it feel like?” he asked, propping his feet up on the table. 

Remus thought back to how he’d described it to his doctor at age sixteen and thought it would likely still do the trick. “Like someone's giving a friction burn to your stomach.” 

Sirius winced. “You really had to debate that over a spoonful of goo?” 

“What part of gooey substances excites you?” Remus asked. 

“Depends on the kind,” Sirius said easily. 

“Happy sixth birthday, Sirius,” Remus sent him brightly. 

Sirius gave into a smile before he dropped his head on Remus’ shoulder and snuggled in. It went on like that for some time, the both of them trading stories of the trade before Remus felt a twinge of remembrance and tried to locate it fully. Once he had, he hesitated, not sure he wanted to put himself through the mental Olympics it would take to rehash all of it, but as with his mum, Sirius knew he was waiting on one more grade and would eventually ask if Remus avoided it for too long. 

“My grade came in." 

Sirius pulled his feet off the table and plunked them on the floor. “Oi, what,” he said, straightening up and looking to him. “When?” 

“Yesterday,” Remus said. “It was a B.” 

Silence hung between them for a few beats before Sirius nodded toward the front hall. “Allons-y?” 

Remus turned his head that way before he looked back, finding Sirius had brandished a fist in that time. “Non, c’est correct,” he waved him off, smiling for the offer. “If I’m being honest, I had it coming.” 

“Excuse I?” Sirius returned. “I read that paper.” 

Remus smirked. “You did not.” 

Sirius gave him a plain look. “You told me enough about it for me to know it was going to be an A paper,” he reiterated. 

Remus tilted his head at that, but kept in with the nag at his gut. “There's a difference between being able to articulate the vision you want versus actually getting it down on paper and then getting it across.” 

“In what world would you not have done both?” Sirius raised. 

Remus lifted his right hand. “Would you rather me mope around about it?” he asked. “I'm not going to kick a door in over it.” 

“That's not what I'm saying,” Sirius said. “I'm saying your professor’s an idiot.” 

“They can’t all be idiots simply because they throw me an A when I don't deserve one,” Remus pointed out, and Sirius gave a click of his tongue for it. “It's fine, the odds weren't in my favour anyway.” 

Sirius gave him a frank look of bemusement then wiped his face clean and lifted his feet off the floor, tucking them under him and turning to Remus, his right knee slotting easily up against the left side of Remus’ waist. “OK, get me on your level,” he prompted with a wave of both his hands toward himself. "How were they not in your favour?" 

Remus tried to appreciate the effort to remain patient even if it was evidently costing Sirius a whole lot. “It wasn’t your class structure,” he explained. “Classes were over within a week and the paper counted toward the entire grade, so realistically I'd have to write a perfect paper to receive an A, and I simply didn’t put in the work or the time for it.” 

“Yes, you did,” Sirius countered, his brow furrowing. “I saw you putting both in.” 

Remus lifted his hand for that. “Well, yeah, I didn't leave it until the last minute, but practicum took more of my time, and a lot more of my focus; I put that paper aside for other classes, other things, people,” he listed, and though he hadn't meant to call Sirius out specifically, he certainly lifted his hands as if he’d been blamed outright. “I’m not saying it’s on you; I didn’t have to take as many study breaks as I did, this is just as much my fault. More, even — those breaks weren’t all your idea.” 

Sirius slowly let his hands drop and Remus didn’t know what to do with him chewing his lip like he was, feeling a bit like he were dealing with a clone of Sirius that hadn't been programmed just right. “This is where you say ‘it’s fine, Remus, a B doesn’t determine your worth,’” he said, nodding his head to Sirius. 

Sirius broke into an incredulous scoff. “I know that,” he said. “I wrote the book on that.” 

Remus gave him a look. “You just got fired up over it, so.” 

Sirius made a vague noise of disagreement. “I wouldn't call it fired up.” 

Remus made the same noise. “What would you call it?” he asked, and he'd never know why it was perfectly fine for Sirius to do the mocking but when it was Remus doing it, Sirius went right into a frenzy. 

“If I had been fired up, I'm sure it would have something to do with the fact that my protective streak begins ends with you,” he returned haughtily. “Obviously I'd rather you land here than have you banging your head against the wall over it, only I saw how much you busted your arse this term and last term and think that ought to be rewarded, so sue me.” 

Remus’ stomach twisted along with his mouth, torn between finding the show Sirius was putting on off-putting or entertaining. “I appreciate it, Sirius,” he insisted, sticking his hand on Sirius’ thigh, “but it’s alright. I had a look at the spots where I lost points and I didn't lose any that weren’t deserved.” 

Sirius blinked at that and shook his head. “I don't know who you are or what's gotten into you,” he said, a fond note to his tone that had Remus flushing in record time. 

He ducked his head away sheepishly. “Well, I opened it on my first break so I had the rest of the long and strange shift to talk myself up to this point,” he admitted. “It took a lot of work to get myself here, believe me.” 

Sirius blinked. “You found out yesterday?” Remus blinked too, nodding. “And you only opened the thing up today?” 

“Yesterday was,” Remus said slowly, carefully picking his words, “quite a day.” 

Sirius waved that effort off. “You had plenty of time to look at it,” he said, taking his feet off of the coffee table and pulling them in to drape them over Remus’ knees instead. “Come to my level for a second; you waited a full day before you checked all the places where you might’ve mucked up and you were just going to gloss over that? No sir, I think Party Punch is in order.” 

Remus’ gave a sheepish smile around the twist his stomach took to. He didn’t feel as if he’d done anything substantial, nor did he feel like he’d many any strides further; he’d ranted to himself for a while and pretended he was all well and good about it with another. “I did what I’ve always done,” he said. “I just traded one fret out for another, and in this case I pretended I liked getting B's for a while and picked up a book.” 

“What, you fretted about the characters in your book?” Sirius asked, flashing a bemused smile. 

Remus sighed, looking at him imploringly. “Why are you taking everything I say so literally, now of all times?" he asked. “I avoided the grade hanging over my head for awhile by completely ignoring it, and then I rang my mum and that whole thing took over. It was one thing after another.” 

Sirius took his lower lip into his mouth and nodded, then let out a small sigh. “Remus, you saw the B, said ‘fuck this noise,’ and proceeded to pull out a book and move on with it,” he emphasized. Remus let out a small breath, giving a shake of his head, and Sirius shifted closer to him, and if he got any closer so he’d be right in Remus’ lap. “Remember our laundromat date?” 

Remus found it quite easy to match his smirk. “Was that a date?” he checked, tilting his head at him. 

“It was for me,” Sirius said, cocking a brow. “A successful evening even if it didn't end without pants, but if you want to make right on that later I won't complain—" Remus huffed a laugh, ducking his head against Sirius’ right shoulder since it was so close, “—but my point is, you did the exact thing I do and the exact thing you said you wished you could do that night, so, how do you feel about it?” 

Remus blinked against the fabric of Sirius’ t-shirt and lifted his head, considering he and his point for a few moments. “I didn't even think of it that way,” he said. 

“Mm, good thing I'm here,” Sirius said. “Try it now.” 

Remus did try, tried to let it sink in and give it a positive spin, but it didn't work for long; something felt too much like a thorn to let the whole of it sit still. “I’m not any better than I was.” 

Sirius let out a sigh. “Remus,” he implored. “There’s no getting better when there’s nothing wrong with you; there’s just shifting the perspective around a bit so that, hopefully, you don't wind up with another ulcer one day from constantly kicking yourself when you’re already down.” 

Remus deflated, leaning in and sticking his face up against Sirius' right shoulder. “It still hung over me throughout the day, I mean,” he said. “I told my mum I was so happy with it even though I wasn’t at all yet, and now I wish I had looked through it when I got it and maybe I'd have made it to a place where I was actually OK with it.” 

Sirius’ eyebrows knitted together as he stared him down, and Remus couldn't say he was a fan of them just then. “Why'd you tell her that?” 

Remus’ own brow furrowed. “What?” 

“Tell her you were happy with it when you weren’t,” Sirius tacked on. 

"I don't know," Remus said, lifting a shoulder. "She knew I was waiting on that grade so she was going to ask eventually, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed so I said it was fine." 

“When has she ever been disappointed?” Sirius put out. 

“She’s been,” Remus said uncomfortably. “I want to avoid that here.” 

Sirius sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “She wouldn't have given you shit over a fucking B, Remus,” he said. 

“Not aloud, no,” Remus said, and at the widening of Sirius’ eyes, he jumped to explain himself. “I don’t want her to think I'm just coasting by.” 

“Coasting?” Sirius repeated, his voice too tight for the situation in Remus’ opinion. “What part of what you're doing here is coasting? You go to school, you work while you’re there, you have human interaction outside of both when you can squeeze it in; this is Hope we’re talking about here, she’s not going to smite you for having a life outside of school.” 

Remus only just fought the urge to pull out of reach, unsure of how he was going to explain to Sirius something he’d set as a hard rule for himself so long ago. “The last thing I want is either of them thinking I'm out here struggling," he said, pushing patience into his voice, "and if she thinks that’s happening that then my dad will think it too, so it's just easier for all of us if they don't hear about it.” 

Sirius sat poised to speak for a few moments and his breath hitched before he managed it. "Party Punch, then?” he offered. 

Remus leaned forward to leave a kiss relieved on Sirius’ lips, feeling the goosebumps that sprouted up all over his body beginning to smooth over. “We finished off the juice last time,” he reminded him. “Malibu’s low, too.” 

“A quest first, then Party Punch," Sirius amended, uncurling his legs from under himself to get off of the couch. 


	3. 3.

Remus heard the foot patters coming, the creak of the door opening and shutting, and lay in the five second lapse that occurred before he was treated to an earthquake better known as Sirius burrowing up beside him on the bed. And yet, despite all that and having ample time to sort it out, Remus still wished he’d used any of it to prepare himself better. He breathed out slowly, made a bleary noise, and the bed shifted along with the comforter Remus wound himself in, and a moment later Sirius was inside Remus’ cocoon with him, worming up close and draping his left arm over Remus’ right hip. 

Remus reached his arms up between the two of them and readjusted the comforter around his shoulders. “Time?” 

“About five,” Sirius supplied, nosing at Remus’ neck. “James got in a little while ago, says he’s going to make pancakes in a bit. What do you think, do you want to get out of the room for a while?”” 

“Does he know?” Remus asked. 

“In general?” Sirius checked, getting an affirming mumble out of Remus. “Yeah, he’s up to speed.” 

“Does he also know that I’m really sorry about Ugly Pot?” 

“It took him a whole four seconds to get over it,” Sirius said, but Remus gave another mumbled noise, not all that sated by the fact that those four seconds were still directly caused by him. “Remus, it was the ugliest pot known to man, hence the name.” 

“You saw his face when he brought it in,” Remus countered. “He was so chuffed.” 

“And he’ll make that face again,” Sirius assured. “Soon even, if you choose to make a reappearance.”

Between staying cocooned and leaving the bed, Remus didn't have to weigh the options too hard. “I don’t think I'm up for it,” he said.

“Do you have any idea of how hard it’s been, keeping him out of here?” Sirius raised. 

“I’m not fit to see anybody right now,” Remus said.

Sirius gave a measured exhale through his nose. “Sit up for me at least?” he requested. “I’ve got to bring you up to speed, too, and I’d rather see you while I’m doing that.” 

Remus gave a bleak noise and nodded, worked to untangle himself from both Sirius and the comforter, and Sirius went ahead and broke free of the cocoon before flapping the entire comforter out over the bed. “It could have been a less ceremonious exit,” Remus mentioned, crawling out from underneath the now vast expanse of the comforter. 

“When have I ever?” Sirius asked, shifting around on the bed. “Lamp’s going on, OK?”

Remus nodded, heard the yank of the lamp’s chain and saw the rim of light visible around the edges of his sleep mask before he pulled it down from over his eyes, blinking to adjust to the dimly lit room. He started at Sirius’ right hand turned up right by his face, but settled down once Sirius ran his thumb over Remus’ left eyebrow gingerly, reminded starkly of the mark going straight through it. 

“How’s it look?” he asked, looking up automatically in the direction even though it’d be impossible for him to see it. 

“Better,” Sirius provided, taking his hand back. “Wouldn’t hurt to change them over, mind.”

Remus nodded and Sirius slid off the left side of the bed headed right on out of the room, leaving the door open a crack. Remus hadn't meant right then and there, but Sirius was long gone now so he pushed himself backwards on the bed to prop himself up against the headboard, crossed his legs underneath him, and reached up to rub his eyes with the edges of his palms, losing himself in the bleary sensation for a good half-minute or so. He pulled his hands away from his eyes once the feeling got too intense to keep up, blinked a fair number of times to rid his vision of spots, and heard Sirius whisper ‘_go get him_’ out in the hall; the door was pushed opened again and Tango trotted into the room, and Remus had to admit that even though he was in the midst of his own pity party, he had a harder time keeping to the itinerary with Tango ambling onto the bed and hogging out beside him.

Remus smirked down at him and reached to give Tango’s snout a pat as Sirius wandered back into the room. Remus looked up, took in his armful of items, and watched him kick back with his left foot to shut the door behind him. He carried the pile over to the bed, stepped up on it, and walked a few steps further before landing himself slightly diagonal from Remus’ legs, crossing his own under him. 

Sirius let the pile go just to the left of himself. “Sit up a bit for me?” he requested.

Remus shifted himself off of the headboard and scooted closer to him. “I can’t wait until I can cover this thing up properly,” he said. 

“Soon, soon,” Sirius gave, beginning to sort the items out into a line beside them.

“Not soon enough,” Remus said of it. “On Tuesday, I noticed no less than seven people staring at it as if I were some kind of street-fighter posing as their barista, and those were just the ones I caught doing it.”

Sirius looked up at him with a quirk of his lips. “Well, it was a fresh one then, and some of them might have been into the street-fighter look,” he said. Remus gave him a plain look that really only amounted to him getting an uppity one in return. “What? You don’t know.”

Remus gave him a bland noise while Sirius reached his right hand up to Remus’ brow. He ran a finger over the first butterfly stitch and gave it a slight tug, but he clicked his tongue as the stitch held onto Remus’ gash. “Thought it might be stubborn,” he said, reaching back to pick up a facecloth he’d brought in with him. “Sorry if this hurts a bit.” 

Remus aimed to shake his head as minimally as he could given his position, then decided waving him off would suffice better than moving his head at all. Sirius ran the damp cloth over Remus’ left brow and Remus left him to it, though if he were honest, there was always something hypnotizing about the way Sirius' eyes looked in the midst of a task that made Remus not want to interrupt. Sirius stuck the cloth down on his left thigh, held Remus’ head with his free hand, and gave another pull on the first stitch with his right hand. This time it pulled free without too much of a hitch and Sirius let out a noise of celebration before depositing the old stitch on a piece of tissue beside him. 

Sirius retrained his gaze on Remus’ brow and worked on peeling at the second stitch. “So, it’s been a day,” he said. 

Remus blinked out of this chapter of vague hypnosis and breathed out as the words registered. “Mm?” 

“Mm,” Sirius affirmed, his eyes still fixed on the task at hand. “Some good news, some medium, and some bad.” 

Remus inhaled through his nose. “The bad first,” he said. 

“I had a feeling, but I might veto for the medium one first, if you don't mind,” Sirius said, tugging the second stitch free. He stuck it down on the tissue with the other one, but didn’t resume his task right away. “I know that what I say is observation at this point, but I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot more reading than that even, and I think we might’ve jumped the gun a bit, assuming that light is what brought these on both times.” 

“Do you?” Remus prompted. 

“Well, unless you stared directly at an incandescent bulb at some point last night, and I doubt you did?” Sirius raised, pausing for a moment’s confirmation before Remus nodded for it. “Not really a pastime of yours, but I grilled Peter for a play-by-play in case I might’ve missed anything big while I wasn't here, and none of what you got up to lines up with Monday’s fiasco, _unless_ you count the brewskies.”

Remus blinked, though it was lagged. “I only had three drinks over the course of, what, three hours?” he raised. "You think those did it?"

“I think they’re a contender,” Sirius said, reaching for the packet of stitches that lay by them. Remus’ brow furrowed as he mulled that over, momentarily forgetting that Sirius was trying to line up the first butterfly stitch. “OK, I love your thinking face, but could you tone it down just a bit?” 

Sirius flickered kind eyes up to meet Remus’ for a moment and Remus did his best to relax his face. “It doesn’t add up,” he said after a few more moments. 

“You don’t think so?” Sirius asked as he pressed the stitch to Remus’ skin. “Our gin and juice on Monday, last nights pints; I see a pattern there.” 

“Right, but I’ve had a few drinks in my life and they didn’t all end with a cluster at the end of them,” Remus said. 

Sirius flicked his gaze up to him while he ran a thumb over the stitch to smooth it down. “How astute.” 

Remus gave him a plain look. “Wouldn’t I have ran into this problem before this?” he reiterated.

Sirius reached to peel off a second stitch from the packet of new ones. “Well, now we’re getting into a chicken or the egg thing, aren’t we,” he said, setting the packet aside. 

“How?” Remus asked. 

Sirius reached up to line the second stitch up with Remus’ gash. “You came before the clusters, not the other way around,” he reiterated, reaching up to line the second stitch below the first one.

“Well, if we’re talking astute, then you just one-upped me,” Remus returned. 

Sirius paused his hands and flickered his gaze back to meet Remus’. “There’s a woman out there somewhere that I read about who gets them like clockwork the instant she has a bite of strong cheese, to the point where she knows she has to avoid it completely,” he said, his hands remaining frozen in place as he spoke. “Now, I don’t know her, obviously, but I somehow doubt that from the moment she stepped out of the womb she was never able to even look at a block of Montgomery Cheddar without flashbacks coming on, what say you?” 

Remus sighed, not really sure why he hadn’t expected Sirius to have brought receipts along with him. “Well, when you put it like that.”

“Think of it like that,” Sirius said, resuming his task and smoothing the second stitch down. “What does anyone really know about these things? All I’m seeing is that triggers can develop over time in some cases, so for me, it’s not so far-fetched to think that in your case it could be the same sort of thing, only alcohol could be your Montgomery Cheddar, so to speak.”

Remus breathed in once. “I felt my eyes sting on Monday,” he said. “Maybe light didn’t cause last night’s, but I definitely felt my retinas sear the second we went out into the sun, so it’s not as if I can pretend I didn’t feel that.” 

Sirius leaned back, had a look over his work, and breathed out a breath of finality that suggested he deemed it a job well done before he trained his eyes on Remus full time. “I’m not saying Monday’s wasn’t related to it at all,” he said candidly. “I’m saying we don’t know what last night’s one came from yet, so I think we ought to tread lightly; let’s not be daft about where and when you take your shades off in case anything like Monday were to happen again, but we may as well stare the bull in the face rather than turn away from it and in this case, booze is the bull.” 

Remus sat with that for a few moments, and it was as if the room had changed its hue to match the new theory Sirius presented. He nodded to show he understood, but he didn’t speak yet, still attempting to thicken the thread between Monday’s attack and the one that slapped him upside the head the evening prior. 

“I know it’s a downer, but I don’t know what the alternative should be,” Sirius said through Remus’ chosen silence, tossing him a frown. “I’m not into the idea of feeding you shots to test it and see whether one comes shooting along after them; it’d be a lot easier and a lot more humane to just keep away from it altogether. There’s always pot if you feel the itch.” 

“I’m fine with that,” Remus insisted, his vocal cords betraying him by showing off the note of panic in his voice. “I’m not touching another drop if it means I won’t go barreling straight into another one.” 

Sirius nodded, taking his lower lip into his mouth this time and reaching to curl his hands around Remus’ left ankle. “That's sort of where the bad news comes in,” he said, keeping Remus’ gaze. 

Remus swallowed, nodding once. “OK.” 

Sirius gave a quick glance to the ceiling, then kept his gaze there as he was poised to speak. “It’s not that it won’t matter at all what we do, so I’m not going to say that,” he said, and it truly was a sight to be had, watching Sirius picking his words carefully, “but if you’re in a cycle, and it’s starting to look like you might be—” 

“We don’t know that I am,” Remus interjected. 

Sirius careful expression petered off to more of a plain one. “Sure, we don’t know it like we know that winter comes after the fall, but you don’t have to worry about them coming every hour on the hour so you don’t fall under chronic, while on the other hand Monday’s clearly wasn’t a fluke either,” he said, displaying his hands open on his lap. “And you’re right, you’ve forgotten your sunnies before and not ended up with one hitting you, but you’ve had two attacks in under a week, so—” Sirius paused to weigh his hands, “—we might as well treat you as if you’re in one at this point, and if you are from what I’m reading, the clusters are going to come round either way; the booze, the light, or both, they’ll just trigger them to come quicker.” 

Remus breathed out, the weight on his lungs helping him feel cornered in as if he’d been stuffed into a straight jacket and forced to try to wiggle free. “Alright,” he said, giving a tight grin. “Good. It doesn’t matter what I do to prevent them because I’m a time bomb waiting to go off.” 

“Don’t say that,” Sirius said, not curt or unkind but Remus gave into a full-bodied shrug no matter the gentle cadence to Sirius’ tone. 

“Why not, I am,” Remus insisted. “Peter’s never going to look at me the same way after what I put him through, James probably won’t either once he hears about it, and they’ve both got the right if I could blow at any moment—”

Sirius tightened his hands around Remus’ ankle as if anchoring him down. “_Peter_ is not a name I want to hear right now, James already knows about it and he isn’t afraid of much, and I didn’t say we’re shit out of luck,” he said, striking down all three of Remus’ points in one go. “I’ve good news too, don’t forget that.” 

Remus gave out a tight laugh. “Well, it’s going to have to be fucking splendid, isn’t it?” he asked, lifting his left hand down over his forehead jaggedly. Sirius caught his wrist and guided it away from Remus’ head, and it took Remus a beat or two to realize he’d pressed his hand all over Sirius’ recently finished handiwork. “Sorry.”

Sirius shook his head, giving Remus’ apology little more than that. “It’s really good,” he said, scooting forward a smidge so his and Remus’ knees touched. “I did a shitload of research last night, so much that Professor Remus should really be wondrously proud, I might add, and I messaged this bloke—”

“You’re off to a fantastic start,” Remus put in. 

“If you think that’s good, just wait,” Sirius said, reaching to walk two fingers on his right hand up Remus’ arm. “I looked through a ton of threads before I came across a post of his, and what flagged me down was that he mentioned the NHS, so he’s right where we need him to be.” 

Remus nodded, holding his breath; if Sirius managed to get a name or number, even just push in the right direction, it could make all the difference. He flapped his hands toward himself to get Sirius to keep talking, and Sirius eyed him with a smile before he thankfully got on with it. “He had a bit of a life story going so I skimmed a little of that, I’m not going to lie, _but_ I caught the important stuff; he wrote that he’s had them for years, minimal to no success on the treatment front until he finally got himself a doctor who hasn’t got her head up her arse, and now he couldn’t be happier,” Sirius detailed. “He practically sung her praises on that post, so I sent him a few questions and after a few back and forths he gave me the number for her office without me even having to butter him up all that much, and I got you in to see her.” 

If Remus hadn’t been sitting down he’d have surely tripped. “What?” 

Sirius wasn’t at all deterred by the speed at which the word came out of him. “It’s happening,” he said, giving a grin before he searched Remus and the grin petered off of his lips. “I know I went ahead and did that without checking with you first, but you were in here and I just needed to do something. It just made sense to get on it.” 

Remus shook his head quickly. “No, it’s OK,” he said minutely. “I just can’t believe you got me in.” 

“Mind, her actually being legitimate means she’s booked up pretty tightly,” Sirius mentioned. “The earliest I could get you slotted in was, of course, right smack in the middle of when we’ll be away, so the next best I could do was the week after we’re back.” 

Remus reached his right hand out to him, trying to halt him. “Sirius,” he said, feeling overwhelmed by every bomb drop. “How did you even get me in?” 

Sirius lifted his left hand and his squeezed the fingers of Remus’ outstretched hand. “Well,” he started mystically, “I used this device called a telephone.” 

Remus gave him a look. “Sirius.” 

Sirius gave him a wry smile. “Pretended I was you,” he levelled with him, lifting a shoulder easily.

Remus gave him a pointed look, but his smile betrayed him anyway. “You little shit.” 

“I do a pretty good Remus,” Sirius said before he tossed his head to the side and put on a huff. “_Sirius_. See?” 

“That was very good,” Remus allowed. Sirius gave him a proud little smile, looking quite pleased with himself as he pulled a cigarette out of the pack laying between them, but Sirius also tended to look pretty pleased with himself whenever he successfully pulled off a prank, so Remus thought his suspicions were warranted. “Please tell me you avoided taking any creative liberties this time around.”

Sirius smirked around his first haul, letting it out in an easy stream as he reached for the ashtray on the nightstand and set it beside him on the bed. “I managed to restrain myself, if you must know,” he returned, tipping his head to him. 

“Oh, mhm,” Remus said, reaching to steal a haul off of Sirius’ cigarette.

“I did, I was the height of professional,” Sirius maintained, leaning back on his hands while Remus took his pull off of it. “I had to be a little careful with my R’s, but I think I sold it well.” 

Remus exhaled through his nose, his mouth twisting up into what might've been a smile if he didn't feel so sure it'd crack at any moment. “What day is the appointment?” he asked, reaching up to swipe his right thumb over Sirius' left cheek.

Sirius turned his head and pressed a peck to Remus’ wrist. “Two-thirty on the thirty-first, and I already put it on the calendar,” he supplied. “So, I know it’s easy for me to sit here and ask this, but do what you can to forget the bad news for now.”

Remus gave a flat laugh there, reopening his eyes and pulling back from Sirius. “Who, me?” 

Sirius gave him a flat smile. “All I’m asking is that you try,” he said, snagging his cigarette back. “Now that the appointment’s booked, my next plan is to get a list going of things we can try out ourselves at least until we get you in that room. If these things could be coming along whether we perfect prevention or not, then the least we can do for that is try not to trigger any more than we have to while shifting some of our focus so that we’re also focusing on how to abort them when they do come on.”

Remus nodded again, swallowing around the lump in his throat and watching the cherry of the cigarette cast new shadows over Sirius’ face before they were gone again in a blink. For someone who maintained that he did not make many plans, Sirius had already checked off step one, had his sights set on step two, and step three was likely to be right around the corner.

Sirius watched Remus for a few moments, speaking through his chosen silence. “It seems daunting now,” he said, “but we’re going to get you the best care that we can, and _then_ I’m thinking that I really like the idea of having a bag of dog shit delivered straight to your hack of a doctor’s doorstep—” Remus shook his head curtly at what step three was looking like it was going to be, “—_ohh_, yes, I am.”

“Sirius,” Remus implored.

“After all the reading I did, I learned that we were not the only ones who got let down along the way,” Sirius returned, consequently not leaving it. “The bloke I talked to, he got skeptical hums, same as us until he got so desperate that he did the work for himself and found out about oxygen tanks through word of mouth, and even _still_ the doctor he had at the time told him to relax when he simply asked to get his hands on them, and your piece of shit doctor would have done the same to us; I know it like I know anything.” 

Remus sat back against the headboard behind him and gave Sirius a deep frown, to which Sirius only lifted his hands at. “With her, he’s far better off and we will be, too,” he tacked on as if dotting the whole point of view offered up. 

Remus didn’t have a ton of fond memories of his former doctor either, but he thought schoolyard antics would hardly get them anywhere at this point. “It’s finished, Sirius,” he said. “It has been for months now.” 

Sirius sighed. “Could we not be noble for three whole seconds?” he asked.

“Or we could try it for three?” Remus suggested. 

“That man stared into this face,” Sirius said, circling a hand around Remus’ visage, “asking him for help, and all he did was up the dosage of pills that we both told him weren’t working — a bag of dog shit is tame compared to what I ought to send him.”

“We don’t ever have to look his way again,” Remus offered. “There’s the silver living if you need one.” 

“No, there isn’t a silver lining about this when I knew something was off about him from the get,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “I should have pushed you harder about finding a different last year, and I definitely should have pulled you out of that room the moment I didn’t see him even blink at the word ‘cluster' — you, you’re always going to see it differently, but you’re never going to question a doctor’s medical opinion no matter how basic it begins to look; you don’t know how to do that.”

Remus lifted a hand, his brow furrowing. “What do you mean, I don’t know how?” 

“With what you’ve been through?” Sirius said, gesturing with his cigarette as he spoke. “You’re going to look at doctors as if they’re Gods but the way I see it, wrong calls are made all the time; case in point, how many times did your dad see the inside of an OR before his doctor finally made the right call?” 

Remus swallowed there. “Too many, but I’ll remind you what a difficult case his was,” he said. 

“That’s what I’m saying,” Sirius said. “How many close calls did it take him to save him?” 

Remus nodded pointedly. “His doctor saves his life, Sirius.”

Sirius tilted his head and let an implored sigh out through his nose, managing to resemble a dragon with impeccable hair and making it difficult for Remus to hold so tightly onto the irritation that sparked in his gut. “You know what I’m saying,” he implored. “Who was it that suggested the right call in the end? Your dad did his job for him because patients aren’t as clueless as doctors like that make them out to be. Your dad wasn’t, and we certainly weren’t either.”

Unfortunate as ever, Remus could see both signs of the coin shining brightly. “OK, but _what_ doctor opts for amputation right off the bat?” he raised. “My dad would have told him to get the fuck out of the room if he suggested that in the early days.” 

“I didn’t say it had to be day one,” Sirius said, pointing at Remus with his cigarette, “third op with no end in sight? Might have been the time to rethink that. And all of his other stints in hospital could have been avoided if his doc hadn’t waited until the last ditch effort to make the call, but instead he tried a million other things before that point as if your dad had all the time in the world to wait around for the right trick to work.” 

“None of us knew what the next step was going to be,” Remus said, his head feeling even more weighted by the memory. “Each time he came out of the OR we thought it was going to work.” 

“Well, of course you did,” Sirius delivered. “You trusted his doctor and as far as I’m aware you and your parents don’t have medical degrees, but someone else in that office did.” 

“Sirius,” Remus scolded. 

Sirius blocked that with a hand. “We’re going off the rails again.”

“You took us off them,” Remus rebutted. “I asked for migraine relief when I had my first visit after I'd moved; I didn’t ask the man for help for clusters, so why would he have made that jump himself?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have asked him for help for the clusters when it took you how long to admit that you weren’t even sure yourself what was even happening to you anymore,” Sirius returned, holding up a mirror that Remus didn’t want to look into. 

Remus breathed out his nose, calling on a thread of patience to tug on. “As much as we might want it to be the case, no GP’s first assumption is going to be clusters when a bloke walks into the room complaining about migraines -- they prescribe him migraine medication, as expected.” 

Sirius took a measured breath in this time. “The point is, it wouldn’t have even occurred to you to question whether he was the right sort for this, and that’s it, I’m done watching it go on,” he said, leaning over to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray, “I’m done dicking around with GP’s who get fucking smarmy the moment clusters are even mentioned, as if a group of people with nothing better to do got together and made them up for the fuck of it.”

“Well, then,” Remus said, somewhere in the realm of measured, “I don’t see where petty revenge is going to get us if the important thing here is that we now have more options than we once did.” 

“Just let me hate the guy,” Sirius sent out, holding his hands open on his lap. “It poses no threat to you whatsoever.” 

“I’m not sure I can stop you,” Remus said of it.

“You can’t,” Sirius said plainly. “If he’d listened to us when we came to him I might not have had to drag you into the ER on Monday, so you’ll just have to let me be bitter about this until I stop seeing it all so clearly in my head.” 

Remus let his head fall forward, his gut twisting up. Stepping out of his own experience, he could understand the gravity of the situation; why all of the voices around him reached as high a pitch as they did, why he was held down so roughly to keep him from making the situation any worse, and why Sirius’ eyes looked the way they did when he perched himself on the end of Remus’ cot once it was all over and he was permitted back in the room. 

He could see all of that objectively, but the moment he put himself back into the hysteria he’d felt in himself at the time, the more he could feel it then and there in Sirius’ room, and the more he could viscerally remember the brief moments’ peace that forced its way in between a string of constant, white hot spikes drilling over the left side of his face — that pause had been breathtaking. Short-lived, but the same as the first breath of clean air after catching water down the wrong tube and nothing like Remus would have expected slamming his head against the window of a taxi would have felt. 

Remus’ scrunched his eyes up tightly, fighting the sting behind them. “I’m sorry this is happening,” he said thickly. 

“I didn’t ask you to be,” Sirius raised. “I asked you to let me be salty, which I deserve to be right about now.” 

Remus wiped at his eyes, smearing wet across his eyelids and transferring most of it onto the right cuff of his sleep shirt. He sniffed and dropped his hand altogether when Sirius reached to block it from brushing and wetting Remus’ new stitches in the process. “I’m just sorry," he said despite knowing the word had little weight to it coming out of his mouth. "I don’t want this; I don’t want it for me, I don’t want it for you, I don’t want it at all but especially not now. Why now? Why’d I go three months without more than a tension headache just to get pummeled now?” 

Sirius took to wiping Remus’ eyes for him. “I saw plenty of remission talk during my scouring, some seem longer than others,” he said. “It’s looking like it’s just the luck of the draw. You had a few really good months there.” 

“No, I know that— one girl I read about last year has a remission period of three weeks and the rest of the year it’s cluster city,” Remus said. “That felt like a horror show to read about then and it’s part of why I didn’t think I was sure I wasn’t getting clusters myself. I can know something is a thing out there in the world and still think it’s bullshit that I’m getting such a hands-on lesson in it for myself.” 

“It is, it’s complete bullshit,” Sirius accepted, tipping Remus’ heavy head up by the chin. “I’m not going to deny you on that, but the good thing is that we now have someone who’s got a track record for getting her patients the good shit straight from the get.”

Remus ran his teeth over his lower lip before he spoke, reaching to fiddle with the wet cuff on his sleep shirt. “I appreciate you getting me in her sights, but I can’t get too ahead of myself with this.” 

Sirius’ eyes narrowed to the point where they appeared as near-slits. “What would you rather we do, pray about it?” he raised, following it up with a fluent yet blasé hail Mary.

“Yes, I was just about to head to mass,” Remus returned. 

The quick realignment of Sirius’ mouth twisted into a smile though it looked as if Sirius really didn’t want to give into it. “Why are you backtracking all of a sudden?” he asked.

Remus worked to keep his shoulders from deflating. “It’s not all of a sudden.”

“You were elated a few minutes ago,” Sirius pointed out, reaching up to wind his right forefinger into one of Remus’ curls on his fringe. “Where did that Remus go? I’ve such a soft spot for him.”

“I haven’t been in here sleeping all day, I’ve been scouring threads just like you until I couldn’t look at them anymore," Remus said. "I saw accounts for and against oxygen therapy; nothing seems to work across the board so I need to be very careful about how many eggs I put into one basket.” 

“It’s our best option,” Sirius said of it, letting go of Remus’ curl. 

“It’s _an_ option,” Remus said carefully, “and I can’t jump in so easily when there’s plenty of room for it not to work for me.” 

Sirius blinked once. “There’s just as much room for it to work if that’s how you want to look at it,” he countered. 

“Come to my level, please,” Remus implored. “Say the bloke was right and she’s incredible, gets me a prescription for the tanks, and it still doesn’t work, what then? And not only that, some say their clusters disappear while the mask is on and return twice as harsh the instant they take it off; if either happen to me then I’m back at square one again after putting so much pressure on this one treatment to work.” 

Sirius wet his lower lip before speaking again. “OK, I’m on your level, but why does it have to be just those those two scenarios and no others?” he asked. “Why couldn’t the tanks work?”

“Why would they work?” Remus raised, holding his hands open. 

“Why wouldn’t they?” Sirius countered, speaking on when Remus dropped his head into his hands. “It’s not as if I’m waving a banner for oxygen tanks without reason, it’s raved about; what you’re doing is paying far more attention to all the counter arguments against them instead of taking all of the positive ones—”

“Of course I am,” Remus said, lifting his head again. “I’ve got one shot for them to work, that’s it.”

Sirius wet his lips, letting that sit for all of a second or two. “There are always going to be naysayers riding in to people’s celebration posts just to announce that the tanks didn’t work for them, but why does that have to change anything about whether they’ll work for you?” he raised. “You’re not them, what do they have to do with you?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe they don’t want other people getting caught up thinking it’ll be the magical cure for them?” Remus countered. 

Sirius doubled-down hard on his read of it. “Or the post wasn’t for them in the first place,” he said. “It’s too good of an option not to walk into the room ready to ask for it.” 

Remus blinked wildly, surprised that they were evening having this conversation when Sirius knew far too well how that tactic could backfire on them. “If I go in there making demands it’s going to turn her right off,” he said. “It’ll go the same way it went last time otherwise, and I need her on my side for this or else there’s no point in even setting foot into her office.” 

Sirius’ breath hitched before he spoke again. “OK, forgive me for bringing him into this again, but it’s the perfect example,” he insisted, clasping his right hand over Remus’ left knee. “Look how well your dad’s doing now because he cut out all of the bullshit; he took his situation into his own hands and took names while he did it, and that’s all we’d be doing here. We don’t need to hear spiels about nasal sprays and shots and whatever other treatments you read about today, not when we could bypass all of those and go with something that’s more likely to work.” 

Remus shook his head. “The tanks aren’t any more likely to work than the sprays or shots—”

Sirius kept on brazenly, lifting his right hand to count on his fingers. “The tanks aren’t expensive either,” he listed, “the whole arrangement is convenient—”

“By whose standards are they not expensive, and convenient, how?” Remus cut in. 

“They’re affordable, and they can be delivered right to your door,” Sirius answered. 

“I’m not going to even be here come September, so how is any of that going to work out for me?” Remus raised. 

“You’re doing a four month stint, not picking up and moving there,” Sirius rebutted. “You’ll be covered.” 

Remus lifted his hands in frustration, dragging them up through his hair. “This is all so idealistic,” he snapped. “Not everything will just work out for the best just because you say it will.”

Sirius drew back, his eyes flashing for a quick moment before a hard reset of his jaw, and Remus could have sworn he saw a wall being built between them with his very eyes. A heavy silence came with the new architecture, lingering in the air around them for long enough that Remus was certain that Sirius was finished speaking with him altogether. Remus would be booted out and told to fend for himself if he didn’t like the way Sirius was doing things, and suddenly Remus saw how ungrateful he was being and knew viscerally that he was walking on thin ice being the way he inherently was.

“That was so mean,” Remus said weakly, reaching to keep Sirius close in case he was about to lose him. “I know you’ve done everything you can to help me and I still keep throwing it back at you like it’s not good enough. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

Sirius moved suddenly, picking every item in between them up to stuff them aside before he reached and hoisted Remus closer with one stark pull, and the wall was gone. “Nothing’s wrong with you,” he said, the words muffled with his mouth pressed against the side of Remus’ head. “You’re allowed to be a grump right now.”

Remus hid his face in the crook of Sirius’ neck; exhausted, put-off, and embarrassed all in one, festering breath. Sirius waited a few beats before he leaned his head down to press a ‘grumble, grumble, grumble’ over Remus’ left ear, giving out a smirking laugh and Remus hid his face further, a pithy, pathetic little noise escaping him. 

“We’re not going to convince each other of anything tonight,” Sirius said, keeping Remus close. “I say we put this aside for right now and start with getting you out of this room. Nothing’s going to look promising from in here, I promise you.”

Remus shut his eyes against the fabric of Sirius’ shirt, hating the moments when Sirius was right about something that took a ton of sacrifice for Remus to rise up to. He didn't move for a moment, didn’t even budge, hating the idea of leaving Sirius’ bedroom more than he hated the fact that Sirius hit the problem right on the nail. He didn’t know a lot just then; how Sirius managed to be so weightless and full of hope, why it was so difficult for Remus to call on some or even a smidge of that for himself, why Sirius even kept on with someone who’d only drag him down and snuff out every bit of the light in him over time, and why Sirius hadn’t managed to see that yet and take off running in the opposite direction.

Sirius budged Remus’ head up with his shoulder. “Monsieur,” he said, switching to holding his hands at the sides of Remus’ neck. “There are pancakes coming with your name on them, and I don't think that's a bad trade for coming out of the tunnels.” 

“I’m not hungry, Sirius,” Remus implored.

“I need you to get something in your stomach,” Sirius pressed. “For me, OK? That’s all I’m asking.” 

Remus frowned, training his gaze over Sirius’ left shoulder and toward the opposite wall. “One pancake and I’m filling up on liquids,” he conditioned. 

“One pancake, liquids, and you can’t come burrow in here once you’ve had them,” Sirius amended and Remus gave another deep frown. “I didn’t know how to cancel on Dora again, so she’s still coming in a little while.”

It took Remus a moment or two to remember Monday’s guitar lesson got an impromptu derailment. “That’s OK,” he said for a pardon, feeling further guilt well up in him on that front. “It’s your flat, you could have a thousand people over and I wouldn’t be able to say much on it.” 

“Well, good thing it’s only two people,” Sirius said. “Andromeda’s coming along so we can talk shop once the lesson’s over with.”

Remus nodded. “OK,” he said, going for mild while he’d just had a rather hands on lesson in the fact that the world kept spinning no matter what happened to him in it. “I can head out before they get here.” 

Sirius shook his head. “No, I don’t want you curling up over there either." 

“I stayed last night and a lot longer today than I’d planned to,” Remus explained. “Mestophales is going to need a refill for sure.” 

“I already stopped in at yours,” Sirius said. “That’s taken care of, all you have to do is leave this room."

Remus deflated in one swoop. “Sirius, I’m no good to anyone right now." 

“I want you here,” Sirius sent him, slowly, like each word were a sentence in themselves. "Besides, what’s Andromeda going to think when she finds out you snuck out of here before she got a chance to see you, hm?”

Remus gave Sirius a heavy look, positively certain that he’d never been more unlikable than he was behaving today. “I’m more irritable than I’ve probably ever been and I look like a fucking mess,” he said. 

“You look like you traded your hair for a feather duster, but I’ll be the first to admit that it looks in-cre-dible,” Sirius returned, giving Remus an OK symbol with both his hands. 

“I’m not going out there looking like a feather duster sprouted legs,” Remus sent him. 

“Well, give me a second, then,” Sirius returned, pushing his hands up through Remus’ locks to control the wild mess. 

When he was done, Sirius let out a similar breath to the one he’d given when Remus’ stitches had been properly changed over and pushed himself off of the bed. Remus shifted himself to the edge of the bed but remained there, feeling like a wet noodle while he watched Sirius stroll about the room depositing the items he’d brought into the room in various spots; the tissue with Remus’ older stitches in it was balled up before it was shot into the bin by the bed, the pack of new stitches went into the drawer, the face cloth got dunked into the clothes near the closet in the corner of the room, and Sirius’ pack got slipped into Sirius’ back left trouser pocket, each movement purposeful and easy in the same breath. 

Once his hands were free, Sirius stopped and stood at the side of the bed, simply eyeing Remus sitting there picking at his fingernails. Remus splayed his hands out flat in response, tacking on a shrug when he didn’t know how even to start looking as carefree as Sirius did or how to start articulating that. Sirius studied him for a long moment before he moved to crouch in front of him and crossed his arms over Remus’ thighs as he leaned up to press their foreheads together. Remus shut his eyes for the gesture first and the closeness second, fighting the sting behind them.

Sirius hummed a tune a few beats later, a few moments of silence hummed a tune that took a few moments to pin down with Remus’ heavy head in the mix. He opened his eyes once he had placed it and breathed out through his nose, knowing full well that he was getting treated to one of the sneakiest tactics that Sirius had at his disposal, and knowing just as well that the tactic would work on him.

Sirius switched out of his quiet humming mid-line. “…_every little thing is gonna be alright_,” he singsonged quietly.

Remus lifted his arms and gave Sirius the best squeeze he had in him, lifting his head enough to press his lips against Sirius’ forehead. Sirius stayed still long enough for the gesture to land, but wiggled free a few seconds later, and though Remus expected to see a smile of the smug nature, Sirius’ expression twisted up into a humbled one that Remus only got to see on occasion. 

“Come on, we’re nearly there now,” Sirius prompted, pushing himself to his feet and turning for the dresser. 

Remus watched Sirius fish around in the top drawer until he lobbed a t-shirt toward him, and Remus’ reflexes were a little sluggish but he managed to catch the shirt before it could land on his head. Remus unfolded the shirt in his lap and looked over it, the corners of his mouth lifting as he took in the Def Leppard logo on it. 

“Why’s it always this one?” 

“How’s it my fault you wear it like it was made for you specifically?” Sirius sent him, digging around in the second drawer for bottoms for Remus to wear. 

Remus switched out of his sleep shirt, replaced it with the frayed tee, and pushed himself to make the effort to leave the bed if Sirius was doing so much of the work for him already; the least he could do was stand up and put some clothes on. He wandered over to Sirius, accepting a new set of briefs before chucking his old ones in the hamper. He hoisted the new ones up his legs and over his hips, automatically reaching to grab the trousers Sirius was holding out to him, but Sirius held onto him, his eyes trained directly at Remus’ left hip. 

Remus quickly looked down, turning his hip in to inspect it, and found that a monumental bruise had blossomed on the side of his hip overnight, spider webbing out toward the back of his thigh. He reached down to inspect it further, assuming he hit the ground hard enough to create one so vibrantly purple, but he found it strange that he’d spent upwards of fourteen hours laying on that side without even a twinge to suggest it was even there. 

“It looks worse than it is,” Remus said, taking his new pair of trousers out of Sirius’ hands. 

“Like fuck it does, Remus,” Sirius returned.

“I didn’t even know it was there,” Remus insisted, wrangling his legs into the leg holes. “I lay on that side for ages and nothing, I don't feel it at all.” 

“I don’t care if you do or don't," Sirius said. "He still fucking maimed you." 

Remus gave an imploring sigh, tugging his trousers up over his hips. “Please don’t make this a thing, Sirius."

“I’m not the one who made it one,” Sirius defended. 

Remus zipped up and moved past Sirius for the door, wanting nothing to do with that facet of last evenings events. Pure, unaltered avoidance got Remus through the first leg of the flat, but he heard clinks and clanks further on in the kitchen and got cold feet halfway through the living room. He got himself around behind Sirius, pushing his hands against his back to illustrate that he be the first to step in that kitchen, and thankfully Sirius didn’t call him out for being a wuss; taking on the final leg of the flat while keeping a hand on Remus’ wrist so he couldn’t break free and run off. 

Sirius led him into the kitchen and there Remus had to admit that walking into any room to find James wielding a spatula at the stove with his Christmas apron on and Tango perched right up beside him for any chance at scraps of food would have raised his spirits at least a little bit. 

“There he is,” James hooted, waving the spatula around in the air a little in celebration. 

Remus followed Sirius to the sink, feeling a touch placated. “You _are_ making pancakes,” he said, evenly enough, he thought. 

“Seemed fitting for a famjam,” James said, evidently pushing for levity as he turned back to the stove to scoop out some more batter out of a large pink bowl into the frying pan. 

Remus followed Sirius to the sink and rinsed his hands off once he was finished with the faucet. Sirius went and used his jeans for a hand towel and headed for his spot at the table, slipping in his cigarette pack out of his back pocket before settling in his chair and pulling his legs up to sit crossed-legged in it. Remus dried his own hands off on the tea towel hanging by the sink and moved to take the spot diagonal from Sirius, facing the windowsill that Sirius so liked to perch beside. 

He took a glance over the table that was already set, studying the mismatched plates and forks, the syrup holder shaped like a serpent, the pitcher of juice nearby it — even placemats had been set. Remus reworked his mouth around a smile, finding all of the effort put in to a makeshift sit-down meal pulling on a string in his chest. He swivelled around in his seat until his left thigh touched the back of his chair, reaching to poke James in the back while he stood at the stove. 

“Thanks, dad,” he said. 

James turned from the stove and gave Remus’ hair one hell of a ruffle with his free hand before he took his hand back right quickly, his gaze on Remus’ left brow. “That’s fucking gnarly,” he said. “I’m not crossing you in the streets.” 

Sirius snorted as he lit up. “Is what I’ve been saying,” he said, pausing to shoot a stream of smoke out in the vague direction of the open window. "He thinks it makes him look like a street rat who'll cut you if you look at him wrong, but is that such a bad thing?"

“Yeah, yeah,” Remus said, waving the both of them off. He waited a beat after James turned to face the stove again. “I’m really sorry about Ugly Pot.” 

“You’ve made me a whopping eight pounds poorer, you Goddamn hoodlum,” James tossed over his shoulder. 

Despite James’ vivacious version of a pardon, Remus still felt he owed him something. “I’m going to find you something to replace it,” he insisted. “The most hideous thing I can find.” 

“I anxiously await whatever you bring through that door,” James returned, giving the pancake on the pan a flip. 

The front door of James and Sirius’ flat had a reputation for one, being made of a thick and ancient hunk of wood, and two, loudly announcing when someone’s come in. It did the latter just then, sending an echo out through the flat and into the kitchen, where Sirius perked and leaned around James' frame to get a look at the time displayed on the stove. 

“They’re early,” he observed, reaching to stub his cigarette out quickly. 

“That’d be Pete,” James provided, transporting the pancake he was working on over to the stacker.

Remus curled his hands in his lap, looking from James to Sirius and back to James again. He knew he'd have to face Peter eventually, he just would have liked that to happen another day, another time. 

“He's mad," Sirius said of it. "Truly he's gone off the deep end if he thinks he can just waltz back in here like it's all good."

"Well, he would think he's allowed back here when I invited him for pancakes," James said, lifting the mixer bowl to scoop the last of the batter into the frying pan. 

Sirius reached for his lighter on the table and tossed it at James' back. "What part of ‘I don’t want him near anywhere near this place’ did you not hear?” he demanded. 

James swivelled back to face the two of them, pointing the spatula at Sirius. “The open door policy was your idea and he’s _sorry_,” he hissed at him, evidently aiming to keep his voice low as footsteps echoed through the flat. He looked away from Sirius to focus on Remus. “He’s really sorry, mate. It was instinct, you know?” 

Sirius scoffed loudly, Remus managed a vigorous nod before footsteps sounded as close as the bathroom, and James sent another pointed look Sirius’ way before swiveling back to the stove. Sirius reached to procure a spare lighter from off of the windowsill and re-lit his cigarette, taking a stark pull off of it that Remus hoped would lend a hand in calming him, and Remus ended up losing the battle with his nerves for the size of Peter’s eyes as he set foot into the tense room certainly didn’t do much for Remus’ already wilted stomach. 

“Yeah, you can cut that out right now,” Sirius said before anyone else managed to get anything out. "You're the one who wouldn't let this settle."

“Hey, hey guys?” James put in without turning around. “I’ve a boatload of pancakes for anyone who doesn’t use a tone from now on, how’s that sound?” 

Sirius shot a flat look to James’ back and turned to flick his cigarette in the tray on the windowsill. Remus quickly faced his placemat, attempting to look even the least bit comfortable, while Peter slipped tentatively into the empty spot to the right and diagonal from Remus. 

“Alright?” he asked, his hesitant eyes on Remus now.

Remus worked on giving him a smile. “Alright.”

“I’m sorry for—” Peter said, then gave up and decided that gesturing listlessly toward Remus said it for him. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.”

Remus shook his head, but Sirius spoke before he could. “That’s odd?” he said, sticking his chin in his free hand. “Something about walking into my living room to find you tackling him really had me thinking you had such a handle on the situation.” 

“I’m sorry, OK,” Peter expelled, to the room at first, but he turned his dinner-plate sized eyes back on Remus. 

He shook his head and spoke before he could lose his opportunity. “It’s fine, I’m just as,” he said. “More, even.”

“We’re all sorry,” James chimed in. "Ain't life grand."

The room sat still with that for a few lagged seconds, and though there was still a great discomfort about him, Peter appeared somewhat pardoned, at least until Sirius pointed his cigarette at him. ”Don’t think that means you’re off the hook,” he said. “His first word was sorry, it’s just real convenient for you this time.”

“What was I supposed to do, then?” Peter retorted. “Let him cave his head in?” 

“I would really rather talk about anything else,” Remus stuck in, but Sirius already shot himself forward in his seat.

“I’ll tell you what you’re supposed to do,” he barked at Peter. “You take whatever’s in his hands out of it, that’s it; you don’t knock him down and put him in a fucking police hold—”

“_Oi_” James called out. “I made fucking pancakes—” 

“I _tried_ to get it out of his hands,” Peter said, flying a hand Remus’ way. “He kept going for it and he is way stronger than he looks, I could barely hold him down—” 

“Well, when you trap him of course he’s going to fight it,” Sirius snapped.

“Anything else,” Remus said, raising his voice to cut between the two of them. 

James turned up at the corner of the table between Sirius and Remus and leaned over to plunk the plate of pancakes down in the center of it. “None of these are for you,” he hissed at Sirius. 

“Oh, honestly,” Sirius dragged out. 

“I warned you,” James said, pointing to the far side of the room. “Go sit over there.” 

Sirius gave a whopper of an eye roll while he plucked up the ashtray off of the windowsill and moved over to the armchair by the washer-drier hybrid in the corner. “When does my time out end?” he inquired as he sat himself back in the plush, green armchair that had no business being in the room at all, his head on a tilt.

“Quit mouthing off and we’ll see,” James returned, taking Sirius’ window spot. “Have at it, boys.”

Peter quickly reached over and forked one onto his plate, James went and helped himself to two off of the stack in turn, and Remus merely sat still save for his hands curling his hands in his lap. He stole a side-glance at Sirius and in the time that it took him to look his way Sirius had made himself appear quite royal; his right leg crossed over the other and his right elbow propped up on the arm of the armchair while he held onto his cigarette as if it were burning inside a bejeweled holder, and despite all of the grievances within Remus, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of amusement over the way Sirius behaved after a banishment. 

Sirius met his gaze while Remus was looking his way, held it for a moment, and nodded toward the table. Remus faced his plate and the tall stacker at the center of the table, held back a frown, and reached to fork one of the smaller pancakes onto his own plate. He picked up his knife and fork and took to cutting it up into smaller pieces in hopes that would help make the process of getting it down easier, but he felt a pair of eyes staring him down. He glanced down on his left where Tango had seated himself and he had to admit it was difficult to fight the urge to refrain from feeding him a piece.

James looked to him and read his internal struggle quite easily, setting his fork down and lifting out of his seat to cross to the kitchen counter. “Might want to cut it up first,” Remus suggested, pouring a bit of syrup on the side of his plate. 

“Watching him devour one whole would be a treat, though,” James said, moving back to the table with a plate in hand. He divided the pancake into makeshift squares before he gave a quick glance at the table. “Do we think he’s a fan of generic syrup or would he be more of a purist?” 

“Couldn’t hurt to give him a dollop and find out,” Peter said. 

“Hey Pete,” Sirius piped up, “how’s your uncle been?” 

Peter dropped his fork to take bits of his hair into his hands. “For fuck’s sake, Sirius,” he sighed. 

Remus looked around quickly; to Peter looking as if the world caved in on him quite suddenly, to James take his lower lip into his mouth to stifle a wan laugh as he stuck the plate down on the floor, and then over to Sirius in the corner, smiling brightly. 

“His uncle’s completely shredded,” he offered Remus’ quizzical gaze. 

“No, he isn’t,” Peter denied.

James chose to put a flat cough out right about there, straightening up in his seat. “Yes,” he put in, “yes, he is, Pete.” 

“Well, I don’t like any of this,” Remus said, pushing bits of pancake around on his plate. 

“Thank you,” Peter said, flying a hand his way. 

“Why haven’t I seen your fit uncle yet?” Remus asked, sticking his fork into a bit of pancake and tilting his head at him. 

Peter dragged a hand over his face. “You’re getting me back, I get that, but this isn’t the way to do it,” he said. 

Remus’ smile dropped off. “I’m not, Pete,” he said. “I’m just kidding.” 

“Sky blue, sea green, Remus isn’t anywhere near as livid as he should be,” Sirius sent over sweetly. “It’s really not that difficult to figure out these sort of constants, Peter; they’re just facts of life.” 

“And you’re plan was to give me hell for the both of you, that it?” Peter snapped.

Remus averted his gaze back to his plate while James pushed himself out of his seat and reached across the table to take Peter’s. “What did I say?” he asked a sputtering Peter. “No— _no_; you can have it back when you’ve fixed that tone.” 

“Tell him to fix his, then,” Peter sent him. 

James pointed to Sirius as he brought Peter’s plate to the counter. “You, too,” he said. “As fit as his uncle is, you’ve earned yourself five more minutes over there.” 

Sirius shrugged openly as he stubbed the end of his cigarette out. “Can you pull up a photo?” he asked. “Remus deserves to see him after the night he's had.” 

“Hold on a mo’,” James said, stepping back from the counter as he fished his mobile out of his pocket.

Peter stuck his head down on the table while Remus, trying for a bite of pancake, fought to get the bite down as he looked to James as he sat back down at the table. “You took a photo of him?” he asked when he could. 

“Oh, relax, he came to graduation,” James returned, scrolling through his mobile. “Aha — here we are.” 

Remus had a look at the man standing beside Peter and Mrs Pettigrew. “I’m sorry, Pete,” he said, biting the right side of his lip. “I’ve never seen someone embody ‘beach hunk’ quite like this before.” 

Sirius’ bark drowned out Peter’s groan. “Hasn’t aged a day either,” he tacked on. 

“Good for him,” Remus said, trying for another bit of pancake. 

“I regret coming here,” Peter put out there. 

“Feel free to head out anytime you like,” Sirius offered. 

Remus looked to James in a near panic, desperate to get the conversation away from snipes. “How was the rest of your trip?” he asked, desperate to get the conversation away from snipes. 

Thankfully James looked positively thrilled about that decision. “Good in the sense that I did not become a murderer,” he offered commonly, “bad in the sense that Petunia and Vernon stuck around there like a swarm of bees.” 

“That neck vein of his still violently prominent?” Sirius asked. 

James raised his glass to him. “As ever.” 

“He turn purple at any point?” Peter asked. 

“Only daily,” James chimed. “I’m willing to admit I egged it on toward the end, but I just couldn’t help myself.” 

“You’re forgiven,” Remus pardoned, trying for another piece that would make him three down, two to go. 

“Watching Lily take him on was a treat,” James added. “Nothing quite like seeing her rapid-fire cold hard facts at a man who resembles a dying walrus he’s getting told off.” 

Remus smiled around the sip of juice he’d gone for, quite endeared by the image passed onto him. James lifted his own glass, but plunked it back down on the table in favour of trumpeting a celebratory noise through his closed fist. “Boys, I’ve news,” he declared. 

Remus coughed out a laugh, setting his juice down before he could fumble and perhaps upend the whole glass in the process. “Well, it’d better be astounding after such a lovely tune,” he said.

Sirius’ rolling laugh sounded from the other end of the room. “Fuck off and listen?” James commanded. “I’m going to marry her.” 

“Right,” Remus said, going for his fourth bite. 

“We,” Peter started, “know.” 

Sirius leaned forward in his chair and pounded his fist into the small table in front of it. “Where’s the fucking news, boy?” he chanted. 

“This _is_ the news,” James sent him, turning half-way in his seat to see Sirius properly. “I’m doing it, I’m proposing.” 

The three of them spoke at once. “OK, I got none of that,” James said with a smirk on. 

There was a quick flash of movement before James was yanked up half out of his seat and straight into a headlock by the force of a rogue Sirius. “_Oi_—” 

Sirius spoke over him, giving him a righteous noogie. “How long have you been holding onto that?”

“Would you settle down?” James heaved out amidst his manhandling. “The epiphany’s a few days old.”

James flailed wildly in an attempt to escape his captivity, but both Peter and Remus reached over to add their own hands into the mix, each of them giving his hair a good ruffle, and James took to slumping in defeat as he kept on. “I was doing the dishes with her mum and I kept hearing Lily in the den zinging Vernon left and right, and I just knew that I want that fire around me until my time here is up,” he detailed. “And then I just told her mum, I said, ‘I want to marry your daughter,’ and yes, one could say that I blurted it, but as far as I’m concerned I’m glad to have done it because she’s it, boys. She’s the one.” 

Remus beamed, taking his hand back, his mood shooting up to a hundred in a mere instant. Of course, that was before Sirius let go of James’s head in favour of punctuating the bearing of his soul by blowing a loud fart noise into the palm of his right hand, and then Remus' spirits went into unimaginable percentiles. 

“Fuck off, all of you,” James ordered, over the three of them in stitches. “You know, from these two I’d expect this kind of tomfoolery, but you, Remus? You’re supposed to be the whimsy, sophisticated one of us; set an example.”

The grin dropped off Remus’s face and was replaced with an attempt at a placid expression. “It was well-timed,” he defended, calling for some understanding from the other man. “Beautiful words, mind; love your words, James. Always have.”

“Never lets up about your words, in fact,” Sirius tacked on from behind James, perching his chin atop his head.

“Kindly stick your head in a ceiling fan?” James asked of him.

Remus tutted. “Not very whimsy, James," he said, lifting the last bite of pancake into his mouth and calling himself a victor. 

“Her mum was beside herself with joy, of course,” James went on breezily. “Loves me dearly, you know how it is, so all that was left was asking her dad--”

Sirius gave a snort before letting go of James in favour of giving a curtsy. “Travelled back a century, did you?” 

Remus smirked. “Hope you remembered to pack your petticoat.”

“I’ll rue the day I ever supported this,” James lamented, pointing between Sirius and Remus. “I had reason to ask; he's a bit old-fashioned and if I’m made to stay in the guest room when I’m there then I figured my best bet was a brandy and firechat, and I’ll have you know that the gesture was appreciated and I’m back in his good books, thanks much.” 

Remus frowned. “Were you out of his good books before this?” he asked. 

James lifted both his hands evenly. “Yes, well," he started before pausing to clear his throat. “He may have overheard my version of the Christmas Song when we were over there this year.”

Remus tried to keep his grimace light. “Well, no wonder," Peter said. "That one’s a bit much even for your regular-fashioned." 

“All water under the bridge now,” James deemed it with a sweeping gesture with a hand.

Remus gave in to a grin. “Very good work, James.”

“When are you doing it?” Peter asked. 

James straightened up in his seat, visibly appreciating the question. “I was going to wait until her birthday, but January’s forever away and I can’t wait that long with all of this burning up inside me, come now,” he gave with a small shake of his head. “October seems the right, though: three years, drop ring on the table, blow her mind.”

“Better yet; _Lily, go long_,” Sirius recited, miming pitching the ring across the room, and James burst out a laugh.

“See, without him you’d never know what not to do,” Remus raised.

“I knew there was a reason I’ve kept you around,” James said before a bite of pancake.

Behind James, Sirius gave a single resounding clap that Remus should have seen coming but jolted him at all the same. Sirius moved around the table with a skip to his step, headed for the cupboards above the sink, and flung them open. “Remus,” he said, on the tips of his toes as he fished around in the left side of the cabinet. “An occasion of this magnitude calls for a drink and the good china, be a dear?”

Remus smirked and pushed to stand, turning for the cupboard above the stove. “Classiest thing you’ve got is a goblet with a gigantic tortoise on the front, but OK.”

“Ah, bring him down, my boy,” James observed with a lofty air. “It’s been too long.” 

Remus did, along with two other, mismatched glasses for the other three to have at it, and brought them over to the table. Sirius plunked the both the Malibu and Schnapps down on the table and went for the fridge. He stood at it with the door open, looking around in it before pulling out the carton of the standard tropical fusion that was reserved for celebrations specifically. 

“Love— love is a many splendid thing,” he gave out as he shut the fridge door and draping himself over the face of it. “Love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love.”

“Please don’t start that again,” Peter put in.

“_All you need is love_.”

“A girl’s got to eat,” James put in. 

“_All you need is love_.”

“She’ll end up on the street,” Remus implored. 

“_All you need is l-o-o-o-ove_.”__

_ _“Love is just a game,” the room echoed._ _

_ _Sirius shot back to the table with his energy on high, leading the troupe, and Remus’s phone began to ring on the table right about the time things got loud, and it was honestly quite lucky he managed to hear the thing at all, but the moment he saw Lily’s name lit up on display the act of seeming natural was suddenly the most important task in the world to accomplish. _ _

_ _Remus ditched out of the room. “Hallo,” he greeted, heading down the hall. “Sorry, bit loud in there.” _ _

_ _“Are you having a screening?” Lily asked. _ _

_ _“Oh, no, this was all Sirius,” Remus provided. _ _

_ _“Ah, mhm,” Lily returned mildly. _ _

_ _“Did you have a good time?” Remus asked with a very, very wide grin that he was glad she couldn’t see just then, heading through the living room toward the front hall._ _

_ _“Yes, yes, great time,” she replied. “Course, now vacation mode has come to a grinding halt and I’m stuck with this list of a thousand and one things to do, but that’s what you get for taking time off, isn’t it?”_ _

_ _“I sure hope not,” Remus said, pushing Sirius’ bedroom door open, “otherwise I’ve got a lot coming to me come August.”_ _

_ _Lily let out a quick laugh. “You’d have a list whether you took a vacation or not.”_ _

_ _“Alright, just call me out, then,” Remus said, smirking as he took a seat on the end of Sirius’ bed. “Have you been into work today or are you just getting a general thousand and one things done?” _ _

_ _“Bit of column a, bit of b. I stopped in for a while and took care of a few things, but I’m in bright and early tomorrow so I’ll be dealing with the rest of that pile soon enough,” Lily said. “Which reminds me, your performance review is tomorrow, so I’m thinking at about three once we’ve got the floor coverage, I’ll nab you for a little while and we’ll get that taken care of.” _ _

_ _Remus blinked. “Can’t wait for that.”_ _

_ _“OK, but,” Lily returned, “there's nothing I can do; Rosmerta’s expecting it and I should have got it done before I left, but I was bad. I was very bad, and we need to just get it done and we can grumble about it afterward.”_ _

_ _“It's fine, Lily,” Remus waved her off, waving his free hand way more than he needed to in a room with no one else in it. _ _

_ _“Did you hit the pipe right before you answered?" she asked. "You sounded a little, err, hoarse, we'll call it.”_ _

_ _Remus dropped his gaze to the floorboards between his feet, knowing the state of his vocal chords had about zero to do with his pipe. “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. _ _

_ _There was a beat of silence before Lily spoke. “‘Course,” she said. “Why, what's up?”_ _

_ _“They've started up again,” he said._ _

_ _“Singing?” Lily asked. “Nothing new there, my friend.”_ _

_ _“No, the clusters have,” Remus clarified. “I’ve had two this week.” _ _

_ _‘_Remus_,’ Lily sent back to him. “Wh— you let me go on about _performance reviews_? Are you OK?” _ _

_ _“I’m OK,” Remus insisted. “Only you would have probably heard all about it since James and Peter have been brought up to speed, and I didn’t want you to find out that way.”_ _

_ _“What happened?” Lily asked, sounding closer to the phone now. _ _

_ _Remus hesitated, but settled for lying on his back, moving his free hand up to the back of his neck. “We caught a film Monday and that one came on while we were heading back from it, and I had another one last night, so I don’t even get to claim the first one was a fluke.”_ _

_ _Lily gave a sigh through her nose. "I hate this for you," she said solemnly. "I don't know, maybe it wasn’t very clever of me but by April it’d been long enough that I really thought that might have been the end of it."_ _

_ _Remus gave a slow nod, relating all too well to that point in particular. “It looks as if I could have been in a remission period for this last while,” he said, finding the cotton coating his head and the glaze over his eyes helped relay their findings in a measured manner. “There are lots of cases like it; periods where they’re scarce to fully gone and then they come around again like the turn of a year, some periods are longer than others, some shorter— there’s a ton of factors that honestly just make my head explode just trying to sort them all out; it’s guesswork at this point, we don't know what my patterns are for certain yet.” _ _

_ _“Have you been in to see someone?” she said, quieter now. _ _

_ _Remus let out a loaded sigh at the question. “Not yet,” he said. “That part hasn't been easy either. These aren’t commonplace, a lot of information is spread by the people who’ve got them rather than professionals, and often people get run around in circles before they get anywhere.”_ _

_ _“How is that even possible?” Lily tossed out. _ _

_ _She let out a tight sigh and Remus frowned, knowing that sound as if he’d given it himself. “Sirius got me in with a specialist, though,” he said, pushing for a bright spot. “It’s not for a while yet but she’s worked with cases like mine before, so I’ll be on the mend soon.”_ _

_ _“Are you sure you’re up for tomorrow?" she asked. "We could postpone, I could find someone to cover you.”_ _

_ _“No,” Remus said, shaking his head. “I'm fine for it.”_ _

_ _“Remus, I’m not boss-Lily right now,” she insisted. “She skipped town a while ago.” _ _

_ _Remus swallowed, not really seeing a notable difference where this was concerned. “We still have to think about it like you’re my boss, even if we might not want to,” he said._ _

_ _“Tell me if you need a day,” Lily kept at it. “I’ll pass it onto your boss and she can suck it up.”_ _

_ _Remus shook his head again. “I already had a day, I slept for most of it,” he insisted. Slept, worried, read; slept and worried and read._ _

_ _“OK,” Lily conceded, speaking concisely, “but if you change your mind...”_ _

_ _Remus shut his eyes, his eyebrows knitting together. “I’m going to come in,” he said after a tight moment. He breathed out his nose slowly, working to keep his voice light, perhaps infuse a little bit of Sirius into the mix. “It’ll be OK. Chin up, light at the end of the tunnel and such.”_ _

_ _He didn't hear anything for a moment or two. “You're right, yes,” Lily said, then Remus heard a long sigh from her end. “If you’re sure about coming in, would you come a little earlier? I want to see you for a bit before you have to start.”_ _

_ _“Yeah, I could,” Remus nodded, already brightened by the prospect._ _

_ _“Good. Give Sirius my love,” she forwarded. “And anyone else who’s there.” _ _

_ _“I will.”_ _

_ _“I’ll see you tomorrow.”_ _

_ _“Have a good one.” _ _

_ _Remus ended the call, gave out a heavy breath, and dropped his mobile on the bed beside him. More so even, he wanted to rekindle the genuine happiness he’d felt in the kitchen, not the faux kind he’d held up for Lily’s benefit. He could still hear boisterous voices from that end of the flat, though the singing seemed to have concluded, and the longer he lay there the more he got the sense that if he hung back for too long Sirius would come looking for him whether Remus had managed to call on the energy he needed or not. __

_ __ _

_ _

_ __ _

__Remus took a deep breath in and let it out, lifted himself off of the mattress, and made his way out into the hall. He heard a slight commotion out in the lobby and paused in Sirius’ bedroom doorway, hearing footsteps bound closer to the front door. It was flung open not a beat later and Dora headed on in with her guitar case slung over her shoulders like a backpack, flanked by her mother who was holding onto a bottle of wine as she entered the flat._ _

_ _Remus waved at her brightly and Dora barreled into him, her arms squeezing him at his middle as Andromeda hung back, shucking her shoes off on the doormat. Remus blocked the neck of the guitar case just before it could connect with his chin and folded down to give her as much of a squeeze as his height would allow. _ _

_ _“How’ve you been?” he asked. _ _

_ _Dora bounced on the balls of her feet. “Good,” she gave him, moving back to stare up at him. _ _

_ _“I hear school’s almost out,” he mentioned. _ _

_ _“Not soon enough,” Dora returned. _ _

_ _Andromeda cleared her throat pointedly at that and Remus smirked at her over top of Dora’s guitar case, though his smile grew multitudes as Andromeda came in for a bear hug. _ _

_ _“Where have you _been_?” she asked. _ _

_ _“Finals took me hostage,” Remus said of it. _ _

_ _“Not good enough, you’ve been out for how long?”_ _

_ _“Work’s taken me from there.” _ _

_ _“Still not good enough.” _ _

_ _A bark and the scamper of nails on the wood floor sounded out, bringing both house guests to look up and toward the living room. Remus reached over and nudged Dora’s left shoulder. “There’s a surprise coming."_ _

_ _Dora’s eyes widened before she took off down the hall, heading into the living room to meet the surprise half-way. “He didn’t,” Andromeda said against him. _ _

_ _“He did,” Remus said. _ _

_ _Andromeda pulled back from their hug with an appraised sigh, but her expression rearranged drastically when she looked at him. “Shit,” she said, reaching up to hover her right thumb over Remus’ left brow, taking a closer look at the stitches. “What happened here?” _ _

_ _Remus thought that given the choice between the real answer that would likely open up a thousand questions and a fib, the latter had the better outcome. “Turns out I can’t fit through all doorways,” he said. “It looks worse than it is.” _ _

_ _“Jesus,” Andromeda said, blinking. “I get it, busy body to go with the busy mind, but no more of that; you’re to slow down once in a while.” _ _

_ _“I’ll do my best,” Remus said, tipping his head to her with a smile. Andromeda lifted the bottle in her left hand and waggled it and Remus’ smile went a little tight. “Not a good night for me to, but the others have a glass going already so don’t let me hold you back.” _ _

_ _“Alright, I won’t,” Andromeda said easily. “Stay here, let me grab a glass, and then you’re all mine.”_ _

_ _Remus smiled and gave a nod, turning to head back into Sirius’ room while Andromeda headed off down the hall. He made for the love seat on the other end of the double room Sirius won himself, breathed in and out in the time he had for himself, and Andromeda was back a short time later with a glass of wine in her left hand, a glass of water in her right, and Tango at her heels. _ _

_ _“He bought a horse?” she near-shouted, claiming the spot beside him on the love seat. _ _

_ _Remus huffed a laugh. “He’s still growing, too,” he said. “He’s going to reach my waist eventually.”_ _

_ _"Ouf," she said. Remus watched her holding the two glasses in either hand while she watched Tango clamber back and forth between the two of them in search for pats. “Your husband sent this along, but I’m afraid I’ll spill,” she said, nodding her head toward the water glass. _ _

_ _Remus took hold of it and drank from it, feeling his entire face flush. “How are you faring?” he asked, dancing right on from that. “Good job on nabbing that building, by the way.”_ _

_ _Andromeda swallowed her first sip of wine and nodded vigorously. “Did you go check it out?” she asked, reaching to give Tango the pats he was vying for._ _

_ _“Sirius brought me by it a few days ago,” Remus said. “Such a good spot for it.” _ _

_ _Andromeda beamed, settling in comfortably. “‘Course now comes the work that needs to get done inside,” she said. “We’re lucky that most of the interior’s going to work for us otherwise this could take so much longer, but neither of us see much of a point in fixing what’s not broken."_ _

_ _"That's a fair point," Remus said. _ _

_ _"Once you see inside, you’ll see what I mean," Andromeda said. "We’re not touching the ceiling and you’ll thank us for it, the bar’s pretty much ready to go, and the stage just needs a little bit of work, but apart from that it’s mostly getting the right sort of decor for the feel that we’re going for.” _ _

_ _“So, the fun part,” Remus translated, going for another sip of water._ _

_ _“I can’t wait,” Andromeda said, going for a sip of wine before she perked up and reached over and hit Remus’ knee with her free hand. “We’ve a deal going with Soho radio, did he tell you?”_ _

_ _Remus smiled. “He did, but tell me anyway,” he requested. _ _

_ _“Good, so just when I thought it couldn’t get better, turns out it can,” she said. “They want to use the venue for shows down the line, we let them use our venue, and in turn they sponsor the shows, get the word out about the place _for us_,” she said. _ _

_ _“Word of mouth and networking can do a lot, but this is even better," Remus said. _ _

_ _"If Ted hadn’t given us a good ref we wouldn’t have had a shot at it, but it’s on," Andromeda said. "I keep thinking I’m going to realize that I’ve hallucinated the entire thing.” _ _

_ _“You didn’t, it’s happening,” Remus returned. _ _

_ _Andromeda beamed and curled her legs under herself. “Shit, it’s stressful, exciting, I haven’t had known sleep in over a month and I’m not going to get one for who knows how long,” she detailed. _ _

_ _“At the very least you’ll be used to long nights before the place even opens up?” Remus raised. _ _

_ _“With Sirius around I might actually get a night off now and again,” she said, reaching to knock on the wooden arm of the love seat. _ _

_ _Remus' smile got a bit schmoozy, he could feel it even if he couldn’t see himself doing it. “He’s so excited about it,” he said. _ _

_ _“I have never had someone say yes to one of my ideas so quickly before,” Andromeda laughed. “It’s good, though, I think it’ll work. This sort of thing is right up his alley.” _ _

_ _Remus found himself inclined to agree. “And your tip jar will be full if you’ve got him manning the bar, so you might think about doing that,” he suggested. _ _

_ _Andromeda snorted. “He’ll be right up front,” she insisted. “OK, enough about me — you, how was the trip? Did the Parisian landscape live up to expectations?” _ _

_ _“And then some,” Remus insisted. “We packed a hell of a lot into two days, I’ll tell you. My only regret is my foolish mistake of letting Sirius in on the stark appreciation for the French language because, Sirius ribbed me so hard for it while we were there.”_ _

_ _Andromeda’s lips quirked. “By stark appreciation, you mean—”_ _

_ _“_Stark appreciation_,” Remus insisted. “I can't help it; it's the hottest language out there and it was a rookie move, telling him, because every now and again while we were there, usually right when I was least expecting it, he’d turn to me after we’d spoken to some city folk and say ‘_bonér_?’” _ _

_ _Remus paused with a loaded grin on asAndromeda threw her head back in a laugh. “Sometimes he wouldn’t even let them out of earshot before asking,” he added to it. “Imagine those poor, innocent folks going about their day, and all of a sudden a pair of rogue tourists come gallivanting over their cobblestones, causing mayhem wherever they go. They didn't ask for us.” _ _

_ _“OK, but you're not even close the worst they’ve seen, I’ll tell you that now,” Andromeda said. “And this is a prime example of why you two are my favourite.”_ _

_ _Remus smirked around a sip of water. “Frankly I’m a little worried for you if that’s your reason for it.” _ _

_ __Dirty Paws_ as performed by Dora ft Sirius began and floated down the hall and over into Sirius’ room, making the two of them pause and look over to the open doorway. _ _

_ _Remus listened without comment for a little longer, but he lost his resolve a few notes into the first verse. “I can’t believe how well she’s done,” he offered, then paused, tilting his head. “No, I can, but after a few months? I wouldn’t be able to form a chord, and look at her.”_ _

_ _Andromeda sent him an easy smile around another sip of wine. “She never stops practicing,” she said, then curled her right eyebrow more so than her left. “I mean that. I had to talk her down from it because Ted caught her speeding through her homework just to get more playing time in.” _ _

_ _Remus smirked a laugh. “It’s doing her some good, even if the focus is a bit unequal,” he said. “Sirius will have a bundle of songs ready early on in the week and waits to assign some of them for later because he’s come to expect her ringing him between lessons to get a few more because she’s gone and destroyed the others.”_ _

_ _“He’s been so good about it, I'll give him that,” Andromeda said. “Good for her, too.” _ _

_ _“Proud uncle, that one,” Remus said. “I’m sure he wanted to teach her as is, but I do get the sense that some of it was a ploy just to get to have her over once a week.”_ _

_ _Andromeda smirked behind her wine glass. “You and me both.” _ _

_ _Smiling, Remus zoned in on Sirius’ voice from the living room and got lost in the levity behind it for a few moments. Blinking back, he shifted to cross his right leg over his left, ran a few words around in his head before he faced Andromeda side-on and gave the words a try. _ _

_ _“Has he talked to you?” he asked. “About his mum, I mean. Or any of it.” _ _

_ _Andromeda swallowed the sip of wine she’d taken and gave something between a shrug and a shake of her head. “Not that that says much, mind,” she said. “We talked so much shit about the lot of them that it’s honestly a bit tired now.”_ _

_ _“Hm?” Remus probed._ _

_ _Andromeda gave a circumstantial nod. “After awhile you get to thinking that you’ve said all you’ve had to say and there isn’t much else to do but keep your sights trained forward,” she said, using her free hand in a forward salute. _ _

_ _Remus nodded, considering a slightly new take on the same sentiment he’d heard from Sirius, and perhaps that should have quelled him enough but he still ran his right thumbnail over the ridge of his forefinger. “I see the merit in that," he said carefully, "I just can’t decide if I’m doing him any good keeping in with that." _ _

_ _The moment he’d gone and said it, the moment he knew he shouldn’t have woven those words together like that, and Andromeda’s open reel was enough to confirm that. “You?” she repeated. _ _

_ _Remus shook his head. “That didn’t come out well,” he said. “Only I’m more than happy to be a soundboard for him and he knows that, but so far he hasn’t needed that from me and I don’t want to force him to get into all of it, but I also don’t want to pretend it never happened in case he does need me to be the one to kickstart it. What do you think, am I doing this the wrong way?” _ _

_ _Andromeda leaned her head on a tilt. “No,” she said, sounding surprised by the question. “I’ve no doubt that he’ll talk to you if he needs to.”_ _

_ _Remus took his lower lip into his mouth and gave a tilt of his own head. “It’s been so busy for the both of us that I'm not sure if he’s even stopped to consider whether he needs to talk about it or not,” he said. “And then, when we get the time where it’s just the two of us there’s other things or something's happening with me so his stuff gets pushed aside, or we end up all over each other and we’re not talking about his mum during that, are we? There’s a line.”_ _

_ _Andromeda snorted. “Sorry, I’m following you, I’m just really glad you’re still at it like rabbits.” _ _

_ _Remus gave a weak laugh, trying to keep the thread of his point intact. “I’m half the problem,” he said outright. “I’ll want to check if he’s OK because I think about it so much, but then it's as if I forget what I’m even doing, we’ll end up fused together, and all my rationale leaves, out the window, gone—” Remus fluttered his free hand out above their heads, then zoned in on the even dimmer light to the side of the room they were on, “—there’ve been a lot of casualties, too; we broke the lamp that went on the desk last week.” _ _

_ _Andromeda’s gaze followed Remus’ right forefinger toward the desk under the windowsill to the right and a little ahead of them, clicking her tongue in realization. “I knew something was off in here,” she said, blinking to survey the desk before she looked to him again. “What’d you do to it?” _ _

_ _“Well, we needed the desk so we shoved everything off of it and the lamp shattered in the process,” Remus supplied, passing a hand over his forehead to push his fringe back. He looked sidelong at Andromeda when he heard nothing else and found her staring over at him with a slightly agape smile. “See? That day we had a really quiet morning, there were plenty of moments where I could have just tried to facilitate some kind of conversation, but I didn’t. I wanted the morning for us, and the sex just happened, but that’s a problem, isn’t it? I’m not trying hard enough.” _ _

_ _Andromeda eyes widened before she reached up to clutch at her chest with her free hand. “You’re right, all that quality fucking’s nothing but bad news,” she sent him gravely, reminding Remus so starkly of Sirius that it blew his mind for a moment or two. _ _

_ _“I really think you know what I’m trying to say here?” Remus said, going out on a limb. _ _

_ _“Have you stopped to consider the fact that he’s just, really into you?” Andromeda countered. _ _

_ _Remus gave her a plain look. “I think there’s more to it than that."_ _

_ _“I think it’s got _something_ to do with that,” Andromeda said. “And, I’ve got to be honest, I’d rather have a quiet morning with Ted and fuck until one of our lamps broke than talk about my side of the family, so perhaps that’s another part of this puzzle?”_ _

_ _Remus chewed on the inside of his lower lip, feeling a little daft about bringing that point up with a rebuttal so frank as hers, but it wasn’t really about the sex, not really. There was more to it than that. _ _

_ _Remus worked on wording things a little better. “It’s not as if it’s a sudden spike -- would you relax?” he implored after Andromeda broke into a seal-clap. “It’s not that we can only fuck around and talking is off limits, it’s that when we talk it’s about everything and anything else— we’ve been having a lively debate over whether Rory should have taken her gap year or not, _that_ we’ve discussed extensively."_ _

_ _Andromeda didn't do so well at hiding her smile in a sip of her wine. “Who won that one?” she asked after a beat._ _

_ _“I didn’t say the debate was over,” Remus said. _ _

_ _“Is a quality debate your guys’ version of foreplay or something?” Andromeda asked, narrowing her eyes a little to read him better. _ _

_ _Remus sniffed airily, as if he had the right to cling to a bit of dignity at that point. “I’m not answering that,” he said, going for the dregs of his water glass. _ _

_ _“Well, that’s an answer in itself,” Andromeda concluded. “The lamp didn’t stand a chance.”_ _

_ _“There’s enough fire behind the both of us that this could go on for weeks," Remus relented. "We’ve charts, diagrams, pages of structured bullet points— the works.”_ _

_ _“I’m elated about this,” Andromeda said outright. _ _

_ _“Me, not so much,” Remus said. “Typically speaking, I’ve been able to count on Sirius being Team Lorelai until the end of time, but he’s gone and pulled a fast one on me with this particular topic, and I’m not about to relent any time soon.”_ _

_ _“I need to see this,” Andromeda demanded. _ _

_ _“Our data’s in a binder in the kitchen if you really want to reopen that box, but I’m warning you, the debate will pick up right where we left off,” Remus insisted. _ _

_ _"Oh, I'm going to," she returned. _ _

_ _Remus gave a relenting breath through his nose. “But see, this is where I get worried again,” he said, running his right thumb around the rim of his water glass. “He used to talk to me about this stuff, and not just because I’d asked; sometimes he’d just go and open up to me, and I don’t know where that went to.” _ _

_ _Andromeda rearranged her coy expression to one that was more thoughtful. “I’m not excusing the work he’s done to get himself here,” she started, “but let’s be honest about what he’s got. He’s has you, he’s got good mates -- and I mean, _great_ mates, he’s loaded, he’s got a new job on the rise, a new project to sink some of that excess money into; the kid’s got it good right now, and maybe that’s what he’s focusing on.” _ _

_ _Remus stared at the bottom of his glass, his breath leaving through his nose in a silent gust. “I know he’s got all of that, but what about when he’s alone?” he asked, chancing a look over at Andromeda and feeling a sense of relief in finding patience coming back his way. “I know I’ve a limited point of view because if I lost either of my parents I’d be a fucking mess. I know that it’s completely different for him, but I don’t think he knows what he’s supposed to be feeling in all of this either, and I want him to be himself with me.” _ _

_ _“He is being himself with you,” Andromeda said. She took a long breath in, let that out, and reached down with her free hand to pet Tango’s head absently. “OK, story time, are you ready?" _ _

_ _"Ready," Remus said openly._ _

_ _"I got out of mine the instant I turned eighteen and I didn’t have Dora for another three years, so while the house I lived in was my own circle of hell, I beat it past the worst that I'd have had coming to me and didn’t get half of the shit he had to live with," she said. "Back when I was still in it, I used to see him at family functions now and again but he was still a kid, you know? Spunky as all hell, but still a kid nonetheless, and once I was out I didn’t keep up with him; I was doing my own thing and I needed to separate myself from that world, but there he went, ringing me out of the blue years later and when we met up it was a absolute trip.” _ _

_ _Remus kept still save for a nod of his head, remained silent as a mouse so not to miss out on any more details he could get his hands on. “He went from this spunky kid to this self-assured, literal adult— as self-assured and adult as you can be at eighteen, but it was still mind-blowing to see him like that,” she said, a twist of a smile showing through there. “And every time we met up afterward, he was ten inches taller than the last time and you could see that from a mile away; nothing was holding him back anymore and I saw how that freedom looked on him like I’d seen it look on me— what Ted said he saw in me the more time passed. Sirius made the family he didn’t get to have, same as I did, and this last Christmas was the brightest I’ve ever seen him. I think that’s always going to be what he’d rather focus on, and kudos to him, right? He deserves it.” _ _

_ _Remus couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips, thinking of Sirius prancing about the flat in his festive apron, his hair pulled into a French braid a la Dora, and the widest smile Remus had seen on him yet; it wasn’t the first time Remus thought it and it wouldn’t be the last either, but Remus didn’t stand a chance against him that night. Remus gave out a breath littered with hope. He wasn’t certain that he’d come up with good enough words to follow Andromeda's, and after a moment or two decided he might not have needed to search for any. _ _

_ _“You’ve a lot to do with it,” Andromeda said, breaking the silence. _ _

_ _Remus was lucky that her gaze was set on the doorway in the far corner rather than on him so she didn’t have to see him nearly drop his water glass out of disarray. “I’ve never heard him talk about anyone like this,” she said, pausing for a sip of wine and glancing sidelong at him while she did it. “He stopped talking about blokes with me a while before you came along, mostly because I hated so many of them— there were some _garbage_ men along the way, alright, I had my reasons—" she tacked on, pointing at Remus who lifted his free hand, forwarding a tight smile her way, “—but let me tell you, the minute he brings you up in conversation, it’s countdown to when he gets to bring you up again, and if I didn’t love you so much I’d have told him to get a fucking grip by now.” _ _

_ _Remus felt torn between straightening his neck out in a bout of pride and shrinking it down out of sheepishness and ended up performing a short rendition of both before settling on a small smile. In the same way that he felt about Sirius & Co, he wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint where he’d done right in gaining Andromeda’s approval, but the humility that came with that fact was heavy enough to drown out some of the nerves that plagued him over the past few weeks. _ _

_ _“He will talk to you if he needs to, but in the meantime, would you try to enjoy this?” she asked, reaching over to jostle Remus’ left knee. “And take it from one of the elderly, you won’t always be raring to go and the snap of a finger, so you best take all of this free sex with a smile and a thank you.” _ _

_ _Remus shoulders shook as he broke into a quiet laugh at the mere idea of Andromeda classifying herself as an elderly woman at a fresh thirty-one, but raised his empty glass to her all the same. “I’ll do my best not to sneer at it,” he said. _ _

_ _“That’s the stuff,” Andromeda said before tapping the side of her wine glass with the nails on her right hand and pushed herself to her feet. “Tanks empty -- there’s a little Lorelai reference for you.” _ _

_ _“I caught that, thanks,” Remus said, lifting off of the love seat. “I’d keep any more of those to yourself because I wouldn’t put it past him to poll the room."_ _

_ _Andromeda headed for the door. “No, see, that’s what I want,” she said over her shoulder. _ _

_ _Remus looked down at Tango, patted his right hip, and headed out of Sirius’ room with the dog at his heels. He went down the hall toward the music, passing through the living room where Dora and Sirius sat on opposite ends of the couch playing out the last few lines of Tegan and Sara’s _Fix You Up_. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

_ _Andromeda headed on down the hall toward the kitchen without a hitch, but Remus only made it to the middle of the hall by the time the song ended and glanced back to see Sirius stretching long on his end of the couch, and that was where he couldn’t help doubling back a few steps. He stepped up behind Sirius, bent down enough to place a quick peck on his forehead as Sirius held his masterful stretch, and made to make a quick and easy retreat before Sirius’ left hand wrapped around Remus’ right wrist and kept him from making himself scarce too quickly. Sirius leaned his head back over the arm of the couch, aimed a bright smile up at Remus and gave Remus’ wrist a squeeze before he let him go. _ _

_ _Sirius repositioned his hands, his right on the fret board and his left hanging easily over the bulk of his guitar. “This one was strumming with her wrist again,” he enunciated, giving a nod toward Dora across the couch. _ _

_ _Dora let out a long sigh. “It’s too heavy to strum with my whole arm,” she returned, looking over at Remus then. “Tell him it’s fine.” _ _

_ _Remus gave her a circumstantial smile. “I would, but he knows this stuff a lot better than I do.” _ _

_ _Dora clicked her tongue. “He made you say that,” she said. “I’ve seen plenty of people play with their wrist, it’s not a big deal.” _ _

_ _“And they’ll all wake up with carpal tunnel one day, trust,” Sirius countered. “Kick that habit now while you still can.” _ _

_ _Remus had to force himself to turn away twice as hard as before, making it into the kitchen to find that Andromeda had dragged the outlandishly plush armchair from the corner far corner of the kitchen up to the table beside James, where the two of them and Peter sat pouring over the binder stuffed full of sheets dedicated Remus and Sirius’ cause. _ _

_ _Remus took the empty spot across the table from James and diagonal from Peter and Andromeda, crossing his arms over his chest. “You weren’t kidding,” Andromeda said, looking up at him. “This is fucking extensive.” _ _

_ _“How far did you guys get while we were gone?” James demanded. _ _

_ _“Just starting seven,” Remus said. “I got really invested and he fell right back in—” he gestured toward the binder, “—needless to say, really.” _ _

_ _The other three observed some more of their case for a good minute or so while Remus kept his word and filled up his glass with some more juice. He set the pitcher back down on the table, settled in again, and started when Andromeda busted out a frustrated noise. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she declared. “I’ve been riding the fence about this since it first aired and none of this is making it any easier to pick a side, there are so many cross points, I can’t handle this.” _ _

_ _Peter reached over and flicked one of the binders’ many dividers. “These are a nice touch,” he said, giving into a smirk and flicking his gaze over to Remus. “You’re doing, I take it?” _ _

_ _James snorted into his Party Punch. “Who else?” _ _

_ _“Somebody had to do it,” Remus defended. “At least now each and every one of the subsets of the overall argument are organized by category and much easier to locate, but it was complete madness at first.”_ _

_ _Dora popping up over the right arm of Andromeda's chair to have herself a look at the binder clued Remus into the fact that Sirius’ presence was an inevitability, and right as Remus turned his head to look toward the hall he spotted Sirius slipping right up behind his chair._ _

_ _“I see you’ve found the important stuff,” he said, leaning forward and sliding his arms out to rest on Remus’ shoulders. “If you flip to the last page, I’ve recently included a simple, but powerful ditty on the topic and I think it’s a game-changer.” _ _

_ _Andromeda’s face lit up anew as she processed that information and quickly flipped to the last page, snorting when she got there. “_She Needed Time_,” she recited. “Sheet music even?”_ _

_ _“I came to win, honey,” Sirius served her._ _

_ _“Can I learn this?” Dora asked. _ _

_ _“You sure can,” Sirius chimed, his crooked grin audible without Remus having to see it to know it was there. _ _

_ _Remus felt the need to interject right about then. “I’d really like to point out that in a fair and just world, ditties wouldn’t be counted into evidence,” he said. “And since I’m clearly not living in one, I motion that ditties should be filed under ‘flair,’ considering I haven’t a musical bone in my body to even attempt to write an apt response to it.” _ _

_ _“Absolutely no one here is stopping you from writing a devastating piece of slam poetry as a rebuttal,” Sirius sent him. “If anything, that’s a challenge I expect you to rise to, Professor Lupin.”_ _

_ _Remus bit back a laugh as James went ahead and took on the challenge, launching into a trial version of said piece, and it wasn’t very long before Andromeda and Pete began to interject where pacing and structure were concerned, and Remus slowly shifted his head to the left and tilted it back a bit, just enough to share a wan smile with Sirius over his shoulder; these were the type of mates you couldn’t find anywhere else. Unfortunately, Remus caught the time on the clock on the far wall and a clang of duty rang out inside of him, but he found himself fighting that call harder than anticipated. Much had shifted in and around him since he’d practically begged Sirius to let him head home early, and looking around at the warmth inside the kitchen then had him wanting to hold onto that warmth as long as he could._ _

_ _Remus reached up to clasp a hand on both of Sirius’ arms, turning a little in his seat to see him better. Sirius caught his gaze for what it was, shifted to Remus’ left, and moved to a knee so that their heads were more or less level. Remus dropped his voice a bit, hiding it behind the commotion and stanza building going on across the table from the two of them. “How much food did you give the cat earlier?” he asked. _ _

_ _“Literal tons,” Sirius replied, the right corner of his mouth quirking. _ _

_ _“Does that mean she’s good until tomorrow?” Remus reiterated._ _

_ _“Oh, believe me,” Sirius said, resting his right arm on Remus’ left thigh, “I hung out with her for a good while and I didn’t know when you’d feel up to leaving here, so I free-poured and hoped for the best.” _ _

_ _Remus felt a tug at the corners of his own lips. “I have to go in a little earlier than planned, but if I head to mine earlier in the morning then I can stay tonight,” he said, curling his hands around Sirius’ right wrist. _ _

_ _“Stay and I’ll deliver you right to your doorstep,” Sirius offered, dipping his head down to press a peck to Remus’ knuckles. “How early is early?” _ _

_ _“Not outlandish,” Remus insisted. “I start at the regular time, only I want to see Lily for a bit before I have to be on the floor and it’ll be a busy one with me training. She’s got my review slotted for the afternoon, too, so it’s going to be hard to get any time in with her unless I stop in beforehand.” _ _

_ _“Alright," Sirius relented. "So long as I don’t have to be up before ten." _ _

_ _“I’ll let you sleep right up until then,” Remus offered, thinking he owed Sirius about a thousand more things than just that. “Lily sends her love along, by the way.” _ _

_ _“Oh ho,” Sirius said airily before turning his head toward the table. “Hear that, James? The wedding’s off.” _ _

_ _James, still free-forming a slam piece, cut himself off mid-word and lobbed a fast one at Sirius. “_Bite your tongue_.” _ _

_ _“Lily sends her love to you too, Pete,” Remus relayed. _ _

_ _Peter clasped a hand over his heart as he sipped at his Party Punch, but the wistful sigh that followed came from Sirius. “It’ll be a modern marriage, see,” he said. “One for the ages.”_ _

_ _Andromeda looked between the lot of them. “Honestly, you’re all so married that I don’t even know if you're kidding or not," she gave bluntly. The four men at the table gave similar expressions before Andromeda fixed her eyes on James, who in turn gave her all of one sly raise of his left eyebrow before he earned himself a series of punches to his left arm. “When is it? _When_?”_ _

_ _“Alright, alright,” he tossed out, waving his glass in the air. “I’ve already been manhandled by the rest of these ruffians, thank you, and I can’t tell you yet since I’m waiting until our anniversary to ask her.”_ _

_ _“So somewhere between October and the year 2030 is a safe bet,” Peter translated. _ _

_ _“Save the date,” James finished. _ _

_ _“Can I come?” Dora piped up. _ _

_ _James whipped his head toward her, speaking past Andromeda. “If you’re not carrying flowers down that aisle I’ll have a word or three with your mother.” _ _

_ _Andromeda beamed before she gave one last good punch to James’ arm. “How is Lilybean?” she asked. “Gorgeous as ever, I bet.” _ _

_ _“She is, thank you,” James nodded, preening behind his glass. _ _

_ _Sirius pushed himself to stand, whisked his right hand through Remus’ hair easily, and pointed to Dora with his free hand. “Alright, you,” he said. “Break's over.”_ _

_ _“You wanted the break,” Dora returned, pushing off of the arm of the armchair. _ _

_ _“I had to weigh in, madame,” Sirius said, shooing her toward the hall. He swiveled back toward the rest of them just before the doorway to the hall and pointed to Andromeda. “After?” _ _

_ _Andromeda pointed back toward him and Sirius disappeared out of view, footsteps leading away from the room and down the hall. Remus pushed himself to stand, moved around the table to cross over to the other side of the kitchen, and pulled out some blank sheets of paper from a pack on the end table over there. He plucked a pen out of a jar full of wonky shaped ones and headed back to his spot, uncapping the pen and scooting his chair forward. _ _

_ _“Hand that over,” he requested, reaching out for the caseload that lay open in front of Andromeda. “I might as well jot down what you lot came up with if I’m to have any sort of chance at matching that ditty.” _ _

_ _“I can’t believe he’d do that, and yet, I can,” Peter said of it. “He’s _just_ that petty.” _ _

_ _“I’m far more livid that it wound up sounding as good as it does,” Remus returned, “but don’t tell him I said it.”_ _

_ _“It’s going to the grave,” Peter affirmed. _ _

_ _“Good man,” Remus said, uncapping his pen. “James, start me in.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realize this chapter is polarizing, but trust me when i say that it's intended for what occurs in this chapter to Feel sudden and strange because this *is* a sudden and strange occurrence for the boys as well. given that I once wrote blends and this is the companion to it, it's no secret that long-form storytelling is my jam, so I ask you to trust me when I say that the answers to your burning questions are dispersed all through this chapter and there are plenty more answers coming in the following chapters. i promise i didn't forget to give yall the info you need, it's just coming to you in a non-linear fashion bc i enjoy subverting expectations and exploring new ways to deliver a plot. so, hang in there and keep your eyes peeled because the answers are all there :)
> 
> consider this chapter and the next one a murder mystery, only the question isn't 'who dunnit' and more 'wtf happened to remus'


	4. 4.

Later that night, when Ted came to pick up his girls, James and Peter said their farewells to them in the kitchen while Sirius and Remus walked them to the door to see them off. 

Remus dolled out hugs to the both of them before he hung back a bit, giving Sirius the room to run at Dora and give her a tight enough hug that her feet hung a few inches off of the floor. With that importance out of the way, Andromeda sent Dora down the stairs ahead of her and paused before going through the door herself. 

“Ring me once you're out and about,” she said, her left hand on the doorknob and her right pointing at Sirius. 

Sirius nodded, scratching a spot on his left ankle with his right foot. “Won't be before noon, mind,” he said. 

Andromeda snorted. “In what lifetime would it be before then,” she returned, pulling the door shut behind her. 

In the new, relative quiet of the entryway, Remus tilted his head at Sirius with a smile on. “Big plans?” he asked. 

Sirius gave a hum that neither confirmed or denied the claim. “She wants to get a head start on decor, but it's mostly going to be window shopping,” he said. 

“A solid afternoon,” Remus called it, reaching his right hand up and pushing it through his hair. By the time he had his hand down again, Remus decided that though Sirius had done his best to tame the mop on his head, it might have been time to sort that out properly. “I think I might get a rinse in.” 

Sirius nodded again, though he gave a more pointed nod toward Remus' head. “Careful with that when you're in there,” he mentioned. 

“I will be,” Remus said, turning to head down the hallway. He stopped at the archway over the living room and hung back for a moment, looking over his shoulder at Sirius. “Of course, if you wanted to be absolutely sure that I don't get them wet, I wouldn't object.”

A solid beat passed before Sirius crowded Remus through the living room and on down the far hall toward the bathroom. Remus let out a half smirk, half laugh as he got ushered into the bathroom, turning around to face Sirius as Sirius pulled the door shut behind him. Sirius reached to tug up on Remus' shirt, garnering Remus to simply stand still with his arms up in the air as Sirius pulled on it until the collar reached Remus' eyes, and there he slowed his movements down, lifting the collar over Remus' brow without catching it on either of his stitches. 

Remus sought to be of some help and reached for Sirius' shirt once his arms were free to do so, ridding Sirius of his shirt quicker than his own came off when he didn't have to worry so much about healing scars on Sirius' head. The static going between them sent a few strands of Sirius' hair to stand upright and Remus held in a laugh as he tossed Sirius' shirt aside to smooth some of the wayward strands down. 

Sirius flashed him a grin before he got to work ridding himself of his jeans, which put the reason behind them being in the bathroom back into the forefront of Remus' brain. He ditched his own bottoms while Sirius pushed the shower curtain aside and got in first. Remus got in behind him and quickly gave himself over to being ushered about; Sirius turned him toward the far wall, facing him away from the upcoming spray before he took his hands off of Remus' waist and turned to mess with the taps. 

Remus waited diligently as Sirius took a few moments to test the water out. “I say we get hair out of the way first,” Sirius said over the sound of the taps running, bringing Remus to glance over his shoulder and find Sirius had the shower head off of its stand. 

With no immediate objections, Remus nodded and left Sirius to it, watching him reach down to pull on the shower nozzle and spark the shower head to life. Sirius lifted his free hand and stuck it over his own forehead in gesture, wordlessly asking Remus to mimic the movement and block as much of the spray as his hands would allow. Remus reached flattened the both of his hands out and placed them over his left eyebrow, waited a few moments before Sirius titled his head back and ran his fingers over Remus' hairline, starting from the delicate section first and working his way back. When Remus' hair was sufficiently drenched Sirius reached pointed the stream of the shower head down and reached it around front of Remus. 

Remus dropped his left hand from his brow and took hold of it, happy to assist wherever Sirius' own needed aid in pulling the whole thing off. Sirius' hands returned not long later and there began the slow process of lathering shampoo into his hair, a process that Remus hardly saw much of a point in rushing; they had no real time constraint given Sirius' far better hot water situation than Remus' own shower could boast, and James and Peter could entertain themselves like nobody's business. 

Sirius reached around Remus to take hold of the shower head once again, freeing Remus' left hand to resume its post at helping block any splash-back as Sirius rinsed his hair out. Sirius stuck the shower head back on its mount and moved onto Remus' body, and Remus' only grapple with the whole arrangement was that he wasn't in a prime position to view Sirius while he had a task at hand, but with nothing to stare at but the tiles on the wall it made it easier for Remus to give himself over to feeling; the feeling of Sirius' wet body pressed up against his back, to the feeling of Sirius trailing the loofah up, down, and over his body, the feeling of being turned this way and that way, slowly and steadily being rinsed off all while Sirius kept a watchful eye on Remus' stitches. 

The feeling of being catered to.

Sirius turned him away from the stream again and stole kisses wherever he saw it necessary, which was another thing Remus could hardly object about when he'd been banking on that. Over-the-shoulder kisses that took Remus' breath hostage that suggested Sirius was in no hurry either, small ones trailed over the back of his neck and the stark lines of his shoulders, careful ones pressed over the spidered bruise on Remus' left hip; every single one felt important and left trails of heat in their wake. 

Considering the fact that Sirius was already down there, Remus thought he should have seen where Sirius was headed but when Sirius went at him like he hadn't eaten in days, Remus surged forward to brace the wall in front of him to keep his knees from buckling from underneath him. That said, the knee buckling would have been easier to avoid if Sirius hadn't moved right along with him without a single hitch, and then the fact that Remus legs didn't buckle was all thanks to Sirius hands pressing him up against the wall and holding him in place. 

Sirius drew it out like the rest of his prior kisses, slipping his arms around front of Remus, one holding him in place while the other played up and down on Remus' cock, the same hand that Remus had watched expertly churn out note after note, and Remus was left with the sole, debilitating task of keeping his voice down. Remus held his lower lip tight between his teeth as he grappled his hands along the wall in front of him, finding nothing concrete to grip onto the way he needed to. He reached his right hand behind him when he couldn't hold out any longer and was as careful as he could be about tapping out; he kept his hand splayed to avoid catching any strands of Sirius' free-flowing hair and felt for Sirius' shoulder before he tapped at it erratically, jolting as Sirius let out a smirk of a laugh against him and relented. 

Remus worked on taking in full breaths as Sirius trailed more kisses on his way back up Remus' body, and when Sirius' hip were close enough to grab Remus yanked on it, pulling Sirius up against him and made a mad grab for the bottle of lube that was still sitting in the shower-hanger and would eventually have to migrate back to Sirius' room, just not quite yet. Remus held the bottle behind him and waited the half-beat it took for Sirius to grab onto it, biting down on his lower lip again as he heard the pop of the cap, bracing himself so that any one of Sirius' fingers wouldn't catch him by surprise. 

To that end, bracing himself only did so much in combat with the slow drag of the first two, and Remus knew in that moment how spoiled the two of them had been not having literal and may-as-well-be roommates quite so nearby. On that note, someone in the room didn't seem to give as much of a shit about keeping it down and that someone certainly wasn't Remus; Sirius hooked his chin over Remus' left shoulder and pressed his lips just underneath his ear, speaking French like an asshole and pairing that language choice with phrases so delicious that Remus couldn't do much more than writhe back on Sirius' hand and send a half-prayer to the universe that he could hold out. 

Remus had a few moments' break where he took in as many breaths as he could while Sirius turned away to stick the lube bottle back in place, but the moment that Sirius was back up against him and hitching Remus' hips downward for their slight difference in height to match up properly, Remus took in the heaviest breath yet, waiting as Sirius held him still with his left hand and lined them up with his right one. He had a handle on it as Sirius filled him up, but the slow roll of Sirius' hips as they gained momentum and the slick drag of his cock had Remus reaching down to pry each of the fingers on Sirius' left hand off of his skin in favour of pulling the entire hand up to cover his mouth. 

Sirius slowed his hips to a full pause while Remus continued holding Sirius' hand in place. In totality, there were many reasons to why Remus knew he'd struck gold falling in with Sirius, but the hesitation Sirius showed in cases like this one was higher up on the very personal list Remus had going, one that he'd never gifted at articulating even in his best of moods. While there were plenty of notes to Remus' entire existence that Sirius showed some trouble making sense of, this wasn't one of them; in all their months together where sex was even on the table (so to speak), Sirius hadn't so much as shushed him for anything, but at the same time, Remus didn't really see a way around it in times like these either. 

Remus reached behind him with his free hand and held onto Sirius' right hip to spur Sirius on himself, partly to signal that he was fine with it and partly because he'd landed someone who was the sort to even stop long enough to hesitate; not holding onto him became the just about the hardest thing he could do just then. 

Sirius lay feather-light kisses over Remus' neck as his hips started up again, and Remus held tight to Sirius' hip as he shut his eyes tight as he rocked back to meet him as he breathed staggered breaths against Sirius' palm. Sirius reached around front of Remus again and stroked him in time, driving Remus back on him with the same arm and setting off a fireworks show behind his eyelids. Remus' breathing ratcheted up to a staggering speed as he felt the onset coming, and if Sirius' plan was to hold out for Remus to get there first, it didn't really work out that way; Sirius' hips lost some of their staccato along the way and his chest heaved hard against Remus' back as his breathing peaked. The good part about it was that Remus was only seconds behind him and feeling Sirius come as much as he heard it happen had him letting go of Sirius' hip and slamming his hand up against the wall while Sirius remained coherent and thoughtful enough to fuck him right on through it. 

Remus dipped his own head forward to rest it against the wall, but Sirius dropped his hand from Remus' mouth and used the both of his to shift Remus' head to the right, keeping his scar off of the tiles, and Remus would have kissed him for it if he'd had the energy for it. 

“OK?” Sirius asked a few moments later, leaning over Remus' left shoulder to get a good peek at him. 

Remus gave an affirming hum, deciding that he had just enough energy to place a kiss on his lips. Sirius reached down to hold Remus' hips in place as he pulled out and then guided Remus back toward the middle of the tub to start the rinse process all over again. 

Remus stood still under the steam, giving Sirius a circumstantial smile for holding his hands above Remus' gash to protect it while Remus soaped up. “If I go lie down after this is done, I want it on record that it was you who sent me there,” he mentioned.

Sirius smirked. “Noted,” he said. “Go on, I'll be there in a few.” 

Remus gave a small frown. “I'm OK, really,” he said. “I'm tuckered out, is all; you can stay up.”

Sirius gave him a plain look. “And what, go pretend to play nice?” he said. “Hopefully by the time the wedding rolls around, I won't want to punch Peter's sad little face so hard but we'll see.” 

Remus gave him a plain look for that, but used the topic as a way to hopefully shift the focus back off of Peter. “What do you think?” he asked, rinsing the last of the suds off of himself. “James and Lily, I mean.” 

“Good, isn't it?” Sirius said. “I will warn you now, though; James is going to be a fucking tyrant about finding the perfect ring, and we're all just going to just have to humour him through this laborious process.”

“I'll accept,” Remus said, tipping his head to him. 

“He's not going to trust his gut, is the thing,” Sirius said, switching spots with Remus to start on his own body. “He should but he won't, so we have to keep agreeing with him until he finds the right one 'cause he'll know it when he finds it, and let's be honest, what kind of help would we be with that anyway?” 

Remus snorted. “Not much." 

“And, we'll get to watch him completely flub this,” Sirius said, holding in a laugh of his own as he soaped up. “I'm nearly two-hundred percent sure that he hasn't got a chance in hell making it to October, I'm calling it now.”

Remus gave a doubtful noise, backing away from any wayward splashes. “I don't know about that,” he said. “He took her surprise party a little too seriously.” 

“Or,” Sirius said, flicking a few suds over at Remus, “it was just seriously enough.”

Remus titled his head pointedly at him. “Whatever you want to call it, he took code names and secrecy to a new level,” he said. “I think he'll rise to this challenge.”

Sirius considered him for a few beats as he ducked under the full force of the stream, then poked his head back out from under it. “Foot rub for the winner?” he raised

Remus squinted. “You say that like I wouldn't just give you one if you asked nicely.” 

“But I'd have _won_ it, Remus,” Sirius maintained, reaching for his bottle of shampoo and squirting a large blob into his hand that would cover the length of his hair. “Where's your competitive side gone to, hm?”

“I think it's been working overtime in Stars Hollow,” Remus returned. 

“Mm, that reminds me,” Sirius said, lathering up his hair, “I really think we ought to revisit—” 

“No no,” Remus denied. “Not tonight; I'm good, I'm centered, let's just—” 

Sirius dropped his hands and mimicked the smoothing gesture Remus had just made with his hands. “Oh?” he checked. “Is this what centered looks like?” 

“Fuck you,” Remus said, pushing the shower curtain aside enough to reach for a towel. 

“No no, I really want to know,” Sirius sent to his back, his crooked-grin audible, “because I have never made it to that level of centered before, was I supposed to do this the whole time?” 

Remus flipped him off as he dried his legs off. “You're the worst,” he said, stepping out onto the bathmat, “bane of my existence.” 

“Well, you could have told me I had it all wrong,” Sirius sent him from beyond the curtain. 

Remus dried his body off while Sirius hummed a jaunty tune as he finished up with his hair. He tied the towel around his waist and went to pick up his shirt, sticking it on over his head for the walk back to Sirius' room. He froze before his hand touched the knob and went back toward the shower, sticking half of himself back in and holding his hand out. Sirius paused in the middle of washing conditioner out of his hair, did the math, and reached for the bottle of lube to pass it over to him.

“Meet you back there,” Remus said before he opened the bathroom door. 

He went through it and made a quick left, set on making it to Sirius' room without being noticed, but he took one look at the couch where James and Peter decided to relocate to and quickly stuck the bottle of lube behind his back. It was mostly for naught if the resounding applause the two of them broke into said anything to it, and Remus flipped the both of them off as he headed through the living room and on down to Sirius room. 

-

In the first few seconds of the next morning, Remus was quick about silencing his alarm so not to rouse Sirius too early as he promised. He set his mobile down beside him on the bed, peeked over at Sirius through lidded eyes to check if he'd indeed silenced it in time, and though he couldn't see Sirius' face to well what with him facing away toward the far wall, he still saw a very rhythmic pattern to his breathing that quelled that tiny worry. 

From there, Remus didn't do much more than study Sirius' ability to make an act as simple as sleeping look divine; his right arm was curled under his pillow while his left was raised up past his head, his right leg laying pin-straight while his left was hitched up. Remus trailed his gaze lower, to the sheet that Sirius apparently stole for himself overnight and had wrapped around his lower half like a toga, but even with the thievery Remus couldn't find it in him to be all that put off about it when Sirius' superhero-in-flight pose was too funny to allow it. 

Remus lifted his gaze to the expanse of Sirius' back and reached over to lightly trace his forefinger in a makeshift shape just underneath Sirius' left shoulder blade, then scooted over to leave a kiss where his fingerprint had been and set to leaving the bed; Sirius had a little less than an hour to doze, and Remus wanted to keep well on his word and let him. 

Remus kept his footsteps light as he went to the hooks on the back of Sirius' door and pulled his housecoat down from one of them. He pulled his arms through it and tied the belt around his waist before leaving the room and shutting the door behind him. He crept past Peter who was fast asleep on the couch with Tango curled up at his feet and tried to signal for the dog to stay put, but Tango ambled off of the left corner of the couch and trotted down the hall behind him. 

Remus went ahead and scooped a cup of kibble into Tango's bowl before he got back to what he was gunning for, which was a proper pot of tea. He dug around in the cupboard he last remembered his rotund, bright red one being in, mostly for the fact that it made just enough for two large cups and Remus thought today was the right day to be a bit greedy about it. He found his teapot stashed behind the popcorn maker, for some reason, and dug it out, rising to his feet too set it on the counter by the stove. 

He picked out the variety he thought would give him the best jump-start to the day, stopped off at the bathroom while the kettle heated, and timed his return to the kitchen to be a few seconds before the whistle of the kettle could sound off. He let his tea steep while he considered the weather outside, finding it to be a pleasant enough morning to have his tea out on the terrace. He stuffed the book on the windowsill that he was still working his way through into his housecoat pocket, knicked Sirius' aviators off of the small table over by the washer-drier hybrid, and went out back to the counter.

He took the handle of his teapot in his right hand and hooked the handle of his mug around his left pinky finger so he'd have enough use of his fingers to pull the screen door open, but on the way out he very nearly lost his footing and his entire pot of tea as he tripped over Sirius' Docs strewn nearby the doorway. Remus shut his eyes after he gathered his bearings, reminded himself that this wasn't his own flat and therefore he wasn't in the position to lecture either of the flat's owners of the merits of not leaving footwear lying around as traps. 

Remus pushed Sirius' boots aside with a foot, walked over to the table out back, and set himself up at it. The open roof of the back terrace allowed for sunlight to stream in from above, but the table was placed at the perfect spot to shield most of the sun's rays so that Remus was warm enough with the minimal layers he had on but also so he wasn't sweltering underneath the heat. 

Remus looked up and across the terrace as he pulled his chair in, spotting Hank the Bagpiper sitting out on his deck chair one floor up. In any other case he might've been embarrassed to be sporting his brightly coloured housecoat around in front of neighbours to see, if the neighbour in question had any understanding of shame, but since it was clear Hank had very little to speak of in his own right given the times in the wee hours of some mornings that he chose to get his practicing in, Remus simply pulled his book out and flipped to the last page he'd stopped at.

He was two chapters and one cup of tea down before the screen door opened behind him. Remus shifted in his chair to glance over his shoulder, finding James standing in the doorway propping the door open. 

“How is it out?” he asked, nodding in Remus' general direction. 

Remus considered it, glanced down to James' work slacks, and seeing as he himself was quite comfortable in little more than a housecoat and pajama trousers he settled for a hum and a minimal shrug. “I'm fine, so you'll be hot in those,” he offered.

James snapped the fingers on his right hand and pointed to him before popping back inside. Remus thought that was just about the end of it, turned back to resume where he left off, but he was halfway down the next page when James made a reappearance in a pair of dark shorts instead of the slacks, taking a seat in the chair diagonal from Remus' corner of the table. 

Remus looked to him, gave him a smile, and eyed him behind the cover of Sirius' sunglasses, watching James pull his chair in a little more, settle in with an easy sigh, and then fix Remus with a firm stare. Remus held the edges of his book a little tighter, chewing the side of his lower lip as James clicked his tongue three times seemingly in thought. 

“I called you that night,” he said finally, “not just because you're my best second, or because I knew you'd have gotten to him the quickest, or even because you're one of his most thorough brands of medicine out there; I did it because I've got you on the brain.” 

Remus sat still under the frank note to James' tone, mostly because James chose to pause there, as if he were waiting for the words to sink in properly. “Lily, too; you're definitely on hers,” James tacked on. “And Pete's, and that's because you've been taken in by us whether you like it or not.” 

“James,” Remus said, not to halt him, but also to halt him, if he were honest. 

“I would have thought we'd have made it here by now, but that doesn't seem to be the case,” James went on, crisp as a summer breeze, “so, to recap; when shit goes south with Sirius, you're going to get a call, if something happens to Lily, you'll get a call, if something happens to me, Pete, the same rule applies to all of us, and the same rule applies to you. So what I can't figure out, is whether you realize yet that we want to know when shit goes south for you, too.” 

Remus let out a quiet sigh, miffed at himself for not seeing where James was heading sooner. “I know that, but it was difficult enough wrapping my head around them showing up again, and all I could see a heads-up being was a damper on your time off—”

“Yeah, I know,” James said, nodding once. “We'd still have wanted to know anyway, because as it turns out, drinking margaritas while getting some R&R in while your mate's off dealing with real shit can make someone feel like actual shit when it finally dawns on them that that's probably exactly what they were doing at the time.” 

“I'm sorry, James,” Remus said, and he was; he was truly sorry that he never knew where to step, and that he spent so much time tripping over 'damned if you do' as a sentiment that it as a whole would likely end up on his tombstone, right under the superlative about how he kept managing to make Sirius laugh while he had liquids in his mouth. 

James nodded his head for that, too. “It's not just you getting reamed, so you know,” he mentioned. “Sirius got his, too; this was just your turn.” 

Remus held back a grimace, not loving the idea of being a direct point of contention between the two of them. “He was keeping me afloat all week,” he said. “It wasn't personal, at all.” 

“I know it wasn't, but he still got a lecture either way,” James said of it, sitting back in his chair. “And on that note, is there anything we can do for you?”

Remus wet his lower lip. “Sirius said he brought you up to speed?” he checked. 

“He did,” James replied. “I'm asking you, though.” 

Remus sat with that for a long moment. “There isn't much,” he said when he found his voice again. “The appointment's further down the line, so it's looking like there will be a lot of trial and error for the short-term until I get in that room— at least until I get a chance to speak to her and hear my options. So, a lot of patience in the meantime is really all I can ask for.” 

“Never been very good at that, but I'll give it one hell of a shot,” James said, aiming a smile at him that the sun caught at just the right angle to strengthen it. 

“I don't want any of you tripping over yourselves because of this,” he said. “It's going to be a long few weeks, but it'll feel longer if you're all walking around on eggshells around me, so maybe a little ground control could go a long way? If you wouldn't mind spreading the word around a bit, with Peter specifically.” 

James thankfully gave a sagely nod for that. “I've got you.” 

Remus nodded and forwarded James an uneasy smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I know you hate it when any of us are fighting, and I really thought the appearance of Dora and all the wedding talk was helping reign Sirius back in, but hopefully after a full night's sleep he won't be so fired up about it anymore.” 

James gave a weighed sigh through his nose. “I get where they're both coming from,” he said. “I get that there was a lot of panic, I don't imagine Peter expected him to walk in right then and there, just like how I don't imagine Sirius expected to come home to all of that, and I don't imagine that _I'd_ be much of a peach if it'd been Lily on the ground, but I'd like to think that I'd have drilled my point home and moved along, but that's not Sirius.”

Remus gave a half-nod, lifting a hand to drag it over his face as he pictured what he remembered of the scene, and ended up making a pained noise behind his hand. “There was so much going on,” he said. “So much noise, yelling – and I'm never sure how much of it is mine versus anyone else's when I'm in it.”

“From what I hear, a lot of it's yours,” James served him, a bit too circumstantial for the situation, and Remus resolved to bite down on his irritation before it could fester into something bigger. He'd very well asked James to treat the whole thing as if it were customary. “It'll smooth over soon enough. Sirius is in guard-dog mode at the moment, but that's about as much as any of us should have expected. He'd have gone off if anyone had done that to you, it just happened to be Peter – but for the record, I'm glad Peter stopped you.” 

Remus gave a tight nod for that and pitched his brain somewhere else, eager to move past what might have happened if Peter hadn't intervened in time. “How did you manage to read the obit in time?” he asked, and felt odd about the topic switch when James blinked a few times at him. “I can't figure out how you even knew to look.” 

James gave out a puff of a breath, his eyes widening. “I didn't know to," he said plainly. "I read every single thing I could get my hands on in that house while I was there. I mean that, I found an old book of Sudoku and I did every single puzzle in there, I had an extensive look through a pile of National Geographic I found in the den, Lily's mum's got about four-thousand issues of Cosmo so you better believe I read some of those; anything and everything just to not have to talk to the Dursleys for as long as I could hold out.” 

Remus' lips quirked. “Well, you got an education out of it at least.” 

“Oh, you've no idea,” James returned. “Her dad's still subscribed to the paper out there and that was one of the first things I sank myself into; I read that thing cover to cover, and... there she was.” 

Remus gave a nod, then shook his head, feeling that the whole thing landed on the spookier side of intuition. “Strange you picked it up that day precisely,” he said. 

“Yeah, a little,” James conceded, lifting his shoulders a second or two later. “Perhaps it's that the bond we've forged has a lot more to do with the metaphysical than we even knew?”

“I'm beginning to think, yeah,” Remus said. “Did you two talk a bit?”

James considered him for a moment or two. “About five percent was been 'ding dong, the witch is dead,' and the other ninety-five has been about everything else, which is very him,” he said incidentally. “That was refreshing to hear on my end of the phone, I'll admit it.”

Remus fiddled with the mug in his hand. “You were worried that he wouldn't be like that?”

“I don't really know what I was expecting,” James said openly. “The moment I read her name I flashed right back to the funeral and the way he looked after it, but I don't know why I expected the same this time around? She's not Reg, so by that alone I should have expected Sirius to pick up and move along as he was, but I needed someone there with him in case he didn't do that.” 

Remus ran his right thumb over the face of his mug. “He said something to me that night that spooked me,” he said. “He asked if I thought he was in the wrong for being glad she was gone— except ask isn't really the right word. He more told me that's what I was thinking.” 

James sized Remus up for a moment. “He say that?” 

“There was more colour to it,” Remus said carefully, “but yes, the sentiment was that I thought he was heartless for thinking 'good riddance.'” 

A few beats passed between them where Remus simply waited for James to say something. “S'pose he was thinking that's what anyone would think?” he raised, then paused short, almost as if he were playing his own words back to himself. “You told him you weren't thinking that, right?” 

“Of course I did,” Remus said. “I don't think that.” 

“Then you did it,” James said. “You're good. Obviously it's bullshit that he'd even let himself think something like that, but he was bound to, wasn't he? He's going to think that he's expected to be completely distraught over this, but the people that would think something like that would probably have had mothers who'd move mountains for them, so our job here, being a pair of blokes who did have decent mum's puttering about the house, is to not hold him accountable for drawing the short-straw on that draw.” 

Remus trained his gaze toward the far side of the terrace, but he lost focus quickly. He knew there were stark differences between his and Sirius' upbringings, there was no way around it; Remus had never been afraid to come home, had never had to dodge flying hands or boots launched across a room, and for that he had it easy. He knew Sirius found the way he and his parents leaned on each other to be so foreign that it looked like a pleasant, Norman Rockwell level image to him – but that image looked nothing like the way the line of responsibility blurred for Remus having been on the inside of it. He hadn't come across another family dynamic quite like his and for that he could understand how odd it looked from the outside, but was that something he could have helped? He couldn't help that responsibility shifted between the three of them in cycles so it certainly looked evenly distributed, that some of the time one of them would have to step up and pick up the pieces where the other two couldn't or didn't have the time to, that Remus took that role on more times than he could count. 

He couldn't help that his own incapability to fail his parents had been in the air, unspoken since before he could even walk or talk. Nothing about his upbringing looked anything like a Norman Rockwell painting when Remus looked at it, and yet that was likely all Sirius could see when he looked at them. 

“I hate that he thought I would think it,” Remus said minutely. “I know I didn't see even half of what it was like for him, but I was there, I saw some of it in that church, and I know I made a piss poor mistake with Reg, but I thought I'd done OK, made up for some of it at least—” 

“I really think he was looking for validation there,” James said, cutting him off. Remus reluctantly blinked his eyes back into focus. “We're the ones he's going actually going to care about whether we think he's a heartless fucking monster, and if he let a thought like that in and I wasn't there to snuff it out, maybe he needed to hear it from you.” 

Remus eyes widened behind Sirius' sunglasses. “But I didn't do that part right, I told him he knew I didn't think that," he insisted. "I didn't like that he insinuated it; it's no fucking wonder he won't talk to me about it, I went and threw that back at him for even suggesting it—” 

“Remus, he thinks the sun shines out of your arse,” James very nearly snapped, and Remus froze over it. “He's been staring at you like you're the last glass of water on the planet for months now, and I have seen a difference since I've been back, so whatever went on between you two, he's not holding onto it tightly, alright?” 

Remus took his lower lip into his mouth and forced a nod, wishing he could see what James and Andromeda seemed to be able to without an iota of a doubt. “He looked so small at first,” he said, “It got easier once he looked like himself again, but then he went and three-sixtied and it's been all go-go-go for him, and I want him to enjoy what he has, but I don't want him to hit a wall before he even sees it coming either.” 

“I know,” James said after a moments' pass, bringing his right hand up through his hair and making it stick out at odd ends more than it typically did. “I get it. And even after knowing him all this time, I still haven't been able to work out whether he does that more for everybody else's sake or his own. So I just— remove the blame whenever he starts taking it on, and I keep him above water. That's my job here.” 

James gave Remus a tight smile, and Remus took a few seconds to ruminate over that, theorizing that it might've been a morbid combination of the two, but that response seemed moot. Any response seemed unworthy just then, but Remus had never been more of a fan of Peter's notorious sense of timing than when he announced through the screen on the door that tea was ready for it gave him a form of an exit. 

“I ought to wake Sleeping Beauty,” he said, pushing his seat back from the table and gathering up his things. 

James nodded as he leaned back in his own seat, stretching his arms high above his head. “Time?” he asked, his voice tight from the stretch. 

Remus paused his task to press the button on the side of his mobile. “About ten,” he relayed, sticking his mobile into the pocket of his housecoat along with his book. “When do you start?” 

“Not 'til eleven,” James gave him, letting go of his stretch and reaching to pick up Remus' tea pot and relieving him of the balancing act he was trying to perform. “Sirius is right; you really can't ask for help.” 

Remus sent a bland noise over his shoulder and went on inside with James not far behind him. He gave a quick smile to Peter sitting at the table, poured himself the last of his tea when James relinquished hold of his teapot, and wandered out of the room and on through the flat with his mug in hand. He let himself into Sirius' room, moved around to Sirius' side of it and stared down at Sirius dozing, and the roll his stomach took to was harsh. He saw flying hands and boots taking that serene face below him and warping it, saw wallops to the back of the head, twisted wrists, small stories he'd been made privy to, saw all the years it had to have gone on for Sirius to shout himself hoarse that horrid Friday in November. Remus flinched, the image of the only person he'd managed to hate on sight coming on, cycling through to the withering stare she sent Sirius' way from near the pulpit, onto the pride managed to she stand with while delivering her speech that was undeserved, and to the ferocity of the venom she spat at Sirius; all of it culminated into one, stark feeling that good riddance was right. 

Remus shook his head clear, straightened out his neck, and refocused on Sirius, but watching him snoozing easily made it that much more difficult to interrupt it. He took a sip of tea, weighed his options, and decided he didn't necessarily have to take a lift over to his flat; he could make it there by bus, feed the cat and doll out pats, and still make it to work in time to see Lily before his shift. Easy-peasy. 

He went to hang his housecoat back on its hook, changed into something acceptable for work as quietly as he could, and went for the desk on the far side of the double room once he was dressed. He picked up a half-finished pad of sticky notes he'd brought over at some point over the term and penned a quick note explaining his disappearance. He crossed back over to the other side, gave a look over the area to find a spot to stick it on, and smirked as his gaze lingered on Sirius' right shoulder; he'd at least see it fairly soon after waking up that way. 

He tried to be slick about it but that didn't work out for him at all; Sirius blinked his eyes open the moment Remus took his hand back and Remus clicked his tongue. “No,” he mused, frowning forlornly. “_Sleep_.” 

Sirius made some more sense of the situation, glanced around a bit, and zoned in on the hot pink note attached to his shoulder. He pulled it off, turned it around, and narrowed his eyes as he gave it a read. “Rude,” he said, tossing the note aside. 

“Not rude,” Remus corrected. “You looked cute.” 

Sirius gave a minute hum, stretched his arms out long, and made grabby-hands toward him. Remus caught a budding smile between his teeth and stuck his tea on the beside table before moving to kneel beside the bed. He crossed his arms on the edge of the mattress while Sirius wormed himself over toward him and eventually pressed his face up against Remus' right arm. “I said I'd take you in,” he said. 

“You don't have to,” Remus said, moving to cover the back of Sirius' head with his left hand. “You missed out on a lot of sleep doing all of that research, which is good because it'll count towards your final grade, but right now you could absolutely sleep in longer.” 

Sirius huffed a laugh against Remus' arm but kept to it. “I'm taking you.” 

Remus gave a relenting sigh and leaned in to press a kiss to the top of Sirius' head. “I'll start a coffee for you?” he offered. 

Remus caught Sirius' bright hum and made to push himself off of the bed, but paused short when Sirius pressed sleepy kisses to every available spot on Remus' arm that he could reach in his flattened position. Remus gave out a quiet, grateful sigh through his nose, putting the image to memory for a harder time.

“Milk or no milk?” Remus asked, rising to his feet. 

“Surprise me,” Sirius replied, stretching long on the bed. 

No milk, then. Remus plucked his tea off of the side table and drank the rest of it as he headed back through the flat. He picked out the strongest roast Sirius had at his disposal, gauged that there was enough water left in the kettle for a cup, and flicked the switch to reheat it. He headed over to the sink to give his dishes a wash while James and Peter seemed to be giving Tango treats for just about anything. 

Remus glanced over his shoulder after the fourth treat was administered. “We're working on shake at the moment, so keep in with that perhaps?” he suggested over the sound of the taps running. 

James pointed to his ear, squinting at him bemusedly. “Sorry, can't hear you?” 

“Oh sure,” Remus returned, facing forward again. 

He was finished with his dishes and just pouring the water for Sirius' coffee when he heard Sirius feet padding down the hallway. “Where'd I leave my docs?” 

Remus gave a thought to the question and quite soon remembered his near-fatal incident with one of them outside. “Out back,” he called back to him.

Sirius appeared in the doorway seconds later in little more than his flannel pajama trousers, slipped up beside Remus at the counter, and leaned in to place a peck on his cheek. “Merci bein,” he said. 

Remus leaned into it as he pressed down on the French press, flashed him a smile, and brought a mug down from the cupboard while Sirius swivelled around and honed in on Peter specifically. “Why are you _still_ here?” 

“Oi,” James called out, waving his cereal spoon around in the air. “That's not cute anymore.” 

“Good thing I'm not trying to be cute,” Sirius returned, trudging over to the screen door and heading out through it. 

Peter shook his head. “Nothing for it, he's going to be mad at me for years to come,” he said, reaching for his mug. 

Remus sent Peter a plain frown over his shoulder. “No, he won't, Pete,” he said, pushing down on the French press. 

Peter turned in his seat to face Remus better. “No, you didn't see it,” he insisted. “He had the Angry Eyes on, and he keeps shooting them at me whenever he remembers just how mad he is–“ 

“Pete, remember breathing?” James cut in. “We like breathing.” 

Peter didn't seem to think much of the concept. “I didn't know what else to do, Remus.” 

“I know you didn't,” Remus insisted for what felt like the millionth time. 

“It was like a mad-house in here,” Peter went on, flying his hands out in front of him. 

Sirius came back through the door behind Peter, his Docs tucked between his left arm and his side. “That's it, just keep digging the hole deeper–” 

A thread in Remus' already tense stomach stretched thin and snapped over how quickly Peter recoiled into the table to appear smaller. “Sirius,” he said. “Room.” 

He hadn't entirely meant for it to come out sounding so much like a command, but James' eyes took on a whole new shape and light before he trumpeted a resounding 'oooh,' toward Sirius, who'd gone and stopped short with his hand frozen in mid-reach for his coffee. 

Sirius gave a quick glance between Remus and his mug, and Remus clicked his tongue. “Take it with you, then,” he said, leaving the room. 

He waited for Sirius in his room, perched on the edge of Sirius' bureau with his right ankle crossed over his left and his arms crossed over his chest. It wasn't very long before he heard the patter of Sirius' feet along the floorboards followed by a thwump that indicated Docs had likely been dropped by the front door, and a few moments later Sirius came through his open doorway, drinking from the mug in his hand. 

He headed for the foot of his bed and took a seat on the edge of it, facing Remus with a rather sweet blink. “Going to teach me a lesson?” he asked. 

Remus left his flat expression on. “How long are you going to keep this up?” 

Sirius smirked around another gulp of coffee, lowering his mug to showcase an easy expression as he lifted his shoulders. “As long as I like.” 

Remus gave out a tight sigh. “If your goal was to get me wound up, then congratulations and please stop.” 

“That wasn't totally my goal, but if it ends up happening then it's more of a bonus,” he said, lifting his mug again and gesturing toward him with it. “What's the saying? 'It's not the destination, but the huffing we did along the way?'”

Remus just barely held onto a huff. “What would you have done in his place?” he pressed. 

Sirius lowered his mug while his eyebrows went the opposite direction, which meant Remus was now hurdling toward a disadvantage. “Pretty sure I have been in his place and I still managed to refrain from throwing you around like a rag doll, so I don't think it's unfair that I expect the same from our friends.” 

Remus had to push to speak past the effect those expertly plucked eyebrows had on him. “He didn't do that, Sirius.” 

“Yes, he did,” Sirius returned within a beat. He shook his head and reached down to stick his mug on the floor, which usually meant he was going to need his hands free for demonstration. “He's not getting a high-five for this and if he ever refers to you like an inpatient again I'm really going to lose it, so for now he can keep kissing the ground we walk on and I'll see how I feel in a few days.” 

“Days? He shouldn't have to beg for your forgiveness, he didn't do anything to you, did he?” Remus raised. Sirius fixed him with a fierce stare that had Remus wilting in a way that took his whole body with it. “He was trying to stop me, and I wasn't making it easy for him. He had the right to call it like it is when I look a hell of a lot like an inpatient when I'm in the middle of one.” 

Sirius scoffed. “Don't you go listening to him.” 

“It's not only him,” Remus insisted. “I can hear when one's happening, Sirius. It wasn't just him, it was everyone in that waiting room thinking I was in the middle of some mental break and who can blame them when that's exactly what it looked like?” 

A tight laugh burst from Sirius. “I can,” he said, as if there was nothing else to it. “No one has the right to touch you like that, not rando bystanders, not those nurses, Peter, nobody. If we were out walking and a rogue paint can fell from a twelve-story building and hit you, that paint can would be the enemy.” 

Remus frowned and took to worrying at his lower lip; he could hear echoes of Sirius' voice Monday night, all the supremely colourful ways he told well-meaning strangers to keep their hands off Remus as if the echoes were in the room with the two of them. Remus moved from the edge of the bureau and stepped over to the bed, avoiding accidentally kicking Sirius' coffee over and sinking down on Sirius' left. 

“I'm sorry you had to sit there through all of that,” he said, curling his hands in his lap. “It can't be easy to have to sit there and watch it, but it can't be easy for strangers either, can it? It's a flight or fight situation; either they're going to freeze up because they don't know how to help or they'll try to intervene because they don't know how else to help, and if I'm acting like a fucking madman while they're trying to keep me down—” 

He trailed off at Sirius' look of warning. “You're in unimaginable pain,” he said pointedly. “Anyone with a lick of sense would be able to tell the fucking difference.” 

“Then maybe we have to start treating people like they haven't any sense at all and give them a bit of a break,” Remus said. “The nurses were just doing their jobs, and if they didn't know what they were looking at, then how are we supposed to expect randos to?”

Sirius worked his jaw and ended up reaching down to pick up his mug and knock back some more coffee, which was as much of a sign that Remus still had the floor than him simply stating it. Remus swallowed around his dry throat, lifted his legs off of the floor to cross them under him, and turned to face Sirius sidelong. 

“Maybe there's an easier way to do this,” he said, reaching to poke Sirius' right knee. “At least for our friends, I don't see us making another ER trip if we can help it—” Remus paused as Sirius let out a loud 'pfft' and shook his head once, “—then strangers we can worry less about. But for the sake of our friends, maybe it'll be easier on all of us if I just keep to mine for now.” 

Sirius made a sound as if Remus' suggestion was ludicrous. “And what, never leave yours?” he raised. "That's not going to help at all." 

“Obviously I'll have to leave my flat,” Remus said, pulling patience out of thin air, “but this isn't my space. I'm inserting myself into it and in turn the rest of you have to make room for this, too, and that's not fair. I don't want to put anyone else through having to make a call like Peter did again.” 

Sirius reached down to stick his mug on the floor, moved to match Remus' stance, and shifted closer. “Peter just needs to learn that he's not on WWE Smackdown, but James and Lily are going to be fine about this,” he said, sounding assured as ever. “You don't have to go hiding away for their sake—” 

“We don't know how they'll handle it,” Remus countered. “James is playing both sides right now, but who knows how he'll fare when one comes around, same with Lily. I shouldn't even be around any of you when it's happening, I could hurt one of you. Pete's lucky I didn't slug him because I really, really wanted to right about then.”

“You're not going to hurt any of us,” Sirius said, moving his hands over top of Remus' and oh, they were so warm. He was always so warm. “Most you've done is try to wiggle out from under someone, and you can hardly be blamed for that.” 

Remus breathed a long sigh through his nose. “I just don't see another way around it,” he said. “I don't want them seeing me like that; it's not my best look.”

Sirius smirked, just a bit. “Fuck 'em, then.” 

Remus curled in and dropped his head down to press it against Sirius' hands covering his own. “No, see, that wasn't my conclusion.” 

“Too bad, it's mine,” Sirius said, a smile breaking through. “I'm not having you turning into some sort of hermit and disappearing on me; we've a momentous summer ahead of us and your role in that is irreplaceable, so the clusters can fuck themselves, and our friends can, too. I'll kick everybody out if you don't want them there for it.” 

“You can't kick James out of his own flat,” Remus implored, lifting his head and narrowly missing Sirius' chin in the process.

Sirius' lips quirked as Remus reached up to grab a gentle hold on his chin, seeking a pardon for the bonk they just barely managed to avoid. “He can bloody-well take a walk,” he said. “Or, he can go over to Lily's; practice for when they're and old, boring married couple, hm? We're really just a pair of self-sacrificing blokes.”

Remus felt the makings of a genuine smile forming, appreciating the small reminder that bright spots still shone through the clouds he felt hovering over him. As if knowing that Remus had cycled onto the topic of bright spots, Sirius lifted a hand to Remus' cheek and reminded him of the vast light-source sitting right in front of him. 

Remus spoke when he was certain he could manage it without a waver in his voice. “I love you,” he said. 

“I love you, too,” Sirius sent him, squinting a little. 

“But,” Remus added. 

“I assumed there was one,” Sirius tacked on. 

“You've got to go easier on Pete,” Remus said, and Sirius gave out an agonized groan. “He's sorry, Sirius.”

“Yeah, I heard him, and read the fucking fourteen texts he sent me about it,” Sirius heaved out. He scooted up the bed and stretched out long to reach for his pack of cigarettes on his bedside table and resumed his post in front of Remus, placing his ashtray in between the two of them. “What I want to know,” he said, pausing to light up, “is how he got you on the ground.” 

“You saw how he got me there,” Remus said. “Plus, have you seen me?” 

Remus displayed his hands along the length of his toreso. “Yeah, you're a twig, fine,” Sirius allowed, letting his first haul out, “but he had a point; trying to move you around while you're in it is like trying to shift anti-matter around, and he managed to get you down and keep you there? Has he been lifting while we weren't looking?”

“Adrenaline can do some things,” Remus said for the case of Peter's fortitude. He knicked Sirius' cigarette to sneak himself a haul, but then he wound up smirking around it, letting his puff out and biting down at the right corner of his lower lip. “Come to think of it, you've held me up for an impressive amount of time off adrenaline alone, so you ought to know what kind of power it can yield.” 

Remus truly did love the moments where he could watch Sirius' pupils dilate up close. “If you want me to take you right now, Remus; just say the word,” he said, walking two fingers from Remus' right knee up toward his thigh. 

Remus set a halting hand on the one walking up his leg. “I need to get going soon,” he maintained. 

“You took us here,” Sirius objected. “This was _you_.”

“I promised I'd meet her beforehand,” Remus insisted. 

Sirius gave a bit of a sigh. “You should just stay here."

“I would if I could,” Remus gave him. 

“No, I mean, come stay here while this is going on,” Sirius said. “You're here enough as is, what's a few more of your things in the grand scheme?”

Remus didn't know that his heart could swell and shrink in such a short variable of time, nor did he know his brain could feel as if it were expanding and compressing in one-go. “Sorry?” 

“Well, do you want to write up a pro/con list?” Sirius raised, lifting his right hand for a count. “You're here half if not more of the time, your favourite teapot's in my kitchen and not going anywhere as far as I can tell, if we're going to be dealing with more clusters then I can keep a much better eye on you here, and you wouldn't have to pay a thing.”

Remus thought he'd been doing a fair job at keeping his expression even while his body whirred, but his face must have shown some aversion to the last point for Sirius gave him a plain look and nodded toward the hall. “Trust Fund Boy is hardly going to care whether you put up money for this, and it's not as if I'm going to either,” he said. “I remind you that we're getting the deal of a lifetime here, so even though I've a strong sense that you'll insist on paying a fair share, even if we did split it three ways, it'd be less than what you're paying now, and you love it here.” 

Sirius could sell junk to just about anyone, but even knowing that all too well, Remus took an almost involuntary look around the room he'd come to consider his home away from home, inside of a flat that seemed to exist on a different plane than everything else.

“Of course I do,” Remus said openly. 

“I've heard you breathe out in relief when you've walked in the door,” Sirius said, bringing Remus' eyes back onto him. “I love your little flat, I do, but it's pretty clear that you don't love it so much, and I don't want you to tolerate where you live because it's what you can afford that's close by your faculty building, I want you to love where you live.” 

Remus breathed in tightly, finding it much more difficult to remain steadfast when he felt as vulnerable as he did. “I can't up and leave mine, though,” he said. 

Sirius gave out a pondering hum. “You're lease is probably just about up,” he mentioned. “Seems to me you could.” 

“It's an expense I really shouldn't be putting money towards when I've already got so much I need to save for,” Remus said. 

“Good thing your boyf's got deep pockets, isn't it?” Sirius served him, waggling his eyebrows. 

Remus gave him an imploring look. “I can't borrow any more from you,” he said. “

“Then we won't consider this borrowing,” Sirius said simply. “It's not like you have a furnished penthouse to move into here, it's not going to break the bank, I promise you. And imagine not talking shit about the place you live? Imagine living in a place where you can actually rely on decent heat in the winter.” 

“It's still my flat,” Remus said, feeling a note of protectiveness over the hole in the wall he'd found. He couldn't call it home when he was sitting in what felt like his own, but that didn't stop his body's whirring any. “It works for right now., it's well-situated, close to work.”

“I mean, you travel to and from here quite a bit,” Sirius brought up, “and that isn't just because your thirst for me is so great that no mere bus ride can get in the way of it. It's got a lot to do with this place, too.” 

“Poetic, thank you,” Remus said of it. 

Sirius lifted his hands with a light laugh. “The moral is, it's a bit of a trek but you do it regardless because the reward is incredible and well worth the ride over here,” he said. “And, hi there, you've got a built in transportation device right here if you don't want to bother with the bus.” 

“I'm not going to rely on you to drive me everywhere,” Remus said, making a face at that. 

Sirius flattened his palms out in a calming gesture. “Alright, I see that you're handling the Cons section of the list, but I think what you're doing right now is just focusing in on the funny angles of the puzzle pieces rather than the sense that the whole picture makes when the pieces are lined up properly.” 

“I have to,” Remus said. “What about Dorcas? I can't switch the plan up on her, she's counting on me here.” 

Sirius eyes lidded at that before he brought his right hand up to rub his thumb and forefinger over them. “You're not going to be the villain if plans have to change,” he said carefully. “I think we both know that she's rather skilled at adapting to situations when it comes to you, so maybe we can give her a little credit here?” 

“That wasn't necessary,” Remus said plainly. 

“Well, I'm not wrong either, am I?” Sirius said, just as plainly. 

Remus shook his head. “This isn't a good idea, Sirius,” he said. 

Sirius took his eyes off of him and set them on the ground before reaching down by the foot of the bed for his mug. He took the dregs of it in a quick swig and held the empty mug in his lap, his previous demeanor replaced with a blank canvas. 

“What's this?” Remus asked, eyeing the whole display. 

Sirius lifted his shoulders easily. “I'm going to have a rebuttal for every excuse you're going to make against this, but there isn't much point in that, is there,” he said. “You made up your mind somewhere around the first few seconds after the offer was even on the table, so you're not going to hear any of what I have to say.” 

Remus stared openly at Sirius, right affronted. “It's too soon to be talking about any of this.”

Sirius' face lit up there, shining the only smile of his that Remus truly hated. “There it is,” he said, faux-fondly. “Took you a while to make it there, but it's good we're there now.”

Remus tore his gaze away from Sirius' professional smile, knowing he had seconds to decide between accepting the offer to avoid a problem or remove himself from the situation altogether. 

Remus chose the latter. “I really have to head out,” he said, and Sirius flung his left hand out, plainly illustrating where the door was. 

Remus swallowed and moved off of the bed, keeping his eyes down as he let himself out of Sirius' room and talked himself up as he walked through the flat to say his goodbyes to the others. He moved into the kitchen as James was up out of his seat and giving a resounding stretch, though mid-way through it he glanced to the time on the stove and jolted before he booked it right past Remus, shouting his goodbyes to every occupant of the flat as a whole as he bounded toward the door.

Remus looked to the time, saw it was about ten minutes to eleven and James' starting time, and gave Peter a smile that didn't feel so forced after a performance like that one. “Are you hanging out here, then?” he asked, eyeing Peter flipping through Remus' book and trying so very hard to look fine with the fact that his prime method of distraction was currently in someone else's hands. 

“I don't start until three,” he said. “I might give him another try, what do you think? Is it worth it?” 

“Wait a little bit,” Remus suggested. 

Peter nodded tightly. “I will lay low, then.” 

Remus nodded and forgoed taking the book back from him. “Just give him some time, OK?” he said. "He's nearly there." 

Peter gave him a minute nod for that and it didn't take Remus legs very long to get himself back to the other end of the flat, but passing Sirius' open door without a sound took more out of him than he'd have liked to admit. He kept it down as he slipped his shoes on, but once he let himself out of the front door, the most objectively pathetic noise escaped his throat. He stopped at the top of the stairs to rub at his eyes, wiped at his cheeks until they felt dry, and pushed down Sirius' aviators, capping them over his eyes. He went down through the lobby and pushed out of the door and on toward the bus stop, pulling his mobile out to gauge his time frame, and relaxed about that part at least; even with the bus ride he was now in for, he had plenty of time to stop by his and see Lily. 

Once the number 3 turned up he took a seat closer to the back of the bus. Over the course of his trip, every now and again, the dull vibrations of the bus moving along faked him out a few times, letting him think that a text had come in, only to end up with his heart in his throat before it'd sink back down when he'd find nothing on his home screen.

He ended up turning his mobile off to avoid any more fake-outs along the way, which helped some, but only by a little. He'd never been essentially booted out of someone's flat before; that was new. He'd been essentially dumped at someone else's home before, but that he chose not to equate with today, mostly for the fact that he didn't even want to think about whether this was two for two, and he tugged the image of Sirius planting tiny, half-asleep kisses over Remus' arm not all that long ago; even with his unceremonious exit, that image was something to hold tight to. 

Instead of festering on that, Remus made plans for his day: what he'd like to cover over the course of his training shift, how he was going to behave during his performance review. The fact that it was Lily who would be facilitating it helped, but he wasn't sure how the two of them would tackle any negative feedback that might have to come his way, but in the end he told himself to treat it a little like it was his interview for the job in the first place; be polite, receptive, pepper in a couple jokes here or there to cut through any nerves and tension on his end and hopefully ease Lily on her own end— that plan had worked out well for him before.

He looked up from his book a stop before his own and tucked it away, pushing himself to stand and pulling the cord above his window to sound the alarm. He waited by the back door until the bus pulled to a stop and gave a thank-you toward the driver before stepping down onto the sidewalk. 

From there it was all about checking the next item off his list; feed cat and doll out pats. From there it was about his legs getting him to work, which they did in not very much time given his flat's convenient distance from his workplace. He made it into the front terrace which a likely palpable sigh, passed various patrons on his way in through the shop door, and only just side-stepped a toddler running for the door with his mother following right behind him. He reached back and held the door open for the small parade that went through it and then made a beeline for the backroom, waving to Emmeline and Ian as he moved up behind the counter. 

He smiled at the new face joining their team, headed down the hall for the backroom, and strolled in to find Lily at the chair by the computer in back, talking on the cordless. She glanced over her shoulder as he moved past her chair and held up her forefinger, and Remus waved her off with a quick smile, and took a seat at the round table nearby, picking the chair closest to Lily's set up as Lily winded the call down. 

“How's she doing?” he asked once the call was over, nodding toward the front. 

“Good, so far,” Lily said, sticking the cordless down on the desk and swivelling around in her office chair. “I've got her on ten to four, so Ian has her covered for now, and I figure both you and Elise can tag-team her for the rest of it.”

“Sure thing,” Remus said, removing his sunglasses and sticking them on the table. 

“How're you feeling?” Lily asked, reaching back for her coffee cup on the desk.

Remus nodded, aiming a smile at her while he tried to ignore her gaze lifting to his brow. “Slept well,” he said. “That always helps.” 

Lily nodded, meeting Remus' eye then. “You look like you did,” she forwarded. 

Remus tipped his head to her. “No bags, then; good.” 

Lily smiled around a sip of whatever it was inside the white and green cup in her hand, tapped the side of it with her nails as she swallowed, and gave a bright smile on the other end of it. “You'll never guess who was up until three in the morning devouring everything and anything she could get her hands on about cluster headaches.” 

The speed at which Remus' smile petered off was unparalleled. “Lily, no,” he chided. 

“I know,” she said, tossing her free hand up in plea. “I know you've already got a mum and you don't need another one, but it's in my bones, Remus, I can't help It. I worry about you and once I started I couldn't stop reading.” 

“Alright, thank you, but no more late-night scouring,” Remus conditioned. "It'll read a hundred times worse with night-brain, trust me on that.” 

Lily nodded and watched him for a few moments longer, her mouth pulled into such a deep frown that the words that followed were hardly what Remus thought were coming. “I'm so proud of you.” 

“Oh, no no,” Remus said, shaking his head once. “Don't be.” 

Lily let out a small laugh that bordered on incredulous. “How can I not be?” she asked. “I found this thread, where everyone in it was sharing how they first came to terms with all of it for the sake of the person who'd made the post, and they were all so supportive of each other that it really was the sweetest thing to read. I saw a lot of people having difficulties with it and I got a little misty-eyed thinking of how good you were on the phone; you're handling it so well.” 

Remus' stomach took a remarkably fast pitfall. Lily's sad smile dropped off right quick, so Remus was, in fact, not the only speedy person in the room, but the way she shrank back didn't help Remus' state whatsoever. He breathed a tight breath against the praise he didn't believe he deserved, not with the way he'd been acting, but it felt as if there wasn't enough air in the room anymore, as if it were getting smaller by the second. Remus looked around to be sure that it wasn't closing in on him and wrung his hands out in his lap before smoothing them over the tops of his thighs to remind himself he was solid, but pins and needles broke out all over them despite his efforts. 

“I'm not handling this well at all,” Remus said. “I'm not doing any better than them, I could barely get out of bed yesterday.” 

“You must have been exhausted,” Lily said quietly, but Remus refused to catch the ball she lobbed at him. 

“Sirius had to lure me out of his room and if he hadn't done that I wouldn't have left it, no way,” he said. “I stayed in there the entire night, all morning, all afternoon while he was out busting his arse and doing a million things just to help me, and I couldn't get out of bed. A fucking coward's what I am.” 

“You're not,” Lily replied, shaking her head once. “The fact that you made it out of that bed is proof enough.” 

Remus heard the words, he did, but all he ended up doing was serving her more muddled ones of his own. “He did everything in his power and then some to get me results even though it's fucking futile for him to even bother,” he said. “I don't know how I thought I'd have the luxury to make all these plans as if something wasn't going to come along and stick a wrench in it, there's no way I can follow through with any of them now.” 

“Of course you can,” Lily said, alarmed. “This doesn't mean you can't enjoy everything you've planned for.” 

“I can't go, Lily,” Remus implored, wringing out his hands again. “I can't go home anymore if these things are going to come with me, and I certainly can't leave the country.”

“Why can't you?” Lily countered. “What happened to all you said last night? You're going to get a system going for you until you get professional help, and then it'll all feel much more manageable.”

“Oh, we'll try,” Remus nodded. “Only I'm not so sure what a makeshift list of possible remedies are going to do for us, and no amount of tea-tree oil or whatever the fuck they'll suggest I take are going to stop a ten, and I've had two in less than a week. I thought I knew what a fifteen felt like and I was fucking wrong, and if I'm in for knockouts every time one comes on then I'm fucked; I can barely speak when they're that bad, I just scream and pummel into things, and convince everyone around me that I've gone 'round the twist; Peter's afraid of me, did you hear?” 

“OK, pause,” Lily said. “Somebody has to tell me what happened with Peter.”

“Well, I was trying to kill the pain with Ugly Pot – not because I have a vendetta against it, it was the only thing close by and I can barely see out the good eye when I'm in one, and that was the hardest thing nearby, so Pete had to do something to stop me 'cause I wasn't going to,” Remus spouted. “And I know I tried to use floor because I was suddenly tackled onto it and it was there and hard and could do the job in a pinch, and when he held me down and stopped _that_ from happening, I tried to use shards of the Ugly Pot because that thing didn't survive the fall, so what was he going to do but keep stopping me – I can't believe I put him through that.”

Lily's hand made it splayed over her chest in the time it took Remus to finish spouting. “Mhm,” he affirmed, pointing to that. “I'll put you all through that, I'll put my mum and dad through it and they can't handle something like this, not now. Things are just starting to feel normal for them again.” 

“Don't go thinking like that," Lily said. "There's plenty of time before July to get a better handle on this.” 

“Say you're right,” Remus said. “That works out, but what about the fall? I've gotten spoiled having Sirius there when I'm having one – he was working but he came in at the best and worst time, and he never left my side for the rest of it, same as Monday, but I'm not going to have him when I'm there, am I? The stress of it will be too much, I'll be in a new city where I know nobody all over again, trying to balance school, and work, and now _these_, my grades are going to go right down the drain so goodbye to As at this point, it was nice knowing them, and oh, _oh_, on top of that, I told Dorcas she could stay at mine over the term so it'd be easier for the both of us, but fuck me, I'm going to have to tell her that she has to start looking for something else because me leaving isn't an option anymore.” 

The sound of Lily's office chair scooting along the floor startled Remus into looking up, finding her much closer to him and reaching out to give him some sort of hug, but Remus shook his head rapidly. “See? Don't, I'm not a martyr, I'm a sham,” he said. “I'm faking all of this happy-go-lucky shit, and I'm not even doing it well. I'm horrible at this.” 

Lily's face went through a wide array of emotions before she pulled him in for a hug anyway, providing quiet shushes and smooth rubs at his back for a full minute or so, rendering Remus into feeling like he were an estranged six year old, but shit, if it didn't help for the moment. 

“Sirius asked me to move in,” he said quietly, needing to say it out loud. 

Lily went and snapped back from him, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open before she shut it and rearranged her face quickly. “Someone has had one hell of a week,” she observed, rubbing at Remus' left knee.

“Did you hear that last bit?” Remus asked. 

“Oh, no, I did,” Lily said, her lips forming a smile that appeared quite coy despite all the churning going on in Remus' stomach. “Tamed a wild horse, you did.” 

Remus shook his head, frowning. “He's doing this because he wants to keep an eye on me so I don't do something stupid when he isn't looking," he insisted. "That's not a reason to ask someone to move in; I could do something stupid anywhere, it doesn't matter if it's my flat or his.” 

Remus stuttered on a breath as Lily's expression turned down and her gaze went to the small bit of floor between them. “Do you think I should have said yes?” 

Lily's gaze shot back up to him before she blinked and patted Remus' left knee twice. “Sweetie, I love you,” she said, patting him again once, “but I'm staying so far out of this one.” 

“Please don't,” Remus urged. “I'm asking you.”

Lily gave him a pained look. “Remus, if I tell you what I'm thinking and he finds out—”

“He won't find out,” Remus said. “I rejected him five times over, he's not talking to me right now.” 

“He'll talk to you again, believe me,” Lily said knowingly. 

Remus breathed in and out, looked left then right, deciding this didn't mean that he couldn't say his piece. “You don't have to say anything, I just need to say that I can't move in,” he said. “Where is he going to go when he needs a breather? Where am _I_ going to go? When he realizes that he offered this out of some horrible combination of pity and fear that I'm going to crack my head against a counter top, he'll either drive himself into misery because he won't want to kick me out even though I'm the hardest to live with, or twist-ending, he _will_ kick me out because that's half his rightful flat, and what will I have? I'd have given up my flat, so I'd have a bag of clothes, a cat, and a teapot to my name, and that's it.” 

Lily gave out a loaded breath and pressed down harder on Remus' knee. “Sweetie, don't do it unless you want to,” she said. “That's it. That's all I'm going to say about it, and if I'm asked I'm denying everything.” 

Lily brought her free hand up and signaled turning a lock at her mouth, then tossed the invisible key for further illustration. Remus couldn't help a smile coming on, but it must have looked pitiful for Lily frowned and scooted her chair that much closer. “Let's work backwards, only we're going to avoid the thing that'll get me throttled if I interfere any more than I've already done,” she said. “If, by some chance, you cannot go this fall, it will hurt, but Dorcas will hardly hold it against you. She's quite possibly the coolest person I've met aside from you four gits, and that's a feat. She'll be fine, she's resourceful, and that's in the worst case scenario, OK? We're not there yet, nowhere near.” 

Remus nodded, but he hardly felt pardoned. “Finding a place to work and a decent place to live were already going to be tough acts to pull off, but my schooling's going to suffer here, too,” he said. “Someone else ought to have my spot if I'm just going to waste it and barely coast by.”

“You'd never waste it,” Lily said, sounding so assured that it made Remus want to shut it and leave it alone, but it seemed he was too far in for his mouth to listen to his head. 

“Where am I going to find an employer whose going to take a chance on me?” he asked, her, the room, Earth herself. “I have to state that I have these from the start, don't I?” 

Lily lifted a shoulder. “Then don't,” she said, lifting one, coy eyebrow. 

“Lily,” Remus said. 

“What?” she laughed. “Fine, then do state it up front, that doesn't necessarily mean someone won't take a chance on you.” 

“I don't know what kind of employer wouldn't just roll onto the next available resume when they hear about these, even a prim and proper version of what they are,” Remus said. 

“Well, I'm not,” Lily said, tilting her head pointedly at the insinuation. 

“We're friends, Lily,” Remus said. “There, I'm no one, and I'll get stuck begging for coin on the tube.” 

“Listen to me, please,” Lily urged. “I know you'll find work for someone who'd jump at the chance to have you, you're going to find a reasonable place to live, you're going to balance school, work, and these, and it will all work out.” 

Remus rested his left elbow on his thigh and his chin in his hand, frowning as he tried to make the words digest. “I'm sorry I unloaded on you,” he said. 

“That's OK, I'm going to need the favour returned one day,” Lily said, matching his stance with her right arm instead. “From a lot of what I read last night, you're not alone in feeling this way about it because it can feel like your life's been taken over, but the best you can do for yourself if to try to not let that take over completely. It can be so easy to let them take over every other aspect of your life, so it's good to remember that you still deserve to have everything you set out to do without letting these dictating your every step, so let's focus on the good that's coming your way instead.” 

Remus tried to nod, but it felt stiff. kHe didn't know how he now had two people who had been able to stare at his situation from the outside and come up with the same action plan, but it had him feeling exhausted, small, and more angry with himself than even he knew what to do with. “You sound just like Sirius,” he said. 

“High praise?” Lily checked.

Remus wasn't really sure just then, but after a few more beats he felt like scum for questioning it. “I've been such a prick,” he said. “He shouldn't have to put up with any of this, and if the clusters don't ruin us then I'm going to do that all my own because he's going to run out of patience with me.” 

“Oh, that wasn't where I was going with that,” Lily said frankly. 

“Did you read about how many relationships fail because of these?” he asked. “I saw a ton of that. Sometimes you luck out and you get a good one, and sometimes you still have a good one but it's all too much for them, they can't give the support that's needed so they end up feeling trapped and helpless, and and this could all blow up in my face if I’m not careful.” 

Lily let out a puff of breath. “If anyone can handle something like this, it's him,” she said. 

“Except it wasn't that long ago that you thought he'd bow out at the tiniest noise,” Remus pointed out. 

“Yes, I'm aware, and I eat dirt every week that you two keep adding onto your count,” Lily returned. “Happily so, if it means he's taking the two of you seriously, and it sounds like he really is.” 

“Yeah, and he's fucking infallible as usual,” Remus said. “He gets set on one thing and decides that's what's happening, and there's no room for questioning. He did it with these way back in October; he was absolutely convinced I had clusters after, what, watching a migraine go off the wall and looking the term up once? And of course, he gets to be _right about it_. ”

Remus gave a gesture to suggest he was so very stoked about that part, which garnered a smirk from Lily. “He could have been wrong, though, and it’s as if he never thought about that,” he went on. “And now he's so far into the new plan he's cooked up that if I say anything to the contrary he gets put off and I end up being the fussy one all over again. He's just, plan-plan-plan and I don't want to get my hopes up, but he won't hear any of that.” 

Lily sighed through her nose, nodding slowly. “Watching him try to find a solution to a problem is right up there on the list of strangest things I've seen,” she forwarded. 

She smirked to herself after that, then put Remus' context-less self out of his misery. “In Sirius' first few months with the company, bar two went on the fritz constantly, and whenever the maintenance bloke came round to fix it, Sirius would chat him up, ask him about what he was doing with the machine, getting details, and no one really thought much about it because Sirius can make conversation with a wall if properly motivated, and most of us thought he was just hitting on the guy,” she said, waving her hand plainly for that. “Turns out, no, what he was really doing was soaking up information. So, bar one starts acting up one day down the line, and Sirius goes ahead and takes it apart himself—”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Remus said. 

“—Mm_hm_,” Lily affirmed, reaching back for her coffee. “He has himself a quick look at it, decides he knows what he's doing, and the worst part about it was that whatever he did— and I can't tell you what that was because I was off trying to call a professional for repairs— but whatever it was, it worked, and for a week straight he strutted about the place refusing to answer to anything other than 'the Toolman.'”

Remus burst out a quick laugh, bringing his hands up to rub at his eyes. “'Tool' is about the right word for him,” he said, sniffing a bit.

He let his hands fall, finding a pointed smile on Lily's face. “I hated that about him,” she admitted. “All through my secondary school career and then some, he had this air about him that was so self-assured and yet, so off-putting to me and no one else.”

Remus reached up and idly scratched at his unmarked eyebrow, and Lily caught the move for what it was and smirked into her coffee. “I thought he was so arrogant, way too quick to jump to the answer to something even if there was still a debate going on," she said. "And on that note, he and I were forces of nature going up against each other in Debate, let me tell you."

“I can imagine,” Remus said, smiling a little for it. 

“He had this ability to walk on into a room with a problem in it and decide that he alone had the answer to it and I thought it was so dismissive, I never thought that he was all of those things because he had to be," she said, giving Remus a sad sort of smile, "but then I worked with him, and then I started dating his best friend, and the more I got to know him properly, the more time I spent with him, the more I learned about where he's come from, it suddenly clicked; no one at home would have listened to a word he said, but at school and at work he was home-free, and people listened to him when he got struck with an idea.” 

Remus frowned, looking at Lily through heavy eyes, with a heavy heart to match. “I know how hard it is to work around when you're on the other end of it, but I have a guess that he doesn't mean to be dismissive of you,” she tacked on. “I'm sure in his mind, all he was doing was being Mr. Fix-It.” 

Remus shook his head. “Why are you all so much better at him than I am?” 

Lily let out a smirk of a laugh. “Practice,” she called it. 

“You should date him,” Remus suggested dryly, crossing his arms over his chest and sitting back in his chair. 

“Can't, we'd kill each other,” she returned without missing a beat. “Practice really is the secret. I've known him since we were eleven, and that only sank in maybe three years ago? And let's not pretend as if I don't have to stop and remind myself of that to this day, so you're well within your rights to find his methods a bit odd now and again.” 

“Odd's a nice word for it,” Remus said faux-pleasantly. 

“Isn't it,” Lily said, matching him. 

“He could have turned out to be the most jaded person and we'd just have to be OK with that, but he isn't," Remus said, rubbing a hand over his face. "He just picks up and keeps on, and what am I doing? Not leaving his bed until he lassos me out of the room. He must be kicking himself for ending up with me.” 

“Kicking his heels, maybe,” Lily said frankly, behind the cover of her coffee cup. 

Rem us gave her a plain look. “He meets me halfway constantly,” he said. “More than I ever do, and he's going to start seeing that soon enough.”

“So do you,” Lily said. “I've seen it.” 

“I could be doing a lot more,” Remus said, sticking to his guns. “He tracked down multiple people and set up the appointment for me without a second thought, meanwhile I just sat there picking out flaws in the plan when I should just be grateful that he even bothers bringing me bright spots.” 

Lily put on a smile that looked rather tense the longer Remus peered at it. “I don't know if there's ever a moment where you're not grateful,” she said hesitantly. “He knows you, it's sort of your default setting – and I mean that in the best way.” 

Remus uncrossed his arms and reached up to rub his hands over his face, wondering how any of his mates put up with him. “I should still be better, more appreciative,” he said. “I need to stop bringing negatives into the mix so much.” 

Lily took another long look at him once he looked to her again. “If you want to work on your outlook for yourself, then hat's off to you,” she said, “but if he wanted someone who didn't bring him back down to Earth like you do, then he'd have kept looking elsewhere.” 

“Lily,” Remus said weakly, covering his face with his hands again. 

Lily gave a laugh that was not unkind, thankfully. “OK, why don't we tackle the short-term first?” she raised, and Remus let his hands drop to his lap again, thankful that she could understand that he'd effectively hit a wall. “We can start by sending out transfer requests if you'd like? I mean, I don't want to speak for you, maybe you're sick of pouring coffee and want to give something else a shot, but there are options if you want to stay with the company while you're there.”

“That would be,” Remus said, shaking his head, “beyond helpful.” 

“Then let's do it,” Lily said, sitting up straighter in her chair. 

“What, now?” Remus asked. 

“Why not?” Lily asked. “You've some time before you're on the floor, might as well get you feeling like you're getting on top of things by actually getting on top of things? What do you think?”

Remus sniffed and nodded, not trusting himself to speak just then in case more spouting came about. Lily stuck her left foot out ceremoniously and dragged both her and her chair back over toward the desk, swivelling around to face the computer monitor. “Alright, you give me shops near where your faculty building is going to be, and I'll find shops nearby and work my way out,” she said as Remus dragged his chair over to plunk it down beside her on her left. “Let's say, five to start.”

“Ten.” 

“Eight.” 

“Fine.” 

Remus met Lily's side-glance and her rather defunct attempt at not smiling, succumbed to a smile of his own, and gave her the street for his faculty building. Lily typed it into the search bar, brought them to a map, and did some vague humming while she clicked this and that, and Remus felt a little better for the antics alone. They acquired exactly six possible locations before Lily put her foot down and suggested that was fine for a first round, and Remus swallowed his reservations down and replaced them with gratitude. 

Next up, Lily pulled up the messaging program that the company offered, selected the first option on their list, and brought up a blank email. 

“This one's name is--” she started before squinting. “Beats me, how do you say that?” 

Remus leaned in and had a look for himself, reading Guillaume on screen. “Gee-yom,” he extended. 

Lily let out a low whistle. “Nope, wouldn't have gotten that.” 

“It's the French William,” he relayed. 

Lily began slowly typing into the text box, putting on a sultry voice. “_Hello, French William_,” she recited. 

Remus bit down on his lower lip and reached his right hand up to point at the screen. “Whoospie,” he said, hovering his forefinger under the glaring typo that simply read 'herllo,' and Lily snorted loudly, hitting the backspace and deleting the entire phrase in a few quick seconds while Remus sing-songed under his breath. “_Herllo, it's me_...” 

Lily gave up all attempts at typing to simply stick her head down flat on the desk, her shoulders shaking. Moments later she straightened up and looked to be back to business except for the fact that she remained with gaze on the screen and her fingers set to type, and that was about it. 

“You good?” Remus asked, biting back a laugh himself. 

Lily shook her head clear. “Very good, only I'm thinking if I stick the words into Google Translate then it'll all come out a mess," she said, "but since we've got you here, an authentic French letter of intent can only help us in the long run."

“Alright, I'm nowhere near authentic French, but you do have a point,” Remus said. 

Lily smiled bright. “OK, I'll pose as you for now, write glowing words about you because I have a good feeling you won't do that yourself, then I'll hand it off to you, you'll pretend you're not uncomfortable translating an entire paragraph about yourself, and we'll be all set,” she instructed, already typing away, then gave out a sudden noise of realization. “Let's get it finished, draft the message until your review is finished, then I can cc a copy of it with your CV, and you'll look like a fucking star.” 

“You're killing this already,” Remus said, reaching for his mobile to start the process of adding his present work to the top of his CV, but he'd forgotten that he'd turned his mobile off on the journey over there. 

Lily began typing again so all Remus had to accompany him on the longest thirty seconds of his life waiting for his mobile to boot up was the click-click-clicking of the keyboard. Lily hit the space bar resoundingly at the end of a sentence, unknowingly timing it for the moment Remus saw the empty home screen he had waiting for him, and he had to force himself to move past the anvil in his gut to resume his task.


	5. 5.

By the time Lily had a finished product for Remus to translate into French, he'd done his due diligence in gearing himself up for the act of translating a paragraph solely dedicated to talking him up to a handful of strangers who might've been looking for extra hands in the fall; there was an end goal there that was worth the bit of strife and funny faces Remus would likely make throughout. 

Lily slid the keyboard over Remus' way when she was officially done, and Remus scooted his chair in closer to the desk to have at it, opening up a blank word document to work off of Lily's blurb. A compatible, relative silence fell about the backroom as the two of them worked on separate things, Lily sat beside him pouring over the hordes of mail that accumulated over her time off, while Remus got so focused on the process of swapping out sentence structures and fine-tuning phrases that when Lily spoke up closer to the end of the task, he missed her words completely. 

Remus blinked and shook his head clear. "Quoi?"

"They sent us new tunes," she relayed again, fanning the thin, square envelope back and forth loftily. "Good thing, too, I was getting sick of nothing but Motown."

Remus, on the other hand, had hardly minded a little Motown added to his shifts, and he might've said as much if Lily hadn't gone and used the side of the desk as a springboard to get herself standing on the seat of the office chair, so he settled for a minimal, warning hum and reached over to hold the back of the chair in case it went out from under her. 

"I get why they did it," Lily went on, tearing at the seam of the envelope and standing up by the inconveniently placed sound system, "spring was coming, sun was starting to shine, what better pairing for that than a bit of musical sun rays, but every day as the default list? Too much Motown." 

"Yeah, it started getting to Sirius, too," Remus said of it, typing one-handed while he held onto Lily's chair as she popped the new disc into the machine. 

"I can only imagine," Lily returned. "Alright, we have—" she paused as she navigated the machine through the playlists offered to them, "much of the same, but there are a few new ones: the Cafe, Unforgettable, City Lights, Soul of the '60s, and Summer in the Sun, any takers?" 

"60s," Remus responded in the next beat, thinking a list that could possibly have a few tunes that might've played round his house could only help raise some of his spirits. 

"Done and done," Lily said, clicking back through the lists for that one. She climbed down from above and sat herself in the chair again, freeing up Remus' free hand to continue typing with both hands. "So, what do we think? Does it sound like you've got a very French boss?" 

Remus took his eyes off his mostly finished product and gave her a mild shrug. "You likely sound like a medium French boss," he offered. 

"Better than the truth," she said of it. 

Remus gave her a half-nod for that, read through it from the top, and deemed this part of the task complete. "I think we're good for now, until we get the review attached at least," he said, but then paused for a thought. "Did you just want to get that over with now? I'm sure I have time." 

Lily gave a bland noise while reading through another piece of mail. "I'd like you to be getting paid for that time, thank you," she said, looking up then. "Draft it for now, and I promise you we will get to your review and we'll have all emails sent out before I leave for the day, sound good?" 

Remus nodded, drafted the email, and gave out a puff of breath as he confirmed the time at the bottom right corner of the monitor. "Well, I've got twenty minutes to spare," he said. "Can I do something small? I could count the safe, seeing as I'd probably be the one to do it in twenty anyway?" 

Lily looked up from the paper in her hands again and tossed her right thumb over her shoulder. "You don't want to grab a tea or something?" 

Remus let out another puff of breath, shaking his head. "I had a full pot this morning," he said. 

Lily looked to go back and forth for a few seconds before she finally sighed. "Fine, start counting, but I'm only saying yes because I like you." 

"Friends in high places, right," Remus said, standing up and moving his chair back to the round table nearby. 

"Make sure you clock in on the dot, though," Lily sent him, moving onto another envelope. 

Remus hummed an affirmation, crouched down at the safe in the corner of the room, and typed the code in, moving to sit crossed-legged while he waited for the safe to time out and let him in. He didn't love the ten minute waiting period on a regular day but he usually had things to busy himself with before he had to be back to open the safe up, today, however, having little to do with his hands while he waited left him playing with the nail of his left thumb. 

"If you were me, how long would you wait for him to cool off before reaching out to him?" he asked. 

Lily lifted her head and put it on a tilt. "If I were you, not much," she said, "mostly because I'd suddenly have magical powers where he's concerned." 

Remus gave a small sigh through his nose. "I think you're all a bit confused about the sort of power I wield," he said. 

"One of us, maybe," Lily quipped, her head bowed again. 

Remus gave her a plain look that she didn't see. "I don't want to pester him and make things worse, but say there's a really good dog out front," he gave for example. "Does he want the picture like I know he would normally, or does he want me to leave him alone for a while? That's where I'm at."

"Oh, well, that one's easy," Lily said over her shoulder. "If you see a good dog, you take the picture for him." 

"Right, and I would, if we hadn't ended on a very tense note," Remus expressed, "and if I do send him a picture, he could look at his screen and see that a text from me came in, and think, 'great, there's that shithead now,' before he even opens it and sees it. And I don't want that to be the first thing he thinks when he reads my name."

"Well, I mean, I think his pulse goes a little wonky when he reads your name, but that's just me," Lily said of it. "Take the picture of this hypothetical dog and send it along when you're feeling less like this." 

Remus nodded, though it was unclear when that would be. "Do you think I shot myself in the foot, saying no?" 

Remus thought perhaps Lily swivelled around in her chair half-way so they could see each other better, but when he saw her pained expression he realized why she wanted him to see her face so badly. "You're not going to get in trouble," he insisted. 

"We don't know that," Lily said of it. 

Remus pressed his lips in a firm line and breathed out his nose. "It isn't fair that I'm not allowed to talk to my friend about something that's going on with me just because he has something to do with it," he put out there. "It just isn't, especially when I know that Sirius talks to James when he's frustrated with me."

Lily chewed her lip, but his words must have stuck for she eventually nodded. "I don't think you did," she said. "I think he moved a little too quickly for you and you hit the breaks, which I'm not going to tell you isn't something you're allowed to do." 

Remus sat with that, waiting for the other shoe to fall, but Lily didn't drop it. "That's," he started, shaking his head, "that's almost too kind a read of it." 

"Remus, it was a snag," Lily said. "You two have been — to quote dear James, nauseatingly sweet for a good long while now, but this was probably overdue. The honeymoon period doesn't last forever, and to be fair, you two had a long one."

Remus sat with that, and then he sat with the fact that it was woefully apparent to him now that he only ever realized he'd been in the honeymoon period once it began to fade out. He'd done it with Tom whenever he turned back up again, walked around in a sunny daze feeling picked, chosen, and the end of that sunny haze typically came like a brick to the face, but now, with Sirius, it felt like a thousand bricks fell on him. 

"It's like we're right back in Novemeber where we couldn't organize ourselves to save our lives and I don't want us to be there," he said. "We've always been different so it was like, I don't know, nuclear fission when we disagreed, but I want to rewind to a month ago when we were literally finishing each others' thoughts, or even better, January, remember that? I loved that." 

Lily's mouth twisted up into a smirk at that. "Personally, I think February deserves a mention," she put out, "seeing as that was my favourite to watch from my seat." 

Remus found a smile budding at his own lips. "Mm, and I wonder why that is." 

"Listen, you," Lily said, pointing at him. "You told him you loved him in a sleepy little whisper and I swear I watched Sirius' heart grow five sizes, OK? I thought I was wandering into the living room, but apparently I wandered into a scene right out of a rom-com, and I was _weak_." 

"I still think running from the room was a bit of an overreaction," Remus said, though he didn't even bother hiding his smile anymore. 

"I needed to collect myself," Lily maintained. "I know that I haven't been here for a lot of this, but try to take it one day at a time. The stuff that's going on that won't be fixed tomorrow will have to wait, but as far as today's issue, I think he'll bounce back from it. He's come back holding trophies from worse concerning you, and you're still smitten, clearly."

Remus chewed on his lower lip some before he let it go. "Except me being wasted over him doesn't change the fact that I only had to walk too loudly on the wrong day for Tom to decide he was completely sick of me until he'd eventually decide that he wasn't anymore," he said, lifting his hands listlessly. "And I know Sirius isn't him; I go over that point in my head more than I can even say. It's overwhelming sometimes, how different they are, and sometimes I'm not sure if it hurts more than it even feels good because there's so much more on the line this time, and the thought that I'm going to send Sirius packing next if I say one wrong thing or step too loudly is no matter how much I separate the two of them." 

The safe chose there to chime in, beeping to announce Remus was free to go in, but the beeping hung in the air between Remus and Lily's down-turned expression. Remus looked away from her then, turning the latch and pulling the safe door open. 

He pulled the clipboard out of the safe and pulling the cash drawer inside of it a little closer to him. He counted the bundles of coin first and moved onto the packet of bills from there, jotting down what each denomination offered and matching it to the morning count. He stuffed the clipboard back inside, shut the safe back up, and looked to Lily sitting over by the desk studying him, and it went on longer than he knew what to do with. In reality, he knew it couldn't have been more than a handful of seconds, but Remus had always had a penchant for feeling time stretch to a slow crawl whenever he thought he said too much or something he shouldn't have. 

"Am I making any sense at all?" he asked. 

Lily nodded her head deftly. "No, I get it," she said, stopping there to clear her throat. "Three years in, and I still stop and ask myself why it's so much easier with James than it was with anyone else, and then I'll get sad for my younger self, because she didn't know any better." 

Remus' chest constricted at that. "Yes, that's it," he said. "I was always _grateful_ when he'd come round again because that meant for right then, at least until he was over it again, he'd picked me— and I look back now, and I just want to ring my own neck for thinking that was as good as it was ever going to get for me." 

Lily flung her hands out, splaying them toward him. "_Yes_," she said. "It's not knowing your own worth."

Remus felt tingles spring out from his head to his toes. "It'll just slap me upside the head sometimes, what Sirius just gets," he said. "Sirius doesn't need me to tell him that my parents are at the top of my list, he just knows it— Tom? He was there for some of the worst times, I mean, there when I wasn't sure my dad was even coming home again, the _worst_ days, and he didn't get that I'd be glued to my mobile in case my mum had any updates for me; Sirius has never given me flack for pausing with him to talk to either of them, at least not out loud, and it sounds so small, I know—" 

Lily shook her head there. "Oh, no no, that's big," she said, nodding once. 

Remus' hands had a bit of a shake to them when he lifted them, but he used them all the same. "If it bothers him, then he's kept that part to himself because he _will_ tell me when he thinks I'm being a dick to either of them, but with the calls, he just waits, waits until I'm finished and he's never held that against me."

Lily sucked a breath in through her teeth. "Oh, that got me in the gut," she said, passing a hand over her stomach for a moment. 

Remus knew the feeling, when he'd had a few sucker-punches to his own chest just hearing Sirius string the right combination of words together, let alone the little acts he performed. "The little things get me more than I know how to handle, he caught onto so many little details about me, even in the early days— and I bet you that to this day, Tom couldn't list on one hand the little, weird quirks I got stuck with, but Sirius spotted so many and we were barely even friends then; that's three or four weeks of studying me versus Tom's six _fucking_ years," he said. "He clocked in exactly how long I like my tea to steep if it's in versus a pot by the end of September, and I never told him that, he just used his third eye and picked up on it. And with the Beatles? I said something about them once, maybe twice because they were on and we were already on the topic, but after that, Sirius would play full albums for me while we were on shift together, just because it made me a little happier. Jesus; he'll ask me about my school work, even if he's really not that interested in whatever I'm doing right then, and he does it because he insists that my eyes get as big as dinner plates when I get talking about something I'm invested in, and _I_ didn't even know I did that until he told me did. I've never had someone pay this keen an eye to me before, and—"

Remus stopped there, realizing he was sitting in the backroom at work of all places, having already talked Lily's ear off and brought the conversation up, down, and back around again as if she even had that much free time to listen to his ramblings, and as sudden as the snap of a finger, he instantly felt like a wart for it. 

Remus shrunk back when Lily flapped her right hand insistently toward him. "And what? _And what_?" she prompted. "You can't stop there." 

Remus relaxed his shoulders a smidge, ruminating over the fact that his patterns didn't stop with Sirius, they went out in a radius. When he spoke again, it was quieter, the way forlorn omissions tended to need to be. "I don't know how to hold onto this now that I know what it's like," he said. "It has been question after question in the background of everything; at first it was how am I allowed this, and then it was, how are you going to hold onto it, and it's onto how do I stop the roof from caving in on us? I don't want to give too much of me upfront and tempt this more than I already have just making all these plans with him; the rug is going to go right out from under me."

Lily sat forward in her chair, and Remus really only realized then that he really could have conducted this from anywhere but the floor by the safe. "Have you told Sirius any of this?" 

Remus swallowed. "Some," he said, then at seeing the plain look Lily gave him for it, he added, "I've told him a lot, but I don't always want to be the bloke who's nine steps behind everybody else with this stuff; it's embarrassing, getting choked up over the littlest thing." 

Lily raised her gaze to the ceiling and brought them back down to him again. "Except you're dating someone who's about nine steps behind everybody else with this stuff," she said, displaying her hands rather royally to pair with a take like that one. 

Remus deflated with it, then in the next moment straightened up when he heard footsteps scuttling along the floor up the hall, and seconds later Emmeline rounded the corner into the backroom.

"We're working with about three stir sticks at this point," she announced.

Lily gave out a great sigh. "I swear to God, people see the container of them and think it's a free-for-all."

Emmeline smirked from the edge of the room. "Want me to call out for some extras?"

"No, let me," Lily said, swivelling her chair around to reach for the cordless. "I'll have to figure out what we can pawn off first."

"What should I do for now?" Emmeline asked. 

"Put a handful of drinks stoppers in their place, they'll work," Lily said, swivelling back with cordless in her hand. 

Emmeline nodded and took off back to floor and Lily looked at Remus once they were officially alone again. "Take a few hours to breathe a little, let him simmer down a bit, and see what talking about what this actually is about will do for the two of you," she said before nodding once toward the front of the store, "but we're going to have to cut Ian loose before anything else." 

Remus took the hint, pushed himself to his feet, and dusted off the back of his trousers before he crossed the room and stopped in front of Lily, bending to match her height. "Thank you," he said, holding her tightly for the moment. "If you catch me moping around here even once, you're to kick my arse." 

Remus felt the laugh bubble up through her. "For you, anything," she said before a resounding pat on the back. "Send Agnes on a fifteen when you get up there, and she's been on till for quite some time now, so help her along on bar when she's back on." 

Remus nodded as he pulled back from her and moved toward his apron hanging on one of the hooks nearby. "Ian's off in a few, Emme's on until six for pre-close, and Elise gets on at three, so there's plenty of backup today," Lily tacked on while Remus tugged the loop of his apron on over his head. "If everything's going smoothly, I'll aim to steal you around three, three fifteen-ish, and we'll get your review started."

"Sounds good," Remus said, heading down the hall as he tied his apron. 

He stepped up front, finding it much the same as it looked when he'd walked in, Ian and Agnes were over by the coffee station, while Emmeline was caught up in conversation with a customer at the hand-off station. She looked his way as he passed her, smiled mid-sentence, and Remus gave his best one in return; having her on past noon was a bit odd, but Remus found it felt similar to how atypical and exciting a power outage felt to him as a kid. 

Remus rinsed his hands off in the sink not far from where Ian was talking Agnes through a coffee switch-over, and was engaged with almost immediately after Ian spotted him. "If I give you room for cream, are you then going to turn right around and dump out another two inches into the bin?" he checked. 

"No, no I wouldn't," Remus gave him, reaching for a sheet of paper towel from the dispenser. "You're almost free, bus and get out of here." 

To that Ian raised his hands to him and turned for the cupboard under the counter that housed the sanitizer bucket, procuring a cloth in near seconds. He set out to do a lap of the cafe while Remus tossed his towel into the bin, stepped over to till one to clock in, and managed to make it in for 1:01. Not on the dot as he'd promised, but not bad for just having had something between a breakdown and breakthrough in the backroom. 

Remus smoothed his hands over the front of his apron, looked round at Agnes simply staring at him for context clues, and gave her a smile. "Hi, I'm Remus," he said. "Orders are to get you comfortable on bar for the next leg of your shift, so take a fifteen and we'll get you started once you're back on, how does that sound?" 

Remus expected perhaps slightly more than a silent nod, a word or two would have been quite fine, but he wondered then if first-day jitters were at play, and on top of that, Ian had the ability to make training a bit more fun, whereas when Remus replayed his opening line in his head, he thought he came off a bit stiff compared to Ian's style. 

"Normally we do a quick bus of the cafe before breaks just to keep on it, but since he's already taking care of that, you're all good," he tacked on. 

"Right, OK," Agnes said for that, and then she was gone. 

Remus looked to Emmeline, finding that she'd seen some if not all of that odd exchange from over at the bar. "Is she a bit shy, or was it me being a lot?" he asked. 

Emmeline shook her head. "She was quite chatty right up until you got out here." 

Remus rearranged his expression before his frown could deepen, nodding once. "I came on too strong," he said. "I'll tone it down." 

Emmeline sent him an airy hum. "The strong jaw she just was made to see is my best guess," she said, her mouth twitching when Remus looked one way and then the other before he landed his gaze on her again. "Just be nice to her, OK? The girl's beet red." 

Remus looked away from her and scoured the till area for a free marker, but he felt her eyes on him the entire time he looked. "I'm going to be showing her bar once she's back, if you want to trade up," he said, gesturing toward her and the entire bar area with the first marker he could find. 

"She's all yours," Emmeline said, lifting her hands to surrender her post. Remus moved for it, but she reached out as they passed each other and blocked his jaw with her hands. "Careful with that; it could cut someone." 

"Stop that now," Remus huffed, budging her hand away, but Emmeline bobbed her shoulders easily as she headed for the till. 

As with most lulls, the one they seemed to be in was short-lived for the shop door opened and carried a group of six in with it, but Remus hardly minded that when it meant the topic had to be dropped. Ian popped back up behind the counter to put the cloth he was using back in its cupboard and made himself scarce from there fairly quickly, but Remus hadn't expected him to stick around long when he did look and sound quite done with his work day. 

The first couple drinks ordered were milk based and in making them, the sound of the steam wand going cut off quite a bit of the bustle around Remus. He cut off the steam wand to pour the milk into the second one, thought he caught a note he recognized from the speaker nearby the bar, and seconds later he was treated to the first brass notes of _With a Little Help From my Friends_. Remus had indeed been looking for a tune or two that might give him a taste of home, but there he found himself addressing the universe directly about that particular pick in regards to himself just about then. 

Remus handed the drink off, took a look at the next set of drinks, and saw that two Americanos were back to back, and that gave him a small form of an exit. He looked to the state of the syrup bottles lined up by the bar and checked for one that might've been getting low, and noted the vanilla syrup was getting precariously so. He picked up both Americano cups and filled them with hot water, stuck them under the tray together so that both cups would catch the drip at once, and queued up six shots to pour in his short absence. 

He ducked into the back hall, stopped in front of the wide array of unopened syrup bottles arranged on a shelf close to the door to the floor, and slipped his mobile out of his pocket while he reached for a new vanilla bottle. He typed a quick, one-handed text to his mum, citing '_Joe Cocker's playing at work_' and sent a second one which amounted to five saxophone emojis to top it off. He slipped his mobile back into his apron pocket, ducked back out onto the floor, and celebrated inwardly as he made it back in time for the last of the shots to pour; later, perhaps once Sirius was interested in talking to him again, Remus thought he might tell Sirius that his speed and candor had reached this crossroad.

Remus placed the new vanilla bottle beside the going one for the time being, started a pitcher of milk for the latte that followed and fired up the steam wand to go while he topped the two Americanos off with water, feeling better than he'd felt in hours at least with the tune playing out over his head while he went through the motions of a quick rush. 

Once it was over with, Remus went and dug out the laminated charts that he quite liked having nearby as a cheat sheet on his own first day and brought them back to stick near bar two, that way he could teach her the basics on the lesser used one, while bar one could be reserved for the flow of orders that would be inevitably heading their way, and then once Agnes got the hang of it he'd try to blur the line between the two. When it came to training, Remus tried to take into account the concerns and reservations he'd come across having been there once, and sort of branch it out from there, find a balance between too much information right off the bat to know what to do with any of it and too little information to know what to do with either, and when Agnes came back up front after her break, Remus strove for the same compromise this time around. 

A little of the way into getting Agnes comfortable with the common drinks, Remus overheard a bloke at the till order an extra hot latte; a slightly jarring request just days before June, but on another note, it practically shoved them the opportunity to show Agnes the process of achieving that feat, so he deemed it a small blessing in disguise and gave her a few pointers as she gave it a shot. 

A little later on, two small lattes came their way, and Remus remembered the trick Sirius showcased to him day one of the job and how to plan for two of the same small drinks by pretending it was one venti sized cup coming down the line, and thought that was a golden opportunity to pass the same tidbit along to her; he didn't know exactly why the universe seemed to be lobbing him easy pitches where work was concerned, but he appreciated it immensely. Now, if it could do some of the same in some more personal areas of his life, that he wouldn't mind either, but he would take the simple throws where he could get them. 

His overall plan proved to run smoothly, as did the process of transitioning into cold drinks when the need arose, and he figured getting Agnes comfortable with blended beverages would only help when they were indeed being ordered more and more as the weather improved. It certainly helped the whole process along that Agnes seemed to have eased up some over her break for she was much more talkative throughout, making what had to be the first hour and some of his shift pass by with more ease on his own part. The longer the time ticked along, the less Remus stood over her shoulder at the less Agnes had questions about, feeling that she had a handle on most of the drinks coming their way. 

Alas, so was the case until he looked up from their training bubble and found Stan the Man was up at the till, ordering was would inevitably be the whirlwind of a drink he was infamous for. Emmeline marked his cup, walked it over to place on the bar with a prim raise of her eyebrows, and headed right back to till as Remus picked the cup up and turned in, keeping his voice in an undertone. 

"This one is a doozy." 

Agnes finished up with the pitcher she was rinsing and stepped up close, matching his volume. "Is it?" 

Remus nodded once before he stuck Stan's cup on the tray on the espresso bar. "I'm not looking to scare you off on your first day, but this is one we will have to remake if it's not done to exact taste," he said. "The rest of the drink I'm sure you would be fine with, but it's the act of achieving a one hundred ninety degree latte that also calls for no foam that I'd rather shield you from," he said, keeping his voice down as Stan meandered from the till toward the hand-off station. 

"But—" Agnes got out while Remus reached for the milk, "—it'll only _be_ foam at that point, no?" 

Though Remus certainly felt validated by hearing quite a similar reservation about it, he strove to keep the mood light. "It's possible to do, but it just takes practice," he said, beginning to pour the milk. "This part, you can treat it like a regular no foam one, and since this is a small we're still going pour for a venti, but we're even going to go a little higher than that for this one." 

He stopped pouring when he eyeballed it to where he normally did, showcased the pitcher to her before he lifted it to the steam wand. "So, like any other extra-hot one, keep the aeration short, and I'm saying a second or two, otherwise we'll be spooning foam out of here for hours," he said before he fired up the steam wand and gave it almost no time at all before he stuck the pitcher up as far as it would go and spoke on under the whirring of the wand. "Make sure the tip of the wand touches the bottom of the pitcher, because that'll only help keep too much froth from happening, or as much as can be done, really, and then you just keep your eye on the temperature, watch it crawl to near-fire, and pull it straight down when you hit it." 

"How are you not howling in pain?" Agnes asked there, and it took Remus a moment to clue into the fact that he was holding the increasingly heating metal pitcher from the bottom of it. 

"Maybe don't do that part," Remus amended, shifting it so that he was holding onto the handle of it with his right hand. He flexed the fingers of his left hand out by his hip, waiting on a sting that never really amounted to anything before he blinked that far into a pocket of his mind for another time and pressed on with it. "Hold it by the handle. You do get used to handling hot, metal objects, but don't be a hero off the bat." 

Agnes smirked and nodded toward the coffee station. "I knocked my arm into the water spigot and cursed my entire life out," she said. 

Remus smirked too while he kept an eye on the temperature creeping up close to the boiling point. "That thing splashed back on me my first day, too, so maybe it's got something to do with an initiation process?" he raised, switching the steam wand off and pulling the pitcher down to the counter.

"Not sure I passed, then," Agnes said. 

Remus queued up the shot to pour into Stan's cup while he reached for a spoon out of the cup-full of them nearby. "Well, you're still here, so I say you did," he offered, waiting the short time it took for the shot to finish up. He pulled the cup down from the tray on the espresso bar and knocked bottom of the milk pitcher against the counter to loosen things up a bit, and started to pour, speaking under his breath all the while. "Same as before, use the spoon to hold back any excess froth because there will always be some, so don't fret on that. From there it's down to skimming off of the top, and don't worry about this—" Remus added, using the spoon to point at the thin film of foam on the top of the drink, "—that's microfoam, and I worried about it early on, but it's damn near impossible to get rid of all of it unless you want to be spooning for days, so I usually go with two whisps off the top and call it a day on that front."

Remus picked up the finished product. "Not bad when you break it down, but when it's coming down the line and it's a cup marked like that, it can be a bit daunting," he said before he went around behind Agnes to get to the hand-off station. 

"There you go, Stan," Remus said, offering a smile along with the drink. 

"I sure am glad you took over," Stan gave around a chuckle, reaching to stick a lid on top of his cup. 

"Alright, you have a good one," Remus chimed, hoping that might get Stan heading on his way quicker.

Remus glanced sidelong at Agnes as Stan ambled over to the condiment bar, biting down on his lower lip at the mother of a face she now had on. "He said that so I'd hear it on my first shift, too," he forwarded. "I doubt you'll believe me right now, but he is a sweetheart once it dawns on him that you know what you're doing." 

"You're right, I don't believe you," Agnes put out. 

Remus smirked there. "Well, believe me on this, he's in here multiple times a week so you will get the practice in," he said, "but if he comes in tomorrow or your next shift and you're not sure you have it down yet, nobody here is going to hold it against you if you ask them to handle it, deal?"

"I'm going to make the best one he's ever had just to spite him," Agnes returned. "How's that for a deal?"

"Even better," Remus said, turning to rinse the pitcher out. 

He stuck it back with the rest of them and gave Stan a parting smile as he made for the door, but before he went through it Elise stepped into the shop. She gave him a hi there, hello and strolled around the side of the bar to come up on the two of them. 

"Oh, you poor thing," she said, pulling her sunglasses off. "Was a bitch this time?" 

"Bit of a bitch, yeah," Remus confirmed after a quick glance around to check if the coast was clear. 

He looked to Agnes then, who he then realized didn't know Elise's face from any of the other people traipsing in and out of the shop for the better part of the morning and afternoon if the blink she tossed him was anything to go by. "She also works here," he gave her. 

Elise burst out a laugh. "Yeah, no, I'm not just walking around back here weirdly," she said, moving for the backroom. "He had me remake his drink three times once." 

Agnes looked to Remus in a near-panic after Elise disappeared into the back. "Is she kidding?" 

Remus shook his head. "I was not on shift then, otherwise I'd have stepped in around round two, I think," he said, catching Emmeline's small wag of a cup over at the till and heading over her way. 

He had a gander over the cup, walked it back to Elise, and turned it around for her to see it. "This one's much less extensive and it'll give you more frap practice," he offered. 

"Gimme," she said, snatching the cup and heading for cold bar. 

Remus smirked, went ahead and took the soy milk out for her a few seconds before she seemed to realize she would indeed need it. "Sure, sure, laugh it up," she said as he placed it beside her little area. 

Remus looked over his shoulder after sensing a presence and saw that Emmeline was in the middle of hoisting a vat of coffee toward the sink to pour it out and as such, didn't really have her hands free to take the order of a regular of theirs that seemingly popped up at till. 

"If you need anything, just call me back over," Remus said to Agnes before stepping over to the till. 

He reached for a grande cup as per Denise's usual and made quick small talk with her while plugged her order into the till. Emmeline popped up beside him as Remus prompted the interac machine, taking over the transaction from there, and Remus went and started on the drink at hand while Elise came up from the back with her apron on. 

"Cutting it kind of close," Emmeline noted. 

Elise gave a bland noise from the hand-washing sink. "Someone jack thought it'd be a stellar idea to try to beat the bus I was on through the intersection and that went about as well as it sounds," she said, reaching for a sheet of paper towel. 

Remus looked round at her quickly as he steamed the milk for Denise's drink. "Oh my God, are you OK?" Elise looked over at him as she binned the ball of paper towel in favour of displaying both her hands over herself, showcasing that she was indeed fine, and to that Remus added, "you know what, I meant that figuratively, and next time I won't ask." 

Elise patted his cheek as she passed him on her way to the till. "Yes, you would," she said. 

"Careful there, those cheek bones are sharp as knives," Emmeline put in, and Remus only just held off flipping her the bird for it. 

"What?" Elise asked, looking to her as she used Emmeline's till to clock in. 

Remus sighed and turned away to top Denise's drink off with water while Agnes crossed over to hot bar to slide her newly-finished and supremely green frap toward the girl waiting for it. Remus nudged Denise's drink in closer to Agnes since she was already where he was headed and Agnes passed that one off for him. 

A flash of red appeared on his right not a beat later and announced that Lily was now on the floor. "Alright, I'm stealing Remus for a bit," she said with a clipboard in her hands. "Elise, take over for him." 

Elise nodded easily and with that Lily led the two of them out onto the sales floor, picking a two-seater in the far left corner of the shop. Remus took the spot across from her and gave a small smile, reminding himself that this was Lily and therefore, not the worst person to have a performance review conducted by. 

"How's Agnes doing?" she asked, tossing a quick look behind Remus toward the bar. 

"She's great," Remus said. "Really good on bar, I hardly have to help her along at this point." 

"Good," Lily said candidly, sticking her clipboard down on the table in front of her. "You're looking a lot better." 

"I'll feel a lot better when this is finished with," Remus said, eyeing the clipboard between them. 

Lily waved that off. "Standard procedure," she said as if she hadn't avoided this very assignment until she couldn't anymore. "First off, how would you rate your performance?"

Remus gave her a face. "Please don't make me do this." 

"I have to," she said, then lowered her voice to an exaggerated whisper. "_Say anything_."

Remus tilted his head back and forth, dying inside a little. "I think I've a knack for training," he raised, "which I'd hope for, given that I'll hopefully be teaching a room full of students down the line." 

"Well, would you look at that?" Lily said, nodding toward her clipboard. "I put that down, too." 

Remus leaned forward a little in his seat. "What else do you have there?" he asked, trying to get a peek at the sheet from upside down.

"No peeking," Lily said, and Remus sat back in his seat again, biting back a smile. "For positives, I put down that you run a tight ship when you're shift lead—" Remus glanced up at the ceiling, thinking of the dishes in back he really should have already gotten somebody started on, "—you're punctual—"

"A little too."

"—No such thing on this," Lily said, gesturing to the sheet in front of her, "you're keen to switch a shift or two around to help out where need be, your customer service has been consistent, if not better the longer you've been with us."

Remus fought hard not to scrunch his nose up through her list, tipping his head to her. "Thank you," he said, giving a smile. "The antique mall got me prepared for some of it, but this is the first I've done something where you have to be speedy _and_ talkative at once." 

"Well, I've no negatives concerning that, so as far as I'm concerned, you're balancing both just fine," Lily said.

"But there are negatives," Remus raised, bracing himself for the other shoe to drop. 

"There are, and honestly, this one is dire," she said frankly, showcasing what was left of the welt on her right forearm that by extension had been caused by him. 

Remus relaxed his shoulders a little. "Does it say anything on there about how sorry I was and still am about that?" he asked, nodding toward her clipboard. 

"Oh, I heard you, but I'll ask that you keep your lyrical observations to yourself when I'm holding scalding tea," Lily reiterated, her pointed look losing force by the second. 

Remus bit his lower lip amidst a budding smile. "I'll do my best." 

Lily gave him a smile, and then that sort of petered off. "I have to level with you, there's an actual negative on here," she said, lowering her voice. "I do have to put down something that we can call a goal, something to work on that we then talk about at your next review, and so on, and you are getting a little too laxed with your breaks." 

Having not seen this one coming, Remus tried not to visibly flinch. "Am I?"

"It isn't only you," Lily mentioned. "You guys are all pretty well on it when it comes to clocking in and out for your shifts, but breaks are where the ball gets dropped, or you'll— the general you, but also you— will remember to clock out but not back in, and sometimes it's as if nobody clocks in or out at all, and that causes a lot of problems up the ladder, and I don't want Rosemerta coming down here and accusing me of running a slave labour trade again." 

Remus gave Lily a feeble frown. "When did that happen?" 

"Mm, right before I left," Lily said with a tight smile. "You're all far too cozy around here, and I'll admit it, I let you all get there, but no more of that. Rosmerta's a gem, but she's a fright when she wants to be, and oh, did she want to be that day." 

Remus nodded, and as much as he would have liked to say something along the lines of 'I will absolutely work on that,' he saw it becoming a problem down the line. "I understand what you're saying, but sometimes I feel like a shit just sitting there in the back while there's a surprise line up happening up front," he said. "So, I'll be honest, in those cases, I'm still going to hop on the floor, but I will set an alarm at the start of my break so I don't miss either of my times." 

Lily looked as if she really did try to hold in a smirk, but she gave that up fairly quickly. "I love that you're straight up telling me that you'll be continuing to shirk your breaks, but you wouldn't be you if you didn't, so I can't even be that mad about it," she said. "And really, forgetting to clock in or out for breaks is nowhere near the worst thing I've had to put down on one of these before, so don't worry about it because this isn't where the world ends." 

Remus gave her another nod for that, hoping that the list of positives would outweigh the negative. "I really will work on it, and I'm sorry it led to Rosemerta coming down on you," he said. 

Lily shook her head, splaying her hands open on the table. "It is what it is," she said. "Now, with that out of the way, we've come to the exciting part; you have earned yourself a raise." 

Remus perked up there, but Lily lifted a halting hand and spoke again, lowering her voice a bit. "It's chump change, but it's all they'll let me do at this point," she said, giving a bit of a frown as she turned the clipboard around on the table and pushed it toward him, tapping her forefinger over his new wage, one that Remus went on to read would kick in by his next scheduled pay period. 

Remus looked up at her again and offered a smile for the frown he was getting. "I won't scoff," he said. "A raise is a raise." 

Lily's face broke there and a smile bloomed where the frown just was. "That's that Good Boy Remus that Sirius always wax poetics about," she said. 

"Oh, stop," Remus said, sitting back in his chair a little more. 

Lily did not do that. "I'm going to send Hope and Lyall a fruit basket," she added, a wry smile on her face, "let them know what a good boy they raised."

"Are we finished here?" Remus said, making as if he were about to leave the table. 

"That about wraps it," Lily affirmed. "See? No harm done." 

"Just a little harm to my pride, but that was mostly shot anyway," Remus said. 

Lily gave him a circumstantial frown for that and reached for the clipboard between them. "Well, why don't the two of us make a quick detour into the back and get this scanned, and once the emails are sent off I've a feeling your pride will be doing a little better," she said. 

"Here's hoping," Remus said. "Thank you again." 

Lily waved him off with a tiny scoff. "It wasn't difficult coming up with the words to sell you," she said. "Though, now that I think about it, I'm glad you took over because my disjointed attempt at sounding French would probably have backfired and I could have accidentally sold you off permanently." 

Remus tilted his head to the right. "To a native Parisian, no less," he observed. "I'd have to thank you twice." 

Lily burst out a quick laugh. "Any questions, concerns?" she asked, pointing down at her clipboard.

"I'm sure I'll think of some, but none for right now," Remus said, shrugging his shoulders once to pair with it. 

"And you know what you'll be doing when your half comes around later tonight, yes?" Lily checked. 

Remus tipped his head to her. "Yes, ma'am." 

"Oh, would you look at that, we already have a negative for your next review," Lily returned, pushing out of her seat. 

Remus ducked his head in a laugh and slipped out of his own seat, following Lily around behind the counter and into the backroom. He looked to the pile of dishes by the sink that had accumulated there over the course of the afternoon and reached out his right hand to splay it over the display on their right. 

"I'm going to get to that," Remus mentioned. 

"Honey, you've been training," :Lily said, passing by the display without much of a hitch. "You can get at those when Agnes has gone for the day, it's all good." 

The two of them congregated in front of the computer in back again and sent off all six emails with both his CV and performance review attached, and Lily had been right about one thing; Remus' pride didn't feel so cut when he didn't really have it in him to funnel his worry into whether or not he'd get an answer from any of them, once it was over with all Remus felt was an immense relief over having done something productive in the middle of it all, and Remus wanted to enjoy that feeling for as long as he could have it. 

Remus hadn't bothered with taking his apron off for his short absence from behind the counter, so he was pretty well ready to go when it was all said and done. Lily let herself into the safe and stuffed the deposit into her purse before she picked up a paper bag sitting on the desk and made her way up the hall beside Remus, tossing her key ring a few inches into the air and catching them in the same palm. 

"I'm taking the deposit in, and I'll be back with stir sticks," she announced. 

"What did the trade come to?" Remus asked, reaching over to try and win himself a peek into the paper bag she was carrying. 

"What do we have a thousand of?" Lily returned, holding the bag open. 

Cartons of soy milk was the answer to that one, and Remus gave a knowing hum for that. After not being wholly prepared for the student rally that blew through the shop last fall and rapidly depleted their supply, Lily had been adamant about never letting that happen again, and months on she'd made well on her word on that front. 

Lily went straight for cold bar the moment she got on the floor and stopped in front of Agnes, who was shaking up a tea-lemonade concoction. "I have to step out for a bit, but if I don't make it back in time for the end of your shift, you did great today," she said. 

Agnes' shoulders went up as she gave into a circumstantial smile. "Thank you," she said.

"Guys, stir sticks are coming back with me, keep faith," Lily said to the rest of them. 

Agnes popped the lid off of the shaker in her hands, poured the contents of it into the cold cup in front of her, and looked over her shoulder as Lily made a beeline for the door before she turned to the rest of them. "Her hair," she dragged out, looking to the rest of them milling about. 

"I can't handle it," Elise put in over by the coffee station. "I've paid a lot of money trying to get that colour and voom, and I got neither." 

Remus smirked to that as he checked on the time, found it to be coming on three-thirty, and sent Emmeline on her break. He went for Agnes as Emmeline set off to do a quick lap of the cafe. "You've about a half hour left, so what do you think?" he asked her, "do you want to stay on bar until you're finished or would you like another shot at till?" 

"I'm fine here," Agnes said.

"I had a feeling, but I thought I'd ask," Remus said circumstantially. 

Remus took to floating between Elise at till and Agnes at the bar, starting orders for Elise in the event of a line, and funneling Agnes' way and switching over the coffee roasts when the need arose. He pulled another one of Sirius' moves here and there, slowing down his initial communication with customers and taking a little longer to write on and pass the cups over to Agnes for her sake, but he was happy to note that prepping for drinks that were further ahead in line was something she was beginning to get the hang of. 

Remus felt his mobile buzz in his pocket mid-way through pouring the hot water for a tea, passed it off to the gent waiting for it by the till, and made a quick disappearing act to back. He stopped just inside the hall and pulled his mobile out, and it was a strange feeling, having his stomach drop at not seeing Sirius' name lit up on screen and then quickly rise at seeing '_mum_ lit up on there instead. 

He'd forgotten he'd even sent her the text near the start of his shift. He opened it up, found about double the amount of sax emojis with the added bonus of a few people striking dance poses tacked onto the end, and grinned at he slipped his mobile back into his apron pocket and went back up front. 

He kept up his role as floater until Emmeline returned from her break. "Remember to clock back in," he said when she passed him. 

Emmeline gave him a severe look. "Oh, I got the spiel when I got on," she said, pressing her code into the lesser used till. "You're up for a fifteen, aren't you?" 

That may very well have been the case, but Remus wasn't so interested in sitting in back staring at his mobile screen. "I might take care of the dishes in the back before I do that," he said, then he gestured toward the coffee station. "I switched Pike over about ten minutes ago, there's about fifteen left on the dark roast before that needs a switch, and Agnes is just about finished, so take over for her for now?" 

"Gotcha," Emmeline said. 

Remus went to Agnes from there, offering a smile as he got to her. "I assume you heard that," he said. 

"That I did," Agnes affirmed, passing a cloth over the counter at bar, which Remus really liked to just see happening. 

"Well, in that case, I'm sure a bus is overkill at this point, but do a quick look around and you're all set," he said. "Don't worry about the creamers this time, they've about an hour left in them." 

Agnes nodded, taking the cloth she was using out to wipe down the tables around the shop. Remus slipped into the back from there, stopped in front of the sink, and started on rinsing off the pile from earlier on in the day. He lined up the first dishwasher tray with plates, in-house cups, and carafes before he put in the first load, and started a second tray for some of the stragglers that didn't fit on the first one as Agnes passed him on her way into the backroom.

She headed back up the hall a few moments later sans-apron and with her bag slung over her right shoulder. "Thanks for all your help," she said, stopping by the sink. 

"No problem, you hardly needed any," Remus said. "When's your next shift?" 

"Saturday," she said. "I think it's noon to six?"

"Oh, getting you started on preclose, good idea," Remus presumed. "Well, I close that night so I'll be around for about half of it." 

"OK, see you then," she said. 

"Do you have a code yet?" Remus checked. 

Agnes shook her head. "No, she told me to write my time down in the book back there." 

"Perfect," Remus said, two of his questions answered in one. "See you Saturday." 

The dishwasher slowed to a stop not long after Agnes headed out and Remus swapped that load out with the second one, then ended up pausing to stare at the time on his mobile once again. 

He was closing in on an afternoon without having heard a thing from Sirius, and that hadn't been a common occurrence since— Remus clocked it, early December at least. At this point, he'd have settled for anything; a joke, a random thought bubble, a blunt if a little bitchy take on any one person or thing that got stuck in Sirius' crossfire, the complete lyrics of _Sex on Fire_ copied, pasted, and sent along to him; anything that would give him a sense of normalcy.

Remus stuck his mobile away with a long intake of breath and reached to lift the tray of clean dishes to run it up front, but stopped short when Lily appeared at the top of the hall again. 

"OK, crisis averted and I am officially done," Lily said, stepping over to him. "Do you need anything before I head out?" 

"An anvil," Remus replied, perching the tray of dishes on top of the dishwasher. 

"What?" Lily asked, blinking up at him. 

Remus shook his head. "Nothing, I'm fine," he said. 

Lily took in a slow, pondering breath through her nose. "Still nothing?" she asked.

"No, and I'm not supposed to be moping otherwise you'll have to kick my arse, and you could do it, too," Remus said. "You've years of Zumba behind you, while I've got zero training to speak of." 

"Well," Lily said, a coy smile on now, "our class did just wrangle ourselves a float at Pride and if you'd just come to some of the classes, you could be up there with me getting some training in—" 

"I'm going to stop you right there," Remus said. "No one wants to see that." 

"I could poll a room and everyone in it would say they want to see that," Lily returned. 

Remus picked up the tray of dished and went around Lily, heading up front and away from her trilling behind him. "I'm not doing it," he said. "I'll look like a tree blowing in the wind with these limbs flying out at all angles."

"Boo on you," Lily sent him with a finger prodded at his back. 

She said her farewells to the girls and headed on her way while Remus brought the tray in his hands over to cold bar and started emptying it from there, sticking cups and plates back into their respective cupboards behind the menu boards. 

He looked over at Emmeline once he had an empty tray left. "You're preclose," he observed, sticking his hands in his apron pocket. 

"That's me," Emmeline said. "Bit of a change of pace, but I'm liking it." 

Remus nodded, held off for a moment of hesitation, and then bit the bullet. "Are you at all interested in splitting some of that?" he asked. "I could take of sanitizing, if you'd like."

Emmeline looked rather chuffed about the proposition, whether or not she clued into the fact that Remus was really more looking for a hands-on task to sink himself into. "Go for it," she said. "I've got floors when you're done there." 

Remus felt a wave of newfound appreciation for bright and bubbly Emmeline and even more so for her unrealized role in his distraction methods. He began with the syrup bottles, pulling each one out of the two plastic staircases between bar one and two and set the bottles in two rows in front of the lesser used bar so they would be out of the immediate way but close enough for Emmeline to use if need be. 

"I can wipe them down since I'm here," Emmeline offered, pulling a new cloth out of the sanitizer bucket. 

"Great, thanks," Remus said, picking up the two syrup staircases in each hand and moving them into the back. 

Since the two pieces were large enough to take up one tray, Remus lay them down on their sides and played a game of tetris to fit them onto the same one, and shut it away in the dishwasher, pressing start on the machine and roaring it to life. He brought the second tray up front with him and filled it up with the any and all portable containers that needed a good rinse cycle, and carted that load into back again. 

Though Remus had been looking for a somewhat time-consuming task, he sort of knew this one was a bit of a bust on that front. While the act of running every piece of equipment at both hot and cold bar had the potential to stretch to forty-five minutes if you were going fairly slowly at it, Sirius had managed to get the task down to twenty, and thus, Remus knew all about the tricks to trimming the task down to less than half the expected time, but he strove for a happy medium here, taking his time to line the trays up a bit slower than he might otherwise go, 

He moved onto cold bar once hot bar was shiny and new, lining up the newly emptied tray with metal syrup holders and wiping the area down before he totted that load into the back. 

He felt his mobile go as he got to the sink and stuck the tray down on top of the dishwasher to pull it out and check the text that had come in. He let out a resounding huff reading Lily's name instead of the one he wanted to see, stuffed it away in his pocket again, and pulled down hard on the door to the dishwasher, feeling far too transparent about his behaviour. Really? He couldn't go one fucking afternoon without hearing from him? He needed a hobby, and badly at that because this was officially getting pathetic. 

He lifted the clean tray out of the dishwasher and just as he did it one of the shiny, renewed milk pitchers rolled over the right edge of the tray and went careening to the floor unnecessarily, and Remus let go of the tray roughly, slamming it down on top of the one already on top of the dishwasher, and stooped to pick the pitcher up before he sent it flying into the sink. 

Remus stopped there, achingly thankful that nobody had been in the immediate area to witness him throwing a tantrum over a milk pitcher of all things, and paused for a quick breather, taking the time to rewash the pitcher by hand. He placed it back into the tray with the rest of the clean dishes, balanced that tray on the edge of the sink as he swapped in the load he brought back with him, and shut the door to the dishwasher much softer than before, pressing start. 

He felt a pang of guilt over blatantly ignoring Lily's text, pulled his mobile back out of his apron pocket to give it the attention he thought he should have shown it already, and opened a picture of an astoundingly fluffy chow-chow perfectly centered in the frame. Remus saved it to his own phone and forwarded it off to Sirius before he even knew he was really doing it, but when he realized he had done it, he lifted his left hand and pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead, feeling like the biggest dolt this side of the city.

Remus dropped his hand from his forehead as his mobile buzzed in his right one and took a moment before he pressed his thumb over Sirius' name and stared down at the brief, but altogether perfect little response that was waiting there for him. 

_9000/10!!!!!!!!!_

Remus read the reply four times over before deducing there was nothing left to deduce from it. He remained still as he pondered what his next move should be. Where do you go next after sending a picture of an undeniably fluffy dog hours after a fight? Remus didn't know, but in the end, he didn't really have to come up with something when another text came in and stopped his rapidly beating heart in its tracks. 

_when's your break?_

Remus typed and sent '_Give me five_' before he stuffed his mobile away again and grabbed the tray to cart it up to the front. 

He placed it at cold bar and rapidly placed everything on it back in their spots he looked to Emmeline standing there at hot bar watching him while he did it. "You good?" she asked. 

"Oh, yep, great," he said. "Just—I might actually go for that fifteen once the last load is finished, if that's alright with you." 

"Yes, it is alright with me if you take the fifteen that you're scheduled for," Emmeline replied after a beat. 

"Great, thank you," Remus said, taking the empty tray to the back He waited the thirty seconds more that it took for the dishwasher to wind down and flung the door open, pulling the tray out and totting it back up front. 

Next up was probably the fastest bus Remus had done in ages, but the fact that he even bothered when he figured a lot of other people wouldn't have in his shoes had him thinking that another one of Lily's sentiments from earlier on rang true; he wouldn't be him if he didn't feel like it was necessary to do, and he wouldn't be him if he didn't feel the push and pull of obligation from all sides. Remus brought the total of two in-house mugs he accumulated over his quick lap of the cafe into the back and left them at the sink for now, hoping Lily would turn out to be right about a few more of her earlier sentiments. 

He went into the backroom and had Sirius on speed dial before he reached the desk. By some wonderful pardon, he only had to wait one ring before the line picked up. "Hey, one sec," he heard, Sirius' voice coming through with a bit of commotion going on in the background. Remus didn't say anything to that, mostly because he hadn't even thought to text him first, but the hooplah died down in the background before Sirius' voice rang out rather faux-sweetly. "Oh, no no, you're welcome, really. I'll be here all day." 

Remus' eyebrows did a slow crawl up his forehead. "What was that?" 

Sirius gave a '_tch_'. "I was trying to get out of there but I got stuck holding the door open for a group of quacks strolling on in like I'm paid to do it." 

Remus' mouth quirked as he took a seat at the desk. "Where are you?" he asked. 

"Some store Andromeda wanted me to see," Sirius said, which reminded Remus of the plans Sirius had for the day that he'd completely forgotten about until just right then. 

"Found anything you like so far?" he asked. 

There was a click of a lighter before Sirius hummed noncommittally and exhaled a few beats later. "This one's a bit frou-frou for me, but the last one we checked out was a treat." 

"Yeah?" Remus prompted, running his pinky finger over the bottom corner edge of his mobile. 

Sirius hummed around another haul. "Took a few snaps for you to have a look at, in case I ever feel the need to go back there and pick up a thing or two," he said, and Remus' stomach took to a little twirl over that little piece of information, "I know you don't want another Ludewig sitch." 

Remus breathed out a laugh for an end cap like that one. "Certainly not." 

"I mean, to be clear," Sirius added, "_I_ wouldn't mind another Ludewig sitch, but you don't, so that's the standstill we're in." 

Remus let his head fall back a bit. "Impressive analogy," he said. 

"Only the best for the professor," Sirius said, and then a few beats of nothing followed. "OK, Remus? I just what to say that whatever that was, I shouldn't have kicked out for it. Let's just get that out in the open now."

Remus fiddled with a hang nail on his left ring finger; though for most of the afternoon he was of the same opinion, hearing Sirius own up to it sort of softened his read of it. "I sort of kicked myself out, if we're being honest," he offered. 

"Yeah, and what was that hand thing I did, even?" Sirius raised. "I don't get to toss you out just because I don't like what you're saying; how was that going to help?"

"It's OK, Sirius," Remus said. 

"I don't want this morning to stick out like a sore thumb over everything else, OK?" Sirius said. "We can forget I even asked." 

Remus swallowed. "I didn't explain myself well at all back there," he said, "and I don't want to pretend it never happened." 

"Remus, I'd really rather you did," Sirius said. "I picked a shit time to drop that on you and I get that; it's what I get." 

"It's not 'what you get,'" Remus said. "This just isn't the time or the way I wanted this to happen." 

"No, I heard that, and the sixteen other reasons so—" There was a few seconds pause where near-silence was all that filtered through the phone. "Wait, you want it to happen?" 

Remus huffed. "Ideally, yes," he said. "Why wouldn't I want to? I'm not saying no, I'm not saying I need space, I'm saying not yet—" 

Remus trailed off when he heard footsteps up the hall and with that he lifted out of the chair and slipped out the back door, winning himself a bit more privacy. "It's going to sound cliché, but it's got nothing to do with you and everything to do with me," he kept on, "and I don't have my shit together enough to make a step this big, and the last thing I want to do is scare you off." 

"On what planet would that ever happen?" Sirius returned. 

"The same one we're on now, Sirius; that's my point," Remus said. "You can't just know that you won't just because you say you won't, and I've scared people off for much less than moving in with them—"

"People, meaning him," Sirius translated. 

"Yeah, him," Remus gave up. "And that's not me saying that you're anything like him, because we both know you're not, but you being so good at this even when it makes almost no sense to me how that happened isn't going to fix the fact that I'm terrified I'm going to send you out the door one way or another, especially now." 

"Why now?" Sirius repeated. "Why would I jump ship now?" 

"Why wouldn't you?" Remus returned. "You didn't ask for this. I've been a moody shit around you all week and I don't know when that's going to let up because I'm fucking livid that this had to happen to me right now of all times when this summer was supposed to be ours." 

"You don't think I'm just as livid as you are?" Sirius raised. "I was ready to kick down every door in this city until somebody got us answers, and we're all lucky it didn't come down to that. Your snark hasn't got a chance against me, so jot that down." 

Remus swallowed around the lump in his throat. "It's not just the clusters," he said. "I feel like I steamrolled us back into this place where we keep missing each other by a hair." 

"Why would you have?" Sirius asked. "Why's it on you?" 

"Our timing has been fucking terrible lately," Remus said, giving out a humourless laugh. "I mean, I bought the tickets for our trip the same fucking day you got word about your mother, so what kind of sick timing was that? It's like we're being bulldozed over for trying to look forward." 

Sirius didn't speak for long enough that Remus had to pull his mobile away from his ear to make sure their call was still going, and it was lucky that he put it back against his ear when he did or else he'd have missed the moment Sirius chose to weigh in. 

"I had a friend in grade school whose aunt, uncle, and grandfather all died within three months of each other," he said, and Remus' eyes took on a whole new shape. "I didn't really get it at the time, not that I'm really going to stand here and pretend I get it now any more than I did then, but when her grandfather went too I remember thinking, 'oh, Jesus Christ, really? Now?'"

Remus didn't dare speak in the pause Sirius gave, but thankfully the pause wasn't long enough to warrant it. "I didn't like that she was crying all of the time and I sort of hated that I didn't really get it, but I didn't know that then, I was just a ball of anger that had nowhere to go," he went on, "but when I've thought about it since, it's obvious to me that timing is a fucking bitch, and yeah, I could just tell you that shit happens and you need to get over it, but I'm not going to say that. I don't think you and I are getting punished just for going and living our lives, and even if by some unfair, mystical chance we are getting beat by an invisible hand, then we owe it to ourselves to just keep fucking going. We deserve it, even." 

Remus shut his eyes and bit down on his lower lip, willing himself to keep it together when he still had half a work shift to complete. "Still with me?" Sirius asked a few beats later. 

"Of course, but you slugged me really hard with that one," Remus returned, rubbing at his nose with his free hand. 

Sirius gave out a breath that might've been a laugh if the situation warranted one, and thankfully, it seemed Sirius had the wits about him to know it didn't. "You don't have to move in with me," he said, "but I need you to start swapping 'I' out with 'we.'"

"What?" Remus asked, dropping his free hand from his nose. 

"I've been saying nothing but 'we' since Monday," Sirius said, "but you keep isolating yourself in this, and you keep saying 'I' like I'm not right there. I'm in this, too; I know I don't feel it the way you do, but I still feel it." 

Remus picked a spot on the ground between his feet to stare at, but he couldn't make out many of the divots in the asphalt with the film over his eyes. "I didn't realize I was doing that," he said. 

"You don't have to let anyone else into this, I'm fine if it's just you and me," Sirius said. "But there is a me and he's sort of a giant man-baby, so let's just jot that down, too, while we're at it." 

Remus succumbed to a weak laugh there. “OK, you have to stop for a bit,” he said. 

“And why should I?” Sirius returned. 

“Because I'm welling up at work because of you,” Remus told him. 

“Is this a half or a fifteen?” Sirius asked. 

Remus frowned. “Fifteen."

“Who's on right now?” Sirius asked. 

“Elise is closing with me,” Remus forwarded. “Emmeline's here 'till six, and the new girl's gone for the day.” 

Sirius gave another, but slightly longer 'pfft.' “As if either E's are going to give a flying fuck if you take a few minutes longer on the phone,” he said. 

“I know, but I've been too laxed about my breaks lately,” Remus admitted, scrunching his face up a little. 

“I'm sorry, but was Elise the one who walk half an hour out of her way for fucking Chinese on one of her breaks?” Sirius raised. “You're allowed to take a phone call.” 

Remus worked his mouth around a reluctant smile. “I should head back in soon, though,” he said. 

“Fucking model shift lead over here,” Sirius returned. “How's the newbie, anyway? Did she end up firing off on you out in the back room yet?” 

“No, but there's still time,” Remus sent him, a smile budding at his lips. 

“Good, glad to hear it,” Sirius said breezily. “So, what do you think? Are you sensing there'll be months of sexual tension between the two of you until you burst and fireworks go off?” 

Remus gave a wistful sigh. “Only on my end this time.” 

“You little shit,” Sirius sent him, the effect marred by the laugh that came with it. “I'll get you for that one.” 

“Can't wait,” Remus said, working his mouth around a smile. “You're stalling and I do need to head back in.” 

Sirius huffed. “Am I that obvious?” 

“Just a bit.” 

“Fine, go milk that conscience while you still have it,” Sirius said loftily. “We're going to be at this a little while longer from what I can tell, but I could have Andromeda drop me by there when we're done, just putting that out there.” 

“Yeah?” Remus asked, his heart rate picking up. 

“Yeah,” Sirius echoed, dropping the airy tone to where it felt lovely just to hear the affirmation for what it was. “Get back to work, slacker.” 

Remus pressed a huff directly into the phone and was still grinning when he ended the call. The breath Remus took in before opening the back door felt like the first breath clean breath after swallowing water, and he waited a moment before he let himself back into the backroom.


	6. 6.

The first thing Sirius does after getting one of Remus' best huffs to date is bask in the relief that washes over him and how easy it all of it still feels. The second thing he does is puff up a bit at not having lost his touch; managing to get Remus to tear up, laugh, _and_ huff in the span of one phone call was not half bad considering where they last left off. The third thing he does, and this is more important than even the first two, is embark on the face journey that immediately comes after receiving three little red hearts to top off Remus' regular huff-and-hang-up routine. 

He sends three back to him, takes a long look at the pixeled version of the two of them cozy and smiling up at him from his home screen, and lights up another one, giving himself until the cigarette runs out to come up with a plan B. Only this time around, the underlying theme he keeps to is that he's got to include Remus in all decision making going forward, and this time, Sirius can't be dropping bombs on him without any lead up. 

Andromeda comes looking for him the same time he crushes the end of his cigarette with his boot, which incidentally is right around the time Sirius has jotted down notes for two plans that coincide with each other swimmingly in his opinion. so it's no surprise that he learns quite quickly that he doesn't just feel like a million pounds; he must look like it, too. 

“Can't have gone too badly, if you're smiling like that,” she observes, shouldering her purse and stepping up beside him on the curb.

Sirius tips his head to her. “I feel much less like I cliff-dove and didn't have a parachute for landing,” he raises, closing the note app on his mobile and tucking it away altogether, “and on that note, I wish I'd caved sooner because he's fucking adorable and I'm a lost cause.”

“I wish you had, too,” Andromeda sends him, rolling back on the balls of her feet, “and then maybe you wouldn't have moped all afternoon.” 

Sirius gives her a look. “Pretty sure I didn't do that."

“Pretty sure you haven't told me the verdict yet,” Andromeda returns. 

“He's definitely not moving in,” Sirius reports, putting his head on a tilt, “and I definitely made the whole thing about me when it wasn't.” 

“Well, I could have told you that,” Andromeda chimed. 

Sirius reels back. “Could have,” he repeats, looking round for a moment before including a random passerby on their street corner, “_could have_, she says.” 

The man passing has nothing to say for or against the matter, though he does speed up to make it past the two of them, which only adds to Sirius' very recent upswing in mood. Andromeda waits the two-point-five seconds it takes for the man to get far enough away, biting her own lip out of amusement. “All I said was there had to be more to it than just you,” she said, lifting her hands evasively. “Remus will wax poetic about you to whoever will give him a second to.”

"Mm, you're a little naive," Sirius tells her. 

Andromeda lifts her hands. "Just a second ago I was right and now I'm naive," she says. "I can't keep up." 

“I hate that you were right, too, you know that?” Sirius lobs at her. 

“Oh, I'm sure you are just on principle,” Andromeda returns. 

“Not only that,” Sirius maintains. “If it actually was about me then maybe I'd be able to do something about it, but it's bigger than me; he's literally afraid to catch himself being happy, and I'm going up against the ripple effects of the actions of a sociopath so maybe you could go just a bit easier on me, considering I've got my work cut out for me?” 

Andromeda takes long breath in and reaches over to pat Sirius soundly on the back. “Mmkay, change of plans,” she declares, “we're going to put a pause on this errand for now since your head's clearly not in it, we'll get some pub food, and by the end of our pints you'll have remembered why he's worth it.” 

“Oi,” Sirius sends out, “when did I say he's not? I was _just_ making a plan for this, thank you--” 

Andromeda smiles tightly, tapping Sirius' right arm with the points of her nails. “D'you," she starts, "remember how the last plan worked out?” 

“Plans that include his input, at every step,” Sirius digs in. “I'm literally making room for his shit, right now, as we speak.”

Andromeda barely bats an eye at Sirius' hands flying about accompanying his point, instead she gives him a squeeze. “Good, then,” she says. "He's done the same for you."

"I'm aware, yes," Sirius returns. 

Andromeda sticks her head down on his shoulder and turns it toward him. “Still want to get a bite?”

“Of course I do,” Sirius says plainly. Andromeda smiles brightly. “Want to come break a Welsh bloke's legs with me when we're done there?” 

“Listen; yes, I do,” she replies, “only we can't open a venue from a jail cell, so let's stick to tearing him to pieces and hope that karma does it's thing.” 

Sirius scoffs. “Karma's never quick enough,” he says of it. 

“Oh, but is she sweet when she comes 'round,” Andromeda says, linking her left arm in with Sirius' right. “Come on, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you hate it in there.” 

“Literally everything about it is giving me hives,” Sirius replies, allowing himself to be led back in the direction of Andromeda's car. 

“Listen, I knew this one was going to be a long shot,” Andromeda returns, “and I only brought you here because the owner's a peach and would've given us a wicked deal on a furnishing the entire place—”

Sirius flaps his free arm back in the direction of the store. “In what world does that place have anything to do with our theme?” he raises. “There's no air in there, first off, and secondly, I took a seat on one of their chairs and I couldn't tell whether I was sitting on a park bench or not; that's how stiff it is in there, and is that the atmosphere you want our valued patrons to be in?” 

“I don't think you're thinking about the fact that we have to cater to everybody, including people with deep pockets,” Andromeda says. “I know you've been out of that world for a while now, but I just want to remind you that hoity-toits don't typically like to sit on threadbare chairs with beer stains all over them, Sirius.”

Sirius knows that she has a point in there somewhere, but he comes up with one of his own quite quickly. “I don't want hoity-toits anywhere near the building, is the thing,” he raises. 

“You'll want them spending wads at the bar and lining our tip jars, though,” Andromeda mentions, letting go of Sirius' arm as they make it to the car. 

Sirius heads round to the passenger side, pointing to her over the roof of the car. “This was never going to be a simple cocktail bar, so I don't know where you're getting that image from,” he returns, waiting with his hand on the door handle for her to unlock it. 

Andromeda presses the button on her key ring and slips into the drivers seat as Sirius gets in on his side. “We might have to think about dividing this into sections,” she says once she's sitting. “For instance, you could take care of the lounge side of things because I see what you're going for and it works for that, but maybe I can handle the bar, and the both of us could work together on the stage seating.”

Sirius looks to Andromeda, looks out the front window of the car, and then back at her in a quick second. “OK, I don't hate that,” he admits. 

Andromeda reaches over to slap Sirius' right knee three times in quick succession. “That's a good sport,” she says, before she straightens herself out, buckles herself in, and sticks the key in the ignition.

They do go get a bite, where they weave in and out of shoptalk, general talk, and Remus talk over a basket of chips and a pint, except Andromeda's treat is a traditional stout whereas Sirius' is a blended daiquiri with a tiny green umbrella as a sprinkle of fringe, but he's celebrating for two tonight. And not that Sirius doesn't already know that all the stretching and bending this way and that way to make Remus comfortable hasn't been worth it, Andromeda wasn't wrong; Sirius feels grade A rejuvenated once he gets to the bottom of his glass, but that might have something to do with the double shot of rum making everything fuzzy around the edges. 

It's closing in on seven thirty when Andromeda drops him off, and yes, the rum may have mostly warn off by now but not so for Sirius' spirit; that, he's going to hold onto so long as he has the hands to make it happen. 

Sirius unbuckles himself in a quick click. "Thanks," he half-chimes, half-sings. 

“Tell him I love him for me?” she requests.

Sirius smirks, reaching for the door handle. “Oh, I will just to get him flustered,” he says. He steps out of the car, shuts the door behind him, and turns back to lean his arms on the window ledge. “Thursday?”

Andromeda tosses a glance up in thought. “Probably fine, but I'll get back to you on it,” she returns. 

Sirius drums his right hand against the side of the car in allowance, straightens up, and heads up the path toward the door, giving a quick glance into the shop window and spotting Remus near-immediately behind the counter closing down one of the coffee blends for the night, and snorts over the fact that Remus' height makes it so that his curly head o' hair sticks out above just about everything behind the counter. His smile widens as he realizes Remus is bobbing to something playing inside, suddenly feels he _has_ to know and heads in through the shop door, and immediately feels that much sunnier hearing _Rescue Me_ playing out over the speakers. He saunters his way up to the till, doing a bit of shoulder-swaying to match Remus' little dance of his own. Remus passes a cloth over the coffee station and shakes the cloth out over the bin with a flourish to pair with one of Fontella's high notes playing out, and Sirius is fucking _weak._

Remus seems to realize he may just have a bit of an audience for he checks over his shoulder, freezes on the spot, and steps over to the till with a sheepish smile on, and if Sirius has a guess, Remus is now sandwiched tightly between a bit embarrassed and happy to see him. 

“By all means, don't stop on account of me,” Sirius insists. 

Remus gives him a more pointed smile there, straightens his neck out, and sticks the cloth aside, simply not obeying Sirius' wish. “I didn't know when you'd be coming, so I _just_ sent Elise on her break,” he tells him. “I can take mine when she's back, though.” 

Sirius shakes his head quickly. “I'm fine to wait,” he says. “I've got all night.” 

Remus' shoulders ease about three inches, but any easing is worth it in Sirius' books. “Would you like your drink while you wait?” he asks, splaying his left hand over the venti cold cups. 

“You know I would,” Sirius returns. 

Remus plucks a cup off of the stack, eyes the bar once before looking back at him, and Sirius takes the hint, strolling over toward the hand-off station. He goes a little further than Remus likely meant, slips up to the ledge overlooking the left hand side of the bar, and leans his arms over it, taking in the show in front of him as Remus pumps the many different syrups it takes to whip up Sirius' concoction without having to look at what he's doing. 

“How was the quest?” he asks. 

Sirius readjusts his focus, nodding lightly. “It was good," he says. "We didn't get very far today, but we've come to a compromise on what our vision is, and we're going to reconvene next week.” 

“Give me the vision,” Remus requests, queuing the shots for his drink. 

Sirius pulls his arms off of the ledge to better use his hands. “See, what I want, is the exact crossroads between Black Dog meets Barfly meets Madame Arthur,” he raises, pausing when Remus' face lights up. 

“That's so many meetings,” he says of it, shaking his head. “And so _you_ that it's perfect.” 

“Right?” Sirius gives out, pumped to have an ally in Remus. “It's not farfetched to think that I'm not the only person who'd thrive in that atmosphere, and I really don't think it's that niche?”

Remus gives him a bit of a frown there, pulling the fridge open to get the milk out. “She doesn't agree, then?” he asks, pouring the milk to the exact line Sirius likes it at.

“She does, to a point,” Sirius mentions, “but she still thinks like a rich bitch, you know?”

“Says the richest bitch I know,” Remus quips, bringing the cup over to the ice bucket and used half of the smallest scoop for the little ice Sirius is quite partial to. 

“Right, but,” Sirius says, taking the hit like a champ, “she's under the impression no one with a ton of coin to spend will even set foot in the place if we don't somewhat cater to them, but either way we'll make it work. We'll just assign ourselves our sections and decorate them as we see fit. In the end I think that could work in our favour, having different atmospheres throughout the space. I've seen it work before; there's a three level pub that's got your regular bar and seating deal, upstairs is a dance floor, and down the hall a little from that is a fucking library, and that place is still around, still going strong.” 

Remus reached for a lid and stuck it on top of the drink before walking it over to him. “That's a very good point,” he said, plunking the drink down on the ledge in front of Sirius. “But also, eat the rich.” 

“Love that,” Sirius observes, plucking a straw out of the bin near them and popping the paper off of it. 

The door to the shop opens up and brings in a block at a brisk pace, clearing the distance between the door and the till in two to three step and calling Remus back over that way. “Hi there,” he says with his I'm-a-model-employee smile, stepping up to till, “what can I get started—”

“Espresso, triple,” the man cuts in. 

Sirius watches Remus' eyes drop to the till screen before he speedily plugs the order in. “Alright, that'll be—”

“Cre-dit,” the man says, making it two, distinct syllables, and as far as Sirius is considered, that man is now the enemy. 

Remus' prompts the machine, gestures vaguely toward the pinpad, and brings the smallest sized cup over toward the bar. He sticks it under the spout, flickers his gaze over toward the man in the midst of paying as he sets up the shots, and puts his gaze on Sirius for a moment, grinning brightly. 

“Well, I'll just go fuck myself, then,” he says under his breath.

Sirius breaks there, setting his forehead down on the ledge in front of him and succumbing to a fit. He comes up for air right around the time the man wanders over to wait by the bar, and he can practically see Remus willing the espresso machine to pour quicker by the way he's staring at it and biting down hard on his lower lip to keep his own amusement in. 

When the remaining six seconds are up, Remus picks up the cup and brings it over to slide it over to the man, but it's snatched from his hand before he can place it on the counter. 

“Yeah, or you could just wait next time,” Sirius sends him. 

Remus steps back and quickly busies himself with rinsing off the espresso tray in Sirius' peripheral while the man only scoffs and heads for the door. “Tell me you decafed him,” Sirius says, watching the man leave through narrowed eyes.

“I did not do that, no,” Remus returns. 

Sirius huffs, looking to him again. “You aren't doing anybody any favours letting the little powers you have go to waste.”

“Alright, keep your voice down,” Remus said in an undertone, glancing around the cafe for any eavesdroppers. 

“Who's he, anyway?” Sirius raises. “What, has he got a breathtaking novel to get to the printers at fucking eight on a Thursday night; eat me.” 

Remus sets sail on a wonderful face journey, and then turns away from him altogether as the door brings in another customer, and heads over to meet a different man at the till. This exchange, from what Sirius can decipher, is closer to the pleasant side of things judging by Remus' body-language throughout their short conversation. Remus rings the man up and brings a grande cup over to the bar, where Sirius is still lounging, sipping intermittently on his drink. 

Remus tops the man's drink off with water and leaves very little room at the top, brings the drink over to the hand-out station with a controlled hand, and it's apparent the man who'd ordered the drink was watching that movement, too. “I don't know how you managed that,” he says. “Must take a steady grip.” 

“And how,” Sirius chimes in. 

Remus ducks down and acts as if he's rotating the milk around in the fridge, giving his most recent customer a quick send-off from down below the counter, and only rises to his feet when he knows the coast is clear. Sirius smiles brightly at Remus' pointed look. “Would it really be too much to ask you not to act like you're ten?” he asks. 

"You know the answer to that," Sirius sends him, going for another sip.

“Ruined a perfectly innocent moment, you did.” 

“I believe they're called opportunists in some circles,” Sirius sends him evasively. 

“That's enough out of you,” Remus says, turning his attention back toward the bar. 

Sirius watches him as he closes down bar two for the night, and a smile tugs harder at his lips while Remus lines the grounds drawer with a few teared sheets of paper towel. He gives Sirius a quick smile before dipping into the back and reappears seconds later with a new, dry cloth that he then sets down flat from one end of the espresso tray to the other to effectively catch any wayward drops from there on out. Remus lets out a tiny breath of accomplishment when all is said and done, or shall Sirius say, one more box checked off of Remus' ongoing list. 

Remus looks over to Sirius grinning at him. “Yes?” 

Sirius shakes his head easily. “I just like watching you work.” 

Remus shifts on his feet a little, on the speedway headed to Flustertown. “I would've thought you were gloating over my implementing one of your many tricks,” he mentions. 

“Oh, it's a bit of both,” Sirius says. “Won't lie about that.” 

“Well, in that case, I'll have you know that I officially knocked sanitizing down to a half-hour—” Remus paused to smile at Sirius' scandalized gasp, “—but that's as low as I'll probably ever get it; not everyone can be you, unfortunately.”

“Well, your right about that,” Sirius says, “though my greatest apprentice to date deserves all the praise here, I think.” 

“Mm, well, hold onto it,” Remus tells him, pointing toward him, “because I pulled another you a little earlier that I think you'd just love to know about.” 

Sirius pauses the sip he went for. “Tell,” he prompts, already quite puffed out. 

Remus turns more toward Sirius, leaning his right hip up against the bar and ruining Sirius' entire life as he does it. “Well, I was coaching Agnes along on bar, and Stan the Man walks in,” he starts, setting the scene.

“'Course he did,” Sirius says, his eyes fixed on Remus' cocked hip. 

“My thoughts,” Remus returns with a gesture toward him. “And rather than end up in a whirlwind of second or third tries to get the drink right, I decided that it'd be easier for everyone involved if I slipped in there and made the drink for her.” 

Sirius lifts his eyes in a snap, giving out an incredulous noise. “Oh-hoh?” 

Remus nods brightly. “So what I did was,” he adds, walking the fingers on his right hand over the counter beside him, “I walked her through the process so she could learn how to make it herself one day.” 

Sirius' half-gapes, half-grins, his entire body sings. “You shit,” he sends him, pounding his right hand on the surface of the ledge between them, “you absolute—”

“See, if you simply break the drink down into small steps as you go along, the entire thing becomes far less overwhelming,” Remus roasts on, smiling away. “It's so important for a new hire to understand that they shouldn't be afraid of the drink or the man behind it.”

Remus had been right to suggest they live in an unjust world, but just then Sirius' main reason for agreeing with the entire sentiment is for the fact that he can't lean over the ledge and snog the living shit out of Remus while he's at work. Absolutely terrible, unjust circumstances. “I'm going to get you for that one, too,” Sirius supplies, tipping his drink and pointing the end of his straw toward Remus. “You just wait.”

Remus gives him the quickest once-over Sirius ever did see. “I'm counting on it,” he says, glancing over at the shop door as it opens yet again. He heads for the till to meet the newcomer, leaving Sirius wondering why nobody has figured out an easy button to press on when the act of fast-forwarding time was an absolute necessity. 

Remus pours the woman her coffee, hands it over to her, and heads back to him with a different smile on. “So, earlier today,” he says, stepping up by the ledge Sirius is still claiming as his home for now, "Lily was typing out what was intended to be a very professional email, but her finger slipped and made it so she started the whole message off with 'herllo.'”

Sirius sends three quick gusts of a laugh out through his nose before he all but drapes himself over the ledge he's leaning on. “_Herrllo, can you hear me?_” he sings, sultry-slow. 

Remus catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth for a quick smile before he lifts his bright gaze to the ceiling thoughtfully. “_Herllo... is it me you’re looking for?_” he offers at a quieter volume than Sirius would ever go.

Sirius' eyes the ceiling for a moment or two for show, but he knows what the next one's got to be. “_You say goodbye, and I say herllo_...”

Impossibly so, Remus' eyes brighten even more. “_Herllo, herllo,_” he echoes back, then pulls his mouth into a firm line as a gent seated somewhere behind Sirius sends a scoff over to them, apparently not appreciating the free entertainment going on near him. 

Remus sends Sirius a quick smile and nods toward the floor. “Go get us a seat before all the good ones are gone,” he suggests. “Elise should be back on soon enough.” 

Sirius nods valiantly and takes his drink with him, scouting the place for the best spot at their disposal, and immediately heads for the farthest corner booth, picking the side that gives him ample view of the bar from across the room. Remus' guesstimate wasn't far off for Sirius couldn't have been fucking around half-arsed on his phone for longer than ten minutes or so before Remus slipped into the booth across from him, holding a small tea in his right hand and sticking his mobile down on the table between them. 

Remus lifts his tea near his chin and blows on it. “You somehow picked the exact spot Lily chose for my review,” he says before he jolts at the sound of remembrance that Sirius lets out. 

“How'd it go?” he asks, sitting forward. 

Remus eased back into his seat, giving his tea another quick gust. “Good for the most part,” he says, going for a trial sip and seemingly deeming the tea a drinkable temperature. “Mm, so, Lily and I found a few shops that'll be near my faculty building, and we sent a few messages out with the review attached along with my resume, so keep your fingers crossed for me that I hear back from any of them.” 

Sirius blinks. “Bit early for that, isn't it?” 

Remus shrugged a shoulder, setting his cup down on the table in favour of playing with his right thumbnail. “It can't hurt any, can it?” he raises. “If some of those managers have an idea of what the fall is going to look like for them and need someone, then they'll already have someone who's looking for work — and even if they don't know yet, it'd be good to get my name out there for when they do.” 

Sirius splays his hands out on the table. “It's May,” he says. Redundant, sure, when Remus knows the date as well as he does, but as Remus so loved to say, there was a point in there somewhere. “There's so much time between now and when you actually have to start panicking.”

“I know,” Remus says. “I know there's plenty of time, but I really did panic today about everything to do with the fall, and Lily thought I'd feel better about it once I did something productive — and she was right, I felt much better once I sent them out.” 

There's a feeling not unlike heartburn burrowing at the bottom of Sirius' throat over which plans Remus could make from May-onward and which ones he couldn't, but what stops it from setting fully ablaze is the appearance of the word 'productive,' and how closely that coincides with half of his new plan. He just has to get them there. 

Sirius picks his legs up off of the floor and crosses them under him, leaning further into the table. “You've only taken this company into account, besides,” he mentions. “You saw for yourself; can't throw a stone there without hitting a café, so you're going to find something even if every single one of these fools decide to take a pass on you – and that's unlikely, given that you're more than qualified.” 

Remus lifts his tea, half-hiding his tiny smile behind it. “I suppose it'd be one thing if I didn't know the language or have any experience,” he says. “No one's really taking a big risk by going with me, are they.” 

“Exactly,” Sirius says. “And, keep in mind, Andromeda's got quite a network out there, so either way we'll make sure you get work, OK? Say the word and the dream team is on it.”

Remus gives into a grin, his eyes brightening substantially. “Do you think she'd put the word out for me?” he asks. 

Sirius tilts his head back and forth with a faux-thoughtful hum. “'Know' is probably the better word in this case,” he says. “She wanted me to tell you she loves you, by the way. Said it right as she dropped me off.” 

Remus' grin, as predicted, goes right on into sheepish in record time. “She's far too kind to me,” he says, his ears a touch more red than they’d been a moment or two ago. 

Sirius hums blandly. “No, I'd say it's the right amount,” he says, going for a good, long sip of coffee before trying his hand at laying out part one of his plan. “I have two things that I want to get your take on, how are we on time?” 

Remus blinks, glances down at his phone, and has a look. “We've got a while,” he says, looking back up at him curiously.

“Perfect,” Sirius says. “So, while I was doing my collegiate level research—” he pauses, catching Remus hiding another smile behind his tea and pressing on with a renewed fire pulsing in his gut, “I saw something that the more I think about, the more I think we ought to try it. It's nothing funky or weird, and you might get a lot out of it.”

“OK,” Remus prompts him, nodding. 

“Some sufferers say that keeping a log of attacks is helpful for them,” Sirius presses on, taking Remus' saucer-eyes as a very good sign, all things considered, “time of day that one strikes, length of attack, possible triggers, pain level, abortive attempts, loads off stuff. Some of it we're going to be better at and some things we're going to get better at understanding as we go along, but I think that could really help us out here.”

“I like that,” Remus returns. 

“I'd hoped so,” Sirius tacks on. “I wish I could say I came up with it all my own, but that's neither here nor there.” 

“I'll forgive you for stealing someone else's idea,” Remus forwards him with a smile. 

Sirius places a hand over his heart in response. “That's very reasonable of you.” 

Remus knocks his left shoe against Sirius' right boot, and Sirius moves quickly, linking his ankle in with Remus' and pulling it in a little closer to him. “This way, when the appointment comes we'll be able to open the book and literally point to what's happening to you, so maybe you'll feel a bit better knowing that this is only going to help us out,” he says, bringing them back around. “And not only that, you might feel a little more productive in all of this, because while it's true that we can't do that much to stop these, at the very least you might feel like you're doing what you can just by keeping a record going. Like — taking the worry and putting it into something actionable.” 

Remus sucked a breath in through his teeth. “That was a really good finish,” he offers. 

“Thought you might like that,” Sirius says. 

Remus takes another sip of tea, his brow furrowing overhead. “Did you think I wouldn't want to try that out?” he asks. 

Sirius shakes his head. “No, that wasn't it,” he says, “but I don't imagine it'll always be a happy-go-lucky task considering it'll mean that we'll be reliving and rehashing each attack just to get the information down, but maybe we won't be so bamboozled once we start having a better idea of what we're in for when one comes round. We can work together on it since I can't answer all the questions for you, same as you can't answer every one of them either.”

Remus shakes his head this time. “I'm never a good judge of time when I'm in one,” he says, frowning a bit. “It drags on and then all of a sudden I come out of it and time's just jumped ahead.” 

Sirius keeps his expression easy, though he hates that Remus has had enough of them to know that already. “Well, that'll be one of mine then,” he says. “Just like how I can't really rate them for you. There's a scale that a ton of people kept referring to online so I can get us that, and I can always observe how you are during any given one, but you'll have the final say on that. The two of us can piece this all together, I'm not worried about that.”

Remus gives a small breath, deflating in his seat. “Thank you so much for being up for this.” 

“Don't thank me yet,” Sirius halts him. “You haven't heard part two.” 

Remus smiles a little tightly. “What's part two?” he asks, bracing himself. 

Sirius waves him off. “Relax, everything's good,” he says. “Only I hate that I wasn't there for most of your last one and I want to make right on that.”

Remus brow furrows even more, which was decidedly not part of the plan. “I can hardly fault you for working,” he mentions, and strike that; it's the perfect anecdote for Sirius' plan. 

“I know that, which is why I'm thinking about dropping down to part time,” Sirius unveils. "Maybe less, we'll see what I can get away with."

“But,” Remus starts, biting at the left side of his lower lip, “what about Will?” 

“I wouldn't be leaving him completely in the lurch,” Sirius says. “He has plenty of workers who'd gladly take the twenty some-odd hours I'd be giving up, and you know what, Will can eat me if he has a fit over it because you come first and if something happens I can get to you much quicker if I'm not tied up at the shop five nights a week.” 

Remus puts his mouth in a flat line before he speaks. “I don't know if I like you restructuring everything in your life because of me,” he says quietly. 

Sirius shakes his head. “It's not everything, though,” he says. “It's a job that I kept because it was cozy and easy, and I like mostly everybody there, and I was doing Will a favour — and none of those hold a candle to you, so it's the easiest decision.” 

Remus sticks his elbows on top of the table, covering his mouth with two balled up fists, and tossed a quick glance around them before he settled on training a heavy look at him. “Fuck you for saying that here,” he mutters. 

“Well, I wasn't planning on telling you this here, but you said the thing about being productive, and it seemed like the right time,” Sirius defends, automatically going lower for Remus' sake. “Nobody's looking over here, OK? And I'm not bringing this up to start slinging mud again, but if you won’t come stay with me then I think this is the best alternative. I'm not asking you to sacrifice anything here, I know you have to keep working, but I have the privilege in this case and I want to use it right.”

Remus let out a breath as if he'd gone and done a run around the block. “Sometimes I'm sure that I'm going to wake up one day and find out I've made you up completely,” he says, shaking his head. 

“You didn't,” Sirius assures him. “I did lie though, there's one thing I am going to ask of you.” 

Remus breaks there, laughing weakly as he lifts a hand to signal Sirius has the floor. “I want you calling me the second you feel that something's off,” he says. “I can't promise I'll be a block away for every one of them, but I'll be there as soon as I can and I can't know that you need help if you don't tell me that you need it. This part is a two way street, yes?” 

The smile Remus settles on is small, but fuck if it isn't radiant. “Yes,” he echoes, resting his chin in his right hand. “And not to bring this up again to start slinging mud around, but it means the world to me — knowing that you'd have gladly had me stay with you.” 

Sirius nods, his jaw feeling a touch heavier than normal. “In a heartbeat,” he says, “but this is the next best thing, so thank you for not doing a rain dance all over my efforts to assuage myself back into your good graces.”

Remus smirks, lifting his tea to hide his mouth. “Boy, you were never out of them,” he says, and right then and there his alarm blares out. 

“That thing's rigged,” Sirius decides, going for the dregs of his coffee. 

“Unfortunately not,” Remus says, reaching to silence it. “It's five minutes ahead for cases just like this one.” 

“Clever bloke,” Sirius forwards. 

Remus' mouth twists as he pockets his phone. “I'm glad you came by,” he tells him. 

Sirius sets his left elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. “You say that like I'm heading out?” 

A genuine smile replaces the budding one on Remus' lips. “Well, I'd hoped you weren't, but I didn't want to assume any,” he says. 

“Mm, I'm thinking we ought to head to yours?” Sirius raises. “We've been at mine quite a bit lately, wouldn't be on to not use a perfectly nice flat if we have the option.”

“Can't argue a point as good as that one,” Remus says, slipping out of the booth. He stands to his full height, stops for a moment, and whisps his right hand over the corner of the table, looking down at Sirius curiously. “If you'd rather not hang around here, there's always the mat key?” 

Sirius shakes his head, reaching to pull a pair of tangled earbuds out of his right pocket of his jeans that he'd smushed in there hours earlier. “I'm fine here,” he says, lifting the tangled monstrosity. Remus eyes it with a smile and lifts his hands as if to say either option was alright with him, but before he gets any further from the table Sirius swirls his empty cold up at him. “Be a dear and fetch me another?” 

Remus eyes him plainly. “You're coming up and getting it yourself,” he says of it. 

“Can't, too weak,” Sirius insists.

“Then at the bar it will sit,” Remus gives him nonchalantly, heading back to work. 

Sirius does go get his refill himself, but he makes himself scarce when he's well aware that the last hour of a shift is, in layman's terms, crunch-time. He starts up a program on his phone, checks over his shoulder once to be sure Remus isn't looking, and sticks his feet up on the booth across from him, settling in comfortably before pressing play. 

The next time he looks up it's mostly due to the fact that a looming figure passes by his field of vision, which is to say that he looks up just as Remus heads past his booth while sweeping the floor and stops long enough to flick Sirius' right boot as he goes by. Sirius takes his feet off of the cushions across from him and pluncks them on the floor below him, and Remus looks back once with one eyebrow crooked and a haughty little smile on, making the whole charade worth it. 

Remus collects all of the dirt and grime into a pile before he sweeps all of it up, disappears into the back, and returns with the mop bucket. Sirius pauses his program but leaves his earbuds in as he watches Remus take on a dual task of moping and pausing by the stragglers left in the shop to let them be aware of the fact that closing time was minutes away. Sirius has been known to dip into the back and stick _Closing Time_ on to send the message home to whoever was still slow-sipping their drinks minutes to close, but unsurprisingly Remus doesn’t have that sort of thing in him. 

Sirius has also been known to snap the lock on the door a few minutes early every now and again, but Remus waits until the clock strikes nine on the dot before he goes to lock up, the absolute madman. Remus heads back over to the mop to finish up the last of the floors, and then it's onto cashing the till out. Sirius watches Remus bopping along to the Supreme's playing overhead as he stands over the cash drawer counting bills, and while there was a certain, perhaps inherent truth to love being a thing that couldn't be hurried, Sirius could certainly get away with making it so he could get some a little sooner. 

Sirius slips out of his booth and heads right for Remus, leaning his forearms on the counter between the two of them and waiting there until Remus looks up at him. “Can I help you?” he asks. 

“You sure can, but not here,” Sirius says in an undertone. “I'm hurting over here, so you best be quick about this, tu compris?” 

Remus gives a glance to the left to locate Elise, but she's nowhere to be found for the moment. “I could finish a lot quicker if you're forearms weren't right there throwing me off count,” he returns, gesturing to his half-counted till. 

Sirius smirks, quite thankful he'd gone and picked a sleeveless top at random. He pushes himself off of the counter and wanders over to the bar, humming and hawing as he goes, then stops altogether when Remus flips him the bird high above the counter so he'll really see it. Sirius snorts, brightens as Elise carts a tray of dishes up from the back, and heads up behind the bar since he's already there with an offer to help put some of the dishes away. Remus does end up counting quicker without Sirius' forearms there to distract him, and then it takes all of a few minutes further for the shop to get shut up for the night. Sirius leans against a lamp post out front and lights up while Remus locks up behind them. 

Remus turns away from the door, backs away in the direction of his flat, and offers a quick wave to Elise. “Have a good one,” he says, and this is good; there will be little loitering outside the shop tonight which is a sentiment Sirius can completely get behind. 

Elise has a look around the parking lot while digging for something in her satchel. “No Priscilla tonight?” she asks, looking to Sirius.

Sirius pushes off of the lamp post and lets his first haul out, shaking his head. “Nah, not tonight.”

Elise pulls out a much less tangled pair of earbuds than Sirius had to work with. “Shame,” she offers to Sirius, who's inching away at the same pace that Remus took to. “Always a pleasure.” 

“Likewise,” Sirius sends her. 

The two of them face the direction they're heading in and Remus looks to him sidelong. “You didn't want to stop for her on your way here?” he asks. 

Sirius shakes his head again. “If I'd done that it'd have taken me until now to get here,” he says.

Remus sways a bit closer as he walks, bumping Sirius' left hip with his right one. “Did I just get picked over the ol' girl?” he raises airily. 

“You certainly did, and keep those hips to yourself if you want me to make it there before you get jumped,” Sirius returns. 

Remus smirks and puts a whole four inches of space between the two of them as they round the corner. “Am I ever going to see those snaps you took for me?” he asks. "Or have you changed your mind on giving me an early peek?

Sirius perks up, reaching for his mobile in his back right pocket. He thumbs through it, opening up his gallery and pressing for the first picture so that Remus can simply swipe through the lot of them, and hands it over to him. Remus' face journeys are, overall, some of the best entertainment that Sirius has at his disposal and Remus does not disappoint while he swipes through the collection of decor pieces, reeling now and again as he goes. 

“Are these for your home or your soon-to-be establishment?” Remus checks, looking over at him. 

“Little of column A, little of column B,” Sirius supplies, smirking around a haul. 

“Then which one is this horrifying portrait intended for?” Remus asks, turning the phone to him and displaying the eighteenth century portrait of a child with a neanderthals skull dressed in the frilliest getup known to mankind. 

“Don't be silly, that one's for you,” Sirius sends him brightly. “I was thinking about hanging it right in your entryway so that everyone who enters your home will know exactly what they're coming into.” 

“A horror house?” Remus expels. 

“Not my place to say,” Sirius says, shrugging for show. “Fine art is in the eye of the beholder, after all.” 

Remus huffs loudly. “I hate that there is a fifty-fifty chance that you're even kidding about this,” he says. 

“Mm,” Sirius hums, lifting his hands as if weighing them, “hate, love; fine line.” 

“The finest,” Remus clarifies. “I'm _this close_ to going and getting this just so it won't be there and you can't follow through with this horrible plan.”

“Good luck getting the address out of me,” Sirius singsongs, bobbing his shoulders as he goes along the street. 

Remus heckles Sirius another five blocks or so, which really was the overarching goal of taking the snaps in the first place and has Sirius feeling lighter than air as he pauses their trek to dip into Boots and pickup a spiral-bound notebook for them. By the time they're back out on the street Remus has found another photo that he's utterly frustrated by on principle, and that's another three blocks of free entertainment for Sirius to indulge in before they head up the path to Remus' complex. 

Sirius takes the stairs two at a time while Remus is right there behind him, his hand on the small of Sirius' back and propelling him up the stairs that much quicker. He steps back at Remus' door, giving him just enough space to get at the lock while working his mouth over Remus' neck, meanwhile Remus fumbles with his keys and those go careening to the floor. 

“Oh, nice one,” Sirius puts out. Remus shushes him once, drops down to pick his keys up, and rises once again to refocus on getting the key in the lock. “See, this is a prime example of why I leave my door unlocked; easy access.” 

“You leave your door unlocked because there's something wrong with you,” Remus tosses over his shoulder. 

“Oh yeah, that's it,” Sirius breathes by Remus' right ear, amusement betraying the sultry tone he was aiming for, “tell me I'm wrong again.” 

A laugh rolls out of Remus as he gets the door open and Sirius crowds him inside only to be pressed against the door as a means of shutting it, and Sirius' pulse triples as he tosses the notebook aside, landing it somewhere by the collection of shoes nearby. The dim light carrying in from the streetlights outside distorts Sirius' view of Remus' face, but then, he doesn't really need to see it when Remus' voice comes out bare enough that Sirius can place the look on his face quite vividly. 

“I love you and I love this,” he says, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind Sirius' right ear, and Sirius is nothing but glorified putty. “You know that, right?”

Sirius takes his lower lip between his teeth, nodding vigorously as he reaches up for Remus' wrist, swiping his thumb over the front of it. He does know it, but fuck if he doesn't need to hear it after going and letting himself forget it for as long as he did. 

“Even your questionable taste in home décor,” Remus tacks on, leaving a kiss Sirius lips. “I love every bit of you—”

Sirius swoops in for another taste of him, pulling a light, startled noise out of him. Sirius reaches up and braces his hands on the sides of Remus' face to keep him there, and Remus follows his lead, matching the slow strokes of his tongue without much more of a hitch until he takes the lead, and Sirius has absolutely no objections to that; Remus drops his head to latch on at Sirius' pulse, Sirius leans to the left and arches into it, Remus switches between using his lips, tongue, and teeth, Sirius tangles his hands in Remus' hair and holds on tight, Remus palms his cock over his trousers, Sirius undoes them and rucks them down for him — a little teamwork never hurt anybody. 

Remus lifts his head and leaves Sirius with a mind-numbing kiss that Sirius then tries his best college try at dragging out, but Remus has other plans. Sirius braces the door behind him as Remus drops down to his knees, skirts his hands over the flat surface behind him as Remus continues right where he left off, placing open-mouthed kisses to Sirius' navel and holding Sirius' hips still as he squirms against him. He sets in on Sirius' cock without much more dancing around it and Sirius gives up on the door as his main source of aid, trusting that Remus' hands have got him pretty well covered there. 

He grabs for Remus' head again, his left winds up curled tight into his hair, the his right skirting along the back of his neck as Remus pulls his lips back and forth over him. Being thanked profusely for a series of good deeds via good head was certainly a reward Sirius was more than happy to accept, the only unfortunate part about it is that Remus is effectively killing it and Sirius wants it for as long as he can have it. He holds Remus' head round the back of it and moves him back and forth, showcasing a slower speed as to not completely burst before he has the chance to really enjoy it. Remus relaxes his jaw and follows his lead, letting Sirius guide him, and that's a fantastic compromise right up until the part where Remus starts swallowing around Sirius' cock every time it meets the back of his throat, and that only spurs Sirius' hips on faster, has him meeting Remus' mouth quicker just to feel the back of his throat sooner, and it's all backfiring completely.

“Nope,” Sirius prattles, trying for conviction despite his voice coming out a notch or three higher than he planned for, “I'm not going to lose it.” 

Remus' laugh comes out muffled, but the vibrations of it send Sirius into a full-bodied shudder before he's absolutely done for, and there's nothing left for him to do but hold on tight and ride it out, his toes curling in his boots as his hips lose what's left of the rhythm he had going. Sirius slumps back against the door and looks down at Remus through lidded eyes as he gets used to that whole breathing thing again. Remus swallows around him more for necessity than for thrills, pulls off of him slowly, and clears his throat before simply staring up at him. 

“You did your best.” 

Sirius blinks down at him, deciding that's three digs in a single day, and for that, Remus is going to get it tenfold. He sends him a languid smile, humming lazily. “Mhm, laugh it up,” he says, playing the leisurely fool while he waits for the prime moment to strike. 

Remus' breathy laugh tickles his navel before he rests his forehead against him and breathes contentedly, and Sirius moves in a flash, dropping down, shoving Remus back, and sliding him back on the floor. He crawls over him in a blink, yanks Remus' slacks down in three hard tugs, and strokes him with his right hand, setting a slow, maddening pace off the bat. Remus puts up with it until he rocks his hips as a signal, but Sirius simply shifts to settle his full weight along the left side of Remus' body, pinning him there and keeping in with the same speed he began with. 

Sirius hovers his lips just out of Remus' reach, enjoying visibility he now has compared to before for it gives him ample view of every slight change to Remus' expression as he speeds his hand up. Remus watches Sirius watch him, the low light pouring in from the other side of the room makes it so his pupils are the size of saucers and completely spellbinding up until Remus up to catch Sirius' lips, and then Sirius snaps back to it, inching back just out of his reach and content on waiting however long it takes. He's got all night. 

Remus knows what he's doing, there isn't a chance he hasn't worked it out yet, and yet he lifts half-off the ground for a second try at Sirius' lips only to get pressed back against the floor while Sirius moves his hand relentlessly over his cock. Remus lets out a wanton noise as he twists on the floor, writhes up against him and thrusts hard into the grip of Sirius' hand, and there Sirius shows him a little mercy for the candor he's been shown. He leans in and slots their lips together, keeping the motions of his lips and tongue slow compared to the rapid pace of his hand, and Remus brings a shaky hand up and twists it into the back of Sirius' shirt as if holding him there in case Sirius has any other ideas, and he's right, Sirius does have another. 

He waits for Remus' breathing to peak, waits for a moment or two past that to win himself a whine, and pulls off of Remus' mouth as he comes, grinning as Remus' whole body arches into it and his voice takes up every inch of the entryway that the two of them weren't already taking up. 

Remus reaches up with the hand not still practically sewn in at the back of Sirius' shirt and passes it over his face as he comes down. “That had no business being as hot as it was,” he says of it. 

“I fundamentally disagree,” Sirius puts in, leaning in to leave a quick nuzzle before he moved onto licking off his coated fingers. 

“Well, of course you do,” Remus returns, dropping his hand and spotting Sirius mid-way through. “How do you manage to go from a tender nuzzle to licking cum off of your fingers without any pause?” 

Sirius shrugs his shoulders breezily. “I hear you like that sort of thing, so a thank-you would have been fine.”

Remus looked away from him loftily, but there was a smile budding at his lips all the same. Sirius gives into a wicked stretch, bumping Remus' right hip with his left one purposefully as he does it, and grinning like he's won the gold. Once he's done with that, he lifts his legs to foot each of his boots off in turn, propelling one toward the floor successfully while the other one ends up bouncing off the door and hitting Remus in the left leg, causing Sirius to reach for him, caught tight between an apology and a laugh that probably shouldn't have been there. 

Remus waved him off, his movements languid as he toes his own shoes off, then goes the extra mile and stretches his right leg out and up toward the door, snapping the lock with his socked foot. Sirius lay there for a few moments, simply impressed by Remus' ability to reach it until he connects the dots and a bark leaves his chest, startling Remus beside him. 

“What was the use in locking it now?” he asks. “Who do you think is going to come waltzing in here anyway?” 

“Say the building were to catch fire,” Remus offers.

Another laugh bubbles right on out of Sirius. “Bit of a jump, no?” 

“Work with me here,” Remus asks of him, lifting a hand to silence him, “say it did, and we were just laying here, trousers down; I doubt either of us would want a fireman bursting in only to find us and our tadgers out in the wild.” 

“OK well, one; speak for yourself,” Sirius returns, lifting his left hand to do some of his own silencing. “And two, if the building were to catch fire we'd have a lot more to worry about than giving a fireman a free show.” 

Remus smirks a laugh, sighing on the other end of it. “I can't deny that you're not good for a little perspective,” he allows. He reaches down for the waist of his slacks and lifts his hips off of the floor in order to tug them on a bit easier, looking to Sirius with a contented smile. “Do you want to stay over?” 

Sirius sends him a 'psh' for that. “'Course I do,” he says, though he's utterly drowned out by Mestophales pops up directly over his head with the loudest call for affection he's heard in quite some time. He huffs a laugh, reaches to pull his jeans up over his hips, and leans his head back to coo at the cat while he gets his button fastened. “Nice of her to let us finish first."

“Well, she didn't come say hi to me, so I doubt she's happy about what the wait was for,” Remus returns. 

Sirius allowing Mestophales the chance to nuzzle his head to her hearts' desire, meanwhile Remus takes to playing with a curl in his fringe as he watched the two of them with a smile on, though his next words are rather pondering in nature. “Do you think the two of them will get along?” he asks. 

“I really think they'll be fine,” Sirius sends him from under a face-full of cat. “I've seen videos of borzois with cats and they just chill out. Tango's going to flounce around her happily while she takes on the role of queen of the flat, I'm calling it now.”

“As in many other cases, I do hope you're right about that,” Remus says. 

Sirius pokes his head around Mestophales' rotund figure and has a glance over Remus' expression to gauge it better. “Tomorrow I've got work, but afterwards I could bring him by and see how the two of them fare?” he offers. 

Remus appears to rather like that idea, that is until he thinks about it. “How're you going to get him here?” he asks. “And don't say walk, because I know you better than that.” 

“I have a handy-dandy thing called James,” Sirius sends him. 

Remus nods, clicking his tongue in realization. “Right, that thing,” he says, smiling over at him. "He'd gladly help transport a dog."

Sirius lifts off of the floor and scoots around Mestophales to get better access to that smile. “'Scuse me, sorry ma'am,” he says loftily before he braces his palms on either side of Remus' body and leans down to plant a kiss to the corner of Remus' mouth. 

”Oh,” Remus says heavily, “are you _trying_ to make her upset?” 

Sirius smirks, leaves Remus with one more kiss — for now, and sits back, putting the bulk of his weight on his knees and reaching his right hand out for the notebook that fell over near the shoe rack. 

“We should get on this while our memories are still fresh," he says, reaching down to run his left thumb over Remus' hip bone poking out from under his work blouse. "Would you like your sleepy-time tea while we're at it?" 

Remus studies him for a beat or two, lifts off of the floor, and holds Sirius' chin in place as he kisses him, and that's a resounding yes in Sirius' books.


	7. 7.

Sirius rids himself of his apron the moment he gets to the backroom, tosses it over the back chair at the desk, and fires a text off to Remus. He sticks his phone face-up on the desk, leans over the frame of the chair to type his employee code into the computer, and waits with his right forefinger on the mouse, ready to clock out the moment Remus gives him the signal. 

Sirius presses to call him with his free hand, switches to his primary arm to hold his phone against his ear as he slips out back. He figures he has enough time to shoulder it and pull a cigarette out before Remus will answer, but he must have his own phone either in his hand or very close by for he picks up before the first ring even goes through. 

"Tell me," he prompts, skipping right past hello. 

Sirius snorts while he lights up, taking a second or two to puff on his cigarette, then takes his phone back in his right hand again. "Someone's fired up."

"I've been waiting all afternoon with nothing but a 'we're aces' sent to me, which really doesn't say much, does it?" Remus disputes.

"Apart from we're aces," Sirius says, pocketing his lighter. 

"Details, Sirius," Remus presses. 

Sirius takes a moment or two to slide down the wall and has himself a seat to the left of the door, or better known to him as ‘The Spot.' He has himself another puff or two, leaves that arm curled over his bent knees, and does as bid. "I'm officially slated to be Friday/Saturday bitch starting next week and on until the end of my days here, but I haven’t known what a free weekend’s like in years so it’s all the same to me," he details. “I’m still going to have to come in tomorrow so Will doesn't have to scramble to cover it, but apart from that, I’m essentially home free.” 

"You're having me on," Remus says outright. 

"Seems that way, but I'm not," Sirius insists, smiling around his cigarette. "Promise I'm not." 

"He let you go down to two days?” Remus stresses. “You're at least fibbing — did you have to trade in a limb to get him to agree to that?" 

Sirius lets his haul out in an easy stream. "Not a one," he says, “and I love that medieval torture practices was where your head went to first." 

"It was the first thing I thought of,” Remus defends. “And in an ideal world I saw you having to finish out what was already posted, and then maybe he would look into switching things around for the next batch of schedules; I did not see this coming.”

Sirius tilts his head back and forth mildly. "He wasn't thrilled about the state of things considering I'm a world class employee—" Remus cuts his bewilderment off to send a hearty 'pfft' through the line and it almost, almost puts a pause on Sirius’ soliloquy by mirth alone, but not quite, "— and his favourite to boot, so it's only fair that he lament the lesser time I'll be spending here in the coming weeks, but he does understand that things come up; my man's in dire straits and that really is that." 

Remus makes a weak little noise on the other end of the line. “Sirius,” he gives minutely. “I don’t know what to say.”

“We’ve been over this,” Sirius hints.

“Fine,” Remus allows. “'You’re a righteous king, Sirius.'” 

“Thank you,” Sirius drags out in a sing-song before settling down again. “It also helped that I rounded up the coverage, so I did a lot of the heavy lifting before I even broke the news to him.” 

“Only you would be able to manage that,” Remus quips.

Sirius preens a bit, giving a little shoulder shimmy. “Phase one was find Mary the moment I got in here and get her to agree to take a shift from me, which proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be,” he offers candidly, “then once she quit boo-hooing over my impending absence long enough to hear that she’d only be helping you out in the long run, she caved real quick.”

“N’aww," Remus says fondly. "Mary." 

Sirius smirks around another haul. “That, and you know as well as I do she’s always passing up shifts and then turning around and begging for hours the next week, so she’s fine with taking my Thursdays,” he keeps on, pausing for a snort. “And fucking Charlotte practically jumped to nab the other two because she's apparently just as hard up for hours, so between the four viable closers Will has at his disposal, the place will live on without my being here so often; it literally couldn’t have been any easier to work out.”

Remus lets out a breath riddled with relief. “I feel like I’m in a fever dream,” he says. “It’ll sink in soon — at least, I think it will.” 

A string of remembrance is plucked somewhere in the back of Sirius’ brain, bringing a budding smile to his lips. "I know what’ll wake you right up,” he says avidly. “Charlotte has demanded to see you in person." 

"Hm?" Remus asks. 

"Charlotte," he says. "New girl." 

"No, I know," Remus clarifies. "I don’t know why, though." 

"I'm glad you asked," Sirius says brightly. "She had a _Drowners_ patch sewn onto the bag she brought with her today, and there I was, thinking, 'just what are the odds?'" 

"Oh, I don't like where this is going," Remus muses. 

Too late for that, the lid's already been loosened so the pickles are coming out of the jar. "So, naturally I let her in on the fact that you're Hitt's veritable imprint on this here soil, which she didn't believe a word of until I pulled out my phone and showed her the proof, and the girl almost dropped it when she saw you, it was marvelous." 

"Did you really have to dig out proof?" Remus asks. 

"Certainly did," Sirius says, lifting his cigarette to is his mouth for a lofty pull off of it. "My very character was on the line." 

"Was it, though?" Remus returns, his voice going a little higher from the skepticism lining it. 

"I may be many things, but a liar is not one of them, Remus," Sirius maintains, tapping ash off of the cherry of his cigarette. 

"You are known for a sprinkle of hyperbole now and again," Remus offers. "Perhaps she just clued into that quicker than bulk of us did."

"Fact is, she essentially called me a liar and for that she needed to eat her words," Sirius presses on breezily, pausing to take one last haul off of his cigarette before he flicks it out and sends it soaring away in a rather impeccable arch. "And now she wants a selfie with you so she can feel like she's been within three feet of the real guy so when the time comes round, do be a sport about it." 

"Oh, I don't know if I can," Remus says thoughtfully. "I'm suddenly incredibly busy from now until the end of time." 

Sirius snorts loudly. "Oh, and you should know that she's taken my side in the debate," he tells him, grinning big. "Says Rory had every right to leave." 

Sirius' grin only widens when Remus sends an enormous huff through the line. "Really?" he says flatly. "You're polling strangers now?" 

"Charlotte isn’t a stranger, she’s your second biggest fan,” Sirius totes. “And d'you know what? I think it’d be fair game if I did poll a stranger.” 

"First of all," Remus prefaces, sending Sirius right on into drumming the soles of his boots on the pavement below him in anticipation, "second opinions are just that and will do nothing to help you win this; secondly, my argument has never been and will never be centered around her right to leave, of course she can make her own decisions, just as I have the right to hate that particular one; and thirdly, I'm not about to head back to work with steam coming out of my ears, so we are pausing this until I say otherwise, tu compris?"

Sirius curls in on himself, setting his forehead down on his knees as he gives into the laugh he was trying to hold in with all his might. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he insists, trying to speak around his convulsing lungs, “what would you rather talk about?”

Remus clicks his tongue ponderously. “Did James agree?” 

Sirius sniffs, straightening up. “Yeah, he’s bringing him by when I’m done here,” he affirms. 

“OK,” Remus replies, and though there’s an undeniable excitement about him, there’s just as much apprehension lining his voice. “I'll likely get in before you, so when you're coming up just send me a warning so I can round her up, and then please be careful when you're coming in with him." 

"I promise I won't come charging in with him," Sirius translates. 

"I'll thank you not to," Remus replies. "He's a big boy, I just don't want her spooked right out of the gate." 

"I'll keep a firm hand on his lead," Sirius tacks on. 

"And I was thinking," Remus says, the dam already well and truly opened, "if they don't end up getting on, then there's always Dorcas? When she thought Mestophales would've been part of the package deal of staying at mine she was thrilled—" 

Sirius gives out a frank noise of a buzzer. "I'm taking in that cat and that's all there is to it," he supplies.

Remus breathes a laugh despite himself. "I know you'd _like_ to take her in, I'm just trying to come up with a plan B in case this doesn't go as well as we'd like it to," he clarifies. 

"It'll go fine," Sirius says. "They'll be the best of friends, you'll see."

"You had better be right about this one," Remus returns. 

Sirius halts and looks round as the back door opens and David, newfound bane of Sirius' existence, sticks his head out the door purposefully, hones in on Sirius on the ground, and levels him with an unimpressed squint. "Opp, hold on," Sirius says to Remus, taking his phone away from his ear and looking back up at David with an equally unimpressed expression. "What could it possibly be now?"

"How long have you worked here exactly?" David asks. 

"Longer than you," Sirius provides. 

"If it's been a while, then why am I having to come out here and remind you that unpaid breaks are thirty minutes, not thirty-whatever-you-feel-like?" David asks. 

Sirius blinks twice, knowing full well that Remus John Lupin's likely got a timer going at this very second, and if he hasn't bum-rushed the both of them off of the phone yet, then they're all set. "Good, then we're both equally as confused as to why you're doing that," he says. "I'm under the cut-off."

David lifts his left hand past the edge of the door and counts on his fingers, "you're five minutes from being expected back up front, you took your sweet time coming back from your fifteens which you're not even supposed to take consecutively, and at first I really thought you were so new that you just didn't know any better but it's getting more and more clear that you do, so you'll understand why I might've sensed more of your bullshit coming my way." 

Sirius grins big and bright, putting his head on a tilt. "Hey, next time? Take the company's balls out of your mouth if you want me to take you even at all seriously; I'm not here for this." 

David reaches for the edge of the door and backs out of the doorway in under three seconds, already put right off and Sirius hasn't even started in on him yet. "Ohh, you're going to have to grow far thicker skin than that with me, princess," Sirius gets in just before the door shuts him out. He fumes silently, pulls another cigarette out and gets that lit, and puts the phone back against his ear. "Seriously, _fuck_ that guy." 

"What the hell was that?" Remus asks.

"Oh, you haven't heard?" Sirius raises. "The other new kid's a bust and a half." 

Remus gives a noise of realization. "Shit, he started this week, didn't he?" he raises. "I'm sorry, I've been really out of it, haven't I?" 

Sirius waves him off via a profound ‘pfft.’ "Been a hell of a week, Remus," he excuses, though he's fuming again a few beats later. "Who does he think he is hounding me like that, while I'm on a call, no less."

"Bit rude, yes," Remus allows. 

"‘Ooh, ooh, policy this, policy that,’" Sirius mimics. "I've one foot out the door already; I couldn’t give a single shit about policy at this point, and do we really just have five minutes left or was he bullshitting on that part?" 

Remus gives a minimal hum as he investigates. "He jumped the gun, but we're closing in on it," he says after a beat. 

Sirius scoffs at the unjust passage of time. "It's sort of funny, and frankly a little sad when you think about it," he offers. "If he'd been at all decent at any point throughout the day and came out here without his fists up, I might've actually considered coming up front on time but he has no idea how hard he just shot himself in the foot; I may take several strolls around the block just to dig this one in a little more." 

"Don't do that, be the bigger person, you'll rarely see him once the night's over," Remus lists. "Etcetera, etcetera."

"Sorry, you're breaking up," Sirius returns, taking a lofty pull off of his cigarette, "can't hear a word your saying."

"Can't blame me for trying," Remus puts in.

"That's sweet of you and all, but he has no idea of the amount of spite that exists within my body, so he might as well learn a thing or two about it," Sirius maintains.

Remus must sense a losing battle for he gives out a relenting breath on his end of the line. "Just don't let it get out of hand," he requests of him. "Please?" 

"He's been up my arse all shift," Sirius insists, pointing his free arm back toward the shop as if Remus could see him do it. "It wasn't just me either; you can ask everybody who was on today, none of them can stand him." 

"Well, sorry to everybody else, but it's you I care about most in this situation," Remus says plainly. "Mainly because I heard your fake grin from here, and that's never a good sign." 

Sirius scoffs a bit at that. "If I'm going to last through the rest of this shift, then I deserve to have a little fun with it," he says. "All I'm going to make him rue the day he spoke to me that way, I'm not going to fight him on the sales floor." 

"I didn't say that," Remus says evasively. "The parking lot, maybe." 

"It'd serve him right if I did," Sirius retorts, going for a pull off of his cigarette. "I'd win, too. He's spindly, has a face that's just begging for a good smack, and I bet he just flaps his hands when he tries to come at you."

Remus snorts despite himself. "OK, think of it this way, then," he prefaces, "I don't know the guy enough to say one way or another, but if he's the type to hound you over breaks and policy, then he could very well be the type to press charges against you only because he technically can.”

"Alright, there's jumping to conclusions and then there's clearing a football field," Sirius says, calling for a dash of realism here. 

"You don't know him at all," Remus emphasizes. "Lay a punch on the wrong person and you could be up to your elbows in problems, and I would really like to take you home to my mum and dad without there being an arrest warrant out for you, so if you have to tell yourself that you're refraining from clobbering him for me, then please do that?" 

The patch of butterflies that took up vacancy in Sirius' stomach right around the time Remus lay his head down on his knee on a brisk afternoon in September wiggles around before it lets another few free to flutter about. "Only for you," he says of it, his mouth twitching upward.

"Even better," Remus says quietly, and Sirius can hear his little half-smile from here. "My alarm's going, so I'll let you go for now. Thank you again for sorting all of that out so quickly, I'm unbelievably relieved."

"Yeah," Sirius gives him, smiling all the way. "Yeah, my pleasure."

"See you soon." 

"Not soon enough." 

"It never is," Remus tacks on, and another butterfly wiggles free. 

Sirius simply sits there after their call is over, enjoying the dual act of finishing off his cigarette slowly and feeling warm from his head down to his toes. He tosses the butt when it's run down to the end, pushes himself to stand, lets himself into the backroom. He clocks back in and goes for his apron, stretching the act of tying it around his waist to a full minute; tying it around his back before pretending that it's just too loose and tugging the knot free to start over from the top. And then he does that one more time just for the fuck of it. 

He makes the walk up the hall stretch out by keeping to an easy strong and a similarly easy air about him as if there isn't a hurry at all, although when he makes it to the doorway that leads out to the floor, even from first glimpse he can suss out that nothing major is going on; there's about nine people sprinkled about the seating out on the floor and all of zero people waiting for orders to either be rung through or made up, but David's face the moment he spots Sirius stretching long and limber in the doorway certainly gives off a vibe that suggests he's just so overwhelmed.

"Keep making that face and it'll stick," Sirius warns him, his voice going tight through his stretch. 

"Does Will have any idea how long you take?" David asks. 

Sirius lets go of his stretch with a bright smirk. "You could tell him if you'd like," he offers, shrugging a shoulder. "I will say that I've kept regulars coming here for ages, I can upsell like nobody else here can or bothers to, and I'm not even going to be here more than two days a week from here on out, but you go ahead and see where snitching gets you."

David whips around and yanks a cloth out from below the counter. "You're impossible," he spouts, heading out from behind the counter via the pastry case route rather than have to pass Sirius to get there. 

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me all shift," Sirius tosses after him brightly, heading for the hand-washing sink. 

He dries his hands off while he inspects the area around him, in search for something he can shut down for the night, help him feel that much closer to relative freedom. He spots the two blends sitting side by side at the coffee station and squints to give the timers a once-over; the dark roast's got about ten minutes left in it whereas the medium has another twenty on top of that one, and given that it's closing in on seven, the dark roast is getting cut out. 

Sirius bins the balled up paper towel in his hands, heads over there, and hoists the vat on the right over to the sink on the left side of the coffee station, and flicks the red handle over the spout, letting what's left of the dark roast free-pour into the sink. He hoists the vat back to its spot, digs out the sanitizing powder for it, and tears at the packet, pouring it in through the hole at the of the vat. He presses start on the machine overhead, leaves the rest up to the slow pour of the waters of hellfire to mix and mingle with the powder for now, and gets rid of the dark roast label before anyone can wander in and mistakenly think it's still a viable option to order. 

He turns away from the station with a dust off of his hands and blinks as David reappears directly beside him, cloth in hand. "What did you do?" he demands. "We're supposed to have both featured blends available to customers at all times." 

Sirius lets out a short, quick laugh. "Yeah, no," he declines. "We're done with that one for tonight; I'm not keeping two full pots on when we're not even going to sell through even half of either of them before we have to switch them out again." 

"What sort of shop is being run around here?" David asks, looking as if he's seconds from pulling his hair out. 

"One with two brain cells to rub together?" Sirius returns, loving everything about this. "Nobody walking in here after seven is going to care which one we have going; they'll look, see what it is, and go with it, and even if somebody did get uppity about it then there's always pour-overs or they can just get an Americano for the price of a plain old coffee, it's literally that easy." 

"You can just push a customer to get something else because you don't feel like grinding out a new batch," David retorts. 

"I can, though; that's the thing," Sirius maintains. "It works seventy percent of the time, and the other thirty I take the loss, make the damn pour-over, and move on; try it sometime." 

"What are we going to do when that one needs switching?" David asks, pointing to the only other coffee on. "You just closed the other one down." 

Sirius lifts both his hands in display. "They'll wait five minutes," he enunciates, beaming at the end of it. "Or they won't, and we didn't really need their spare change anyway." 

David turns away from him with a fitful expression on, opens the cupboard with the sanitizer bucket in it, and chucks the cloth back into it. "I'm taking my fifteen," he says exasperatedly. 

"Take a nap while you're at it," Sirius suggests as David retreats. 

A small, surprise rush occurs not long after David goes, and it's the form of a rush that brings one customer into the store and up to the till just as another's taking their drink and leaving, which is Sirius' least favourite form, and yes, sure, it could be karma coming to bite him in the arse, but Sirius isn't about to let her do it. No, thank you, ma'am; he's already taken. Instead he resolves to take each order as it comes, and funnily enough, the next person who orders a plain old coffee has no obvious qualms about the pike roast being on, imagine that. 

He's out of the woods and just starting on closing down bar two when David reappears up front, totting on about how he's exactly on time, and Sirius simply whistles over him as he takes the espresso tray to the sink to rinse it off. He heads back to bar, hooks the tray back into place, and dumps the grinds drawer out, fully aware that his every movements are being scrutinized. 

"I don't even know where to start," David says listlessly, switching off the taps at the sink.

"Then don't," Sirius chimes, bringing the grounds drawer past David's useless body and giving it a quick rinse at the coffee station. 

David halts Sirius on his way back. "I wondered who'd started doing this, and of course it was you," he says, lifting his hands and using them jaggedly to help illustrate his newest frustration. "You can't close either bar down until the shop's closed." 

Sirius steps right around David's hands, uninterested in his near-meltdown. "I don't know know who hurt you along the way, but that's fucking ridiculous," he sends over his shoulder. 

"Oh, it's ridiculous," David parrots, following him to bar two. "At mine, we didn't do any of what you're doing." 

Sirius sets the grounds drawer on the counter by the bar and digs out the cleaning tablets for the espresso machine. "Mmkay, well, we're not at yours, so take the sand out of your snatch and shut your mouth a little more often, and you might learn something," he raises, shaking two tablets out onto his right palm while immensely enjoying how fucked off the kid gets over that serve alone. "When have we used this since five? Name one time."

"That's not the point," David sputters. 

Sirius reaches the tablets into the bulk of the machine and inserts them in at the back. "That literally is my point," he emphasizes, stuffing the grounds drawer back into the espresso machine and pressing the button to spark the rinse cycle to life. "She's done with, and now we don't have to worry about doing this later on."

Sirius heads around David to get to bar one, pulling the grounds drawer out of that one and dumping it out in turn. "Alright, no, bar one stays," David insists. 

"I'm not shutting her down completely," Sirius returns, bringing the grounds drawer to the sink for a rinse. "She's just getting a make-over, don't worry about it; she wants one." 

David stays put, watching hawkeyed as Sirius lines the drawer with three torn sheets of paper towel and sticks it back into the espresso machine, and then looks even more bemused as Sirius fetches a new cloth from the back. In the time it takes Sirius to rinse off the tray and set the new cloth down on it from end to end, David's come to look positively irate. 

"What is even the point of doing that?" he spouts. 

"It couldn't be that I'm trying to make it so all we have to do is start a good rinse cycle at the end of the night or anything," Sirius supplies, crossing his arms and feeling quite good about the state of things. "I get that you've nowhere else to be but here, but I do so if I do something that'll only make our close go quicker and easier you can either shut it and take it, or you can hope and pray that you don't get paired up with me again, but get used to seeing all of my tricks because I've passed them onto everyone here and you'll be seeing a lot of them." 

A customer heads in through the front door and David heads to meet her at the till. "We'll see about that," he sends him as he goes. 

"Yeah, you will," Sirius echoes after him. 

The beat goes on; David fights him on counting up the cash drawer early so they can keep tabs on what cash goes in and out of it and at the end of the night all Sirius will have to do is add two totals together, et viola, the task is handled before the store is even locked, David fights him on sweeping and mopping at the turn of the hour before closing time rather than leave both until the last minute, David fights him on running most of the dishes to the back and leaving one of every item available if needed so all that would have to be done is the final load of everything that didn't already get run through the dishwasher. The good thing about all of that is it not only reinforces Sirius' reasons for doing any one of them, but it gives him a chance to locate a pattern that David has, and that is as much as he fights Sirius on his every mood, he eventually gets so frustrated and tired that he gives up the longer Sirius presses a single point, so it's a win/win for him on two counts. 

David waits until Sirius is back behind the counter after booting the small amount of stragglers out of the place before locking up to scold him for going ahead and doing that. "They don't have to go home, but they can't stay here," Sirius gives him, and really, David's just lucky that Sirius had been having such a grand old time with the solid gold that is the Soul of the '60s playlist that he didn't even bother with climbing up to the sound system in back to put _Closing Time_ on. 

Sirius shuts bar one down once and for all and leaves it to rinse while he closes down the till and leaves David to figure out the dishes; Sirius went and made it the task that much easier for him, so all and all he should be able to handle a tray of mismatched dishes as such a prideful, hard-working employee, and yet when Sirius gets back up front after shutting the cash drawers away in the safe, sans-apron and ready to fucking go already, the man is still wandering around putting things back in their spots at a leisurely pace while James is already idling out front, and Sirius would have to be a right idiot not to suss out that he was being taught a lesson. 

There's about four to five seconds wherein Sirius is _this close_ to elbowing David out of the way and finishing the rest off by himself, but he quickly shoves that urge down once he identifies it; wouldn't be on brand to lose it after maintaining a les affaires attitude all shift, so rather than give into that impulse, Sirius perches on the counter by the till with his keys in his lap and says a bittersweet goodbye to getting out early for he's about 99.9% sure that David is so much of a suck-up that he'll stamp his feet and insist on staying right up until the moment they're scheduled to clock out, and communicates with James through the front window of the shop via hand-motions alone. __

_ _The face David makes when he notices the game of charades they've got going is neither new nor does it stop either of them; they have and will likely always be a spectacle in and of itself, but whether or not he clues into the fact that he's being dragged the entire time remains to be seen. _ _

_ _As Sirius came to terms with, the two of them get out of there precisely on the dot, and James sticks his head out his open window and calls to Sirius in his best Jeeves voice. "Your chauffeur awaits." _ _

_ _"Yes, quite," Sirius trills back to him as he turns the lock. _ _

_ _He gives David a firm salute, heads down the path toward James' car idling sideways over two parking spots, and takes to rolling over the hood to get to the passenger side that much quicker. _ _

_ _"Watch him try to call and get us committed first thing tomorrow," James says the moment Sirius gets in and shuts the door behind him. _ _

_ _Sirius looks around James' head and barks a laugh loud enough to wake the heavens at finding David simply standing there looking as if he's seen a ghost. "Drive before he talks to me again," he urges, snapping his right hand toward the steering wheel while trying to locate his seat belt blindly with his left one. _ _

_ _James makes a quick u-ie, needing nothing more than that to comply, and makes a swift left onto the street, meanwhile Tango seems to take his finger snap as a call to him for he ambles up between the front seats and situates himself there quite comfortably, nosing the side of Sirius' head. _ _

_ _"What a fucking scab," he sends James while he dolls out the necessary rubs to Tango's ruff. "Him, not the dog." _ _

_ _James gives a guttural grunt. "I had one full hour with him yesterday and let me tell you, that was enough," he returns. "Can you move the dog? I can't see anything behind me." _ _

_ _Sirius stops trying to connect his belt with its buckle and focuses on stretching his right arm past Tango's body to snap his fingers toward the backseat, and then has to repeat that two more times before Tango complies. "We'll work on that," he calls back to him kindly. _ _

_ _He puts his full attention on buckling in before moving onto rolling his window down all the way, perching his elbow on the windowsill as he settles into just another one of his home away from homes. "Well, you could end up seeing more of him than I will, so enjoy that," he offers sweetly, digging out his cigarette pack. _ _

_ _"What, why?" James returns, pulling to a stop at a red. _ _

_ _Sirius chooses to light up first and foremost, pairing a tight grin with a bit of a squint as he holds in his first haul, and leans his head toward the window to shoot a stream of smoke out of it. "I've asked for my hours to be cut," he says, keeping to the same sweet tone in hopes of lightening the load, but James sputters all the same. _ _

_ _"No — _no,_" he returns. "You said you'd hold out until July, I heard you say it." _ _

_ _"That was before the clusters came back for round two," Sirius objects. "I'm not ditching completely, but I'm going down to fourteen as of tomorrow's shift." _ _

_ _"That's it?" James puts out, missing the light change by an entire second before the pilot of the car behind them toots his horn and then James is leaning his head right back out of his window again, calling out a string of colourful obscenities before he pulls his head back into the car and presses on the gas. "That's it?" he repeats, like his outburst never happened. _ _

_ _Sirius lifts his hands evenly all while he snickers his haul out. "I can't be opening a venue, teaching Dora, fighting clusters, _and_ working here full time," he replies. "I can't be everywhere at once so something had to get cut."_ _

_ _"Well, fuck you for putting it like that," James sends him. "Now I feel like a brat." _ _

_ _"Like one," Sirius repeats, getting the two finger salute from James in reply. _ _

_ _"Excuse you," he returns. "I'm allowed to be express sadness for the boys and understand why you're doing this; I do have the capacity for both." _ _

_ _Sirius grins brightly and reaches over to ruffle James' unruly hair just that much more. "We'll just have to be the boys somewhere else," he maintains, though he winds up getting his hand swatted at. He snorts out a laugh, takes his hand back, and taps it twice against his chest. "Putting that love right here." _ _

_ _"Do what you want with it," James puts out. "I still reserve the right to grumble until this sinks in."_ _

_ _"I don't remember grumbling when you took less hours," Sirius brings up, blinking at him sweetly. "Your lucky little arse gets work from home and elect to take whatever mids help Will out any given week, so you don't get to complain just because I'm dropping down to the same hours that you've kept there for months now." _ _

_ _James reels back, blinking like mad. "That was so Remus, I got whiplash."_ _

_ _Sirius aims a wry smile his way and taps his right temple. "He gets right in there," he says. "Look, we were always going to have to say a fond farewell to working together, all I'm doing is kick-starting it a bit." _ _

_ _James gives a hearty sigh and one last pout. "I'm getting over it by the second," he reiterates plainly. _ _

_ _Sirius snorts, flicking the butt of his cigarette out the window. "There's the guy I know," he puts out. _ _

_ _James sends him a side-grin and reaches up with his left hand to move his glasses up and down suggestively. "You'd have never moved anything around to help lighten the stress load of a dude even a year ago, and look at you now, you little cheeseball," he teases. _ _

_ _Sirius preens a little there. "He's not just any dude," he says, bringing on a series of prolonged retching noises from the driver. "Fuck off, you; he isn't." _ _

_ _"I know he isn't," James says, backing off him a bit, but Sirius isn't done._ _

_ _"You went on off on hols with Lily and came back with a proposal plan, so you're as gross as I am, if not worse," he maintains. _ _

_ _James takes the hit like a champ, preening quite a bit himself. "Who knew we'd end up being a pair of lovesick fools, hm?" he raises. _ _

_ _Sirius snorts. "You? Literally everyone you've ever met," he returns, tossing an easy look behind him toward Tango panting in the backseat. "Thanks for bringing the pooch for us." _ _

_ _James offers an easy hum. "Not at all," he says. "Not quite sure why the feline was any less portable than he, but alas." _ _

_ _Sirius gives a minimal hum, staring easily out the front window. "Remus was worried they wouldn't get along, so I figured I'd quell that one sooner than later and he won't have that thought in the back of his mind all summer long," he forwards._ _

_ _"Commendable," James calls it. "I still don't quite see why she couldn't have come to ours when that's precisely where she'll be come fall." _ _

_ _Sirius sticks a pointed face on and turns it slowly toward him. "Alright, you want the truth?" he asks, garnering a light 'mhmm' returned to him. "He's blacklisted our flat as of yesterday morning." _ _

_ _James clicks his tongue. "Remus Fucking Lupin," he sounds out. "You're just going to let him?"_ _

_ _"Oh, I tried," Sirius returns, splaying his hands out in front of him and showcasing his useless set of them. "He doesn't want anything like Tuesday happening again and to a different extent neither do I, but rather than fight him on this when he's very much made up his mind and risk repeating myself over and over again telling him that none of you are holding any of that shit against him, I'm just going with it." _ _

_ _There's after a few bewildered beats where James simply drives on before he formulates a reply. "You've had better ideas," he says plainly. _ _

_ _Sirius scoffs wildly. "There's nothing I can do," he says outright. "I tried to reign him in, I even offered the let him stay with us and that went horribly; he gophered faster than I could catch him." _ _

_ _"Well, pull him out of the hole," James tells him. _ _

_ _"No no," Sirius declines. "We're not doing that; he's made it very clear that it's too soon for that because he thinks I'm seconds from running for the door." _ _

_ _"Want me to talk to him?" James offers. _ _

_ _Sirius presses his hands together in a form of a prayer. "No," he says plainly. "We just put all of that to bed and we're lucky still letting me in at this point, so no; we're not going to do that." _ _

_ _James sends a scoff to him now. "It's not forever and ever," Sirius adds to it. "It's until he gets his head wrapped around this." _ _

_ _"Alright, well, I don't know what the fuck that means," James returns plainly. _ _

_ _"It means he'll come round to ours again eventually, he just has to lift the ban on mates being present for the attacks," Sirius says, inverting his hands so his palms are facing up. "That's not going to be tomorrow, so until he's comfortable with that idea again I'm not going to hound him over it any more than I've already done just to make him feel even more guilty for feeling this way, I'm going to be around his as often as he'll let me and I'm going to just go with his flow." _ _

_ _James waits a block or two to say anything else. "We're not holding it against him, though," he tosses out. "Why would we?"_ _

_ _"I know that," Sirius says, catching his toss. "Deep down I think he knows it, too, but that's not the point, this is Remus."_ _

_ _"And?" James probes._ _

_ _Sirius gives him a pointed look. "He's memorized every spot on our floors that don't creak so that he can step on them in the mornings and not wake us up, even though I have told him in a thousand different ways that we will both just roll the fuck over," he gives for an example. "He hates being a bother even when he's not even being one, and right now that’s been turned up to a hundred and nine because all he can see is how he scared Pete half to death, and he doesn't want that for you, Lily, Pete, anybody."_ _

_ _"Speaking of, have you talked to Pete without yelling yet?" James stops to check. _ _

_ _"One thing at a time," Sirius stresses, barely holding back from barking it. "You don't have to like that Remus is doing this, you just have to take it and deal with it." _ _

_ _"I _don't_ like it," James puts out. "In fact, it's literally the exact opposite direction that Remus and I already discussed yesterday morning, so you better believe I don't." _ _

_ _Sirius blinks expectantly at him. "Well, go on, then," he prompts. "You brought it up."_ _

_ _"I told him I was less than thrilled about finding out about all of this second-hand," James returns. "I went way easier on him than you, and he looked me in the eye and told me he understood, and there I went thinking that wouldn't be happening again." _ _

_ _"Where?" Sirius asks tightly._ _

_ _James makes another bewildered face. "What?"_ _

_ _"Where did you have that conversation I specifically told you not to get into with him?" Sirius reiterates. _ _

_ _"Out on the terrace, who cares where it was?" James raises. _ _

_ _"So, he was wearing shades, then," Sirius presumes. "In that case, he probably looked you in the eye once, maybe twice before avoiding it the rest of the time, and I assure you, he didn't promise you anything." _ _

_ _"Cool, OK then," James sends him, chipper as a sunny day. "So, as the Remus-whisperer here, when I asked him how we could be of help and he said to be patient; was he talking about the situation as a whole like I thought he was, or was he just asking me to be patient with him?" _ _

_ _Sirius sits fantastically still while his hands start to shake in his lap, his blood set on boil. "We could have lost him that night, so I wouldn't be coming for his integrity right now if I were you," he presses, and he likes that James' face contorts like it fucking should. "Keep any more of your armchair character analyses out of this, if you please." _ _

_ _Sirius sets his gaze firmly out the front window and stews for a block and a half before James lets out a sigh of magnitudes. "I shouldn't have went at him like that," he says. “I'll admit it.” _ _

_ _"No, you shouldn't have," Sirius barks. "I get that you're feeling useless; join the fucking club and quit ragging on him." _ _

_ _"I'd love to join if he'd let me anywhere _near_ the fucking club," James barks back, "and you don't get to act like you've been a fucking angel to Lily at all times." _ _

_ _The irony that Sirius is the one who ends up stamping his feet tonight is not lost on him, but he drums the shit out of the floor under his feet all the same. "That's irrelevant right now."_ _

_ _"You sure as hell wouldn't be acting any differently than me if it was her in this mess," James keeps to it. "You'd be all over it and you wouldn't give a single fuck about her self-preservation if it meant she was being taken care of." _ _

_ _"I am taking care of him," Sirius shoots back to him. "If you want to help so much, don't even bother hounding him over this and just finish transporting this fucking dog for us because the minute those those two furballs meet and frolic together Remus is going to be beaming, and we want him doing that because he's already down in it and he needs all the uppers he can get at this point." _ _

_ _Sirius stews for a beat or two before he realizes he isn't quite finished yet. "And no, I haven't worked out what we're going to do if they don't get along yet, so do not ask," he tacks on resoundingly. _ _

_ _James managed a respectable, if pointed silence through Sirius' monologue but this is the precise moment where he breaks; dropping his head forward in the throes of a laugh and garnering Sirius to reach over and help steer the wheel of the car for the few seconds it takes for James to come back up for air. _ _

_ _"They'll be fine," he says as Sirius helps him pull up beside the lawn out front of Remus' building. "He's the sweetest soul ever, she'll show him who's boss and he'll just take it." _ _

_ _Sirius takes his hand back as James puts the car in park, crosses both arms over his chest, and sniffs. "Thank you," he lets him have. "That's what I was thinking, but it's nice to get a second opinion." _ _

_ _"It is a really good smile," James puts out there, taking them back around. _ _

_ _"An actual sunshine ray," Sirius raises it. _ _

_ _"I still don't like you taking this on all your own," James can't help but mention, surely, and Sirius lifts his shoulders and drops them again without a response; it is literally what it is. "What happens when you're at work and one hits?" _ _

_ _Sirius shakes his head once. "No," he denies. "We're not going there." _ _

_ _James sends a pointed frown his way. "We have to."_ _

_ _"No," Sirius digs in. "I've worked everything else out; I can drop and go if I have to, but this is the one and only roadblock, and I can't think about it or I won't sleep again." _ _

_ _"That's what I'm saying, Sirius," James stresses. "You need backup, so call me if one strikes and you're stuck at work; I'll come in and cover you, and you know I'm not taking no for an answer so don't even bother trying."_ _

_ _Sirius deflates in his seat, so overwhelmed with love for the shithead beside him going and giving him the answer to just one of the many hypotheticals he's refusing to think about. "That, I wasn't going to fight you on," he mentions. _ _

_ _"Perfect," James says of it, leaning back exhaustively in his seat before he takes a look out his window to the building they're in front of, reminding Sirius of the fact that they are, in fact, at his destination. _ _

_ _"Well," he says, undoing his belt buckle with a pop. "Thanks for the ride, fuck-o."_ _

_ _James chokes on air or his own saliva, difficult to say which. "Will I ever see you again?" he asks after beating his chest once or twice. _ _

_ _"You'll see me plenty," Sirius sends him, letting himself out of the car. _ _

_ _Though Remus' street is desolate at first glance, Sirius heads round to the other side to let Tango out onto the sidewalk rather than the road. He snatches Tango's lead preemptively as he opens the door, but Tango merely hops down and out of the car and prances around in a circle, making Sirius a right proud papa._ _

_ _Sirius stops at James' window, leans his head down, and reaches his left hand into the open window, ruffling James' hair one last time. "Seriously, thanks," he says. "I did not want to walk him over here." _ _

_ _James gives him a loud 'pshh' and bats at his hand again. "Should have made you do it." _ _

_ _Sirius breezes past that and straightens up tall, pulling his phone out of his pocket and pulling up his and Remus' everlong message thread. "Are you heading to Lilith's from here?" he asks, garnering a happy hum from James in confirmation. "Give her my best." _ _

_ _"Gladly," James responds. Sirius feels a tug on his left arm and looks up from his screen in his right hand to investigate it, finding James' Dad-face on. "Seriously, though; Pete." _ _

_ _Sirius gives a grand, agonizing noise toward the sky. "Fine," he spouts, pressing the home button on his phone and seeking Peter's name out in his recent messages. "Here we go—" he prefaces, typing as he recites, "—S-o-r-r-y, sorry. Happy?" _ _

_ _Sirius sends it off and strikes a pose. "Quite," James replies, stretching in his seat._ _

_ _"Kay bye," Sirius drags out, leading Tango across the grass to get to Remus' stoop. He pulls their thread open again, then simply presses to ring him instead, waiting on the stoop for him to pick up two rings later. "Hi, I'm about to head up."_ _

_ _"OK, I just," Remus pauses there, "...have to find her first." _ _

_ _Sirius smirks a laugh at hearing Remus' own puzzled one. "How'd you manage to lose her in there?" he asks, letting himself into the lobby. _ _

_ _"I have not lost her," Remus maintains. "She was just nowhere to be seen from the kitchen." _ _

_ _"Under the bed's my best guess," Sirius forwards him, heading up the first flight of stairs with Tango at his heels._ _

_ _Remus gives a pondering hum before he follows that up a few moments later with a half-hearted gasp. "Your best guess proved false." _ _

_ _"Then she must've skipped town," Sirius laments, taking the stairs up to the second floor. _ _

_ _Remus breathes a laugh as his search continues, then lets out a bright, inwardly directed laugh. "She's in the fucking hamper." _ _

_ _"God, I love her," Sirius returns, heading down the hall toward Remus' door. "We're ready when you are." _ _

_ _"OK, I'm going to try to scoop her out without being swatted," Remus says. “Wish me luck.” _ _

_ _"Luck," Sirius echoes, and the call drops right about there. _ _

_ _Sirius slips his phone back into his pocket and smiles down at Tango staring up at him, waiting on a signal that they didn't really discuss. There's about thirty seconds or so that pass before he hears Remus call 'ready' from inside and Sirius loops the lead twice around his wrist so their whole plan won't go tumbling over sideways on account of him, lets himself in the door, and finds Remus standing in the middle of the flat with Mestophales in his arms. _ _

_ _"Should I—" Remus starts, looking down at her, "I'll bring her down, but I'll keep a hold on her in case he springs, yeah?" _ _

_ _Sirius nods eagerly, keeping Tango back in the entryway while Remus shrinks down to his knees and holds one arm around Mestophales' front and tucks the other under her. "Her face," Sirius spouts, breaking into a laugh. _ _

_ _Remus looks down at her sitting in a resigned heap on his thighs while training a fierce, watchful gaze on Tango, and ends up biting his lower lip out of mirth. "OK, bring him in," he prompts. "I have no idea how she's staying so still, but I don't want to tempt it for much longer."_ _

_ _Sirius does as bid, stepping into the main room, then stops short as the cat's eyes get comically bigger as Tango springs forward buoyantly. He rocks back on his feet, keeping Tango in place, and reverts to slow, easy steps before giving a tug back on the lead when Tango gets a few steps from the two of them. Sirius reaches down and pats Tango's back so he'll take the hint and have a sit, and moves down to the floor to mirror Remus' stance, kneeling behind the dog and letting him have a good sniff of the cat. _ _

_ _The two of them trade glances between each other and the pets, watching avidly as Tango settles down onto his front in between the three of them and sticks his head down on Remus' thigh, just below the cat, who then slowly moves her back left paw down and sets it directly on his face, sending both Remus and Sirius right into stitches. _ _

_ _"Good enough," Remus calls it, aiming a sunshine ray at Sirius and lighting up the flat better than the lamp in the corner of the room could ever. "You can say you were right if you'd like, I'll allow it." _ _

_ _Sirius unravels the lead from his left wrist, scoots around Tango's bulk to get in a little closer to Remus, and wins himself another taste of sunshine. "No need, you said it just fine for me," he maintains the moment they're finished, slipping back from Remus now-pointed smile to detach Tango's lead from his collar. _ _

_ _Remus looks down at the cat, readjusts his hold on her, and reaches to set her down on the floor, keeping a close eye on her as she spends a little more time studying Tango from above him. Sirius spots the moment when Remus moves on from her and sets his gaze on Tango, still laying his head on Remus’ left thigh and apparently quite comfortable where he is, and lets a smirk leave his nose._ _

_ _"I started the press for you," he offers, looking up at Sirius and nodding back toward the kitchen. "I don't have the heart to move him yet." _ _

_ _Well, don't mind if he does. Sirius pushes off of the floor easily and heads for the entry way to untie his boots, though in doing so he sparks Tango's avid interest, bringing him to lift his head, and that takes care of Remus' current predicament for him; Remus uses Tango's momentary disinterest in his leg to his advantage and moves back on his knees, rising to his feet by the time Sirius has footed his boots off in turn. _ _

_ _Sirius moves for the kitchen while Remus watches the pets mingle, pulls open the cupboard that houses the mugs, and reverts to standing on the tips of his toes to reach even one of them. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

__"Would it be such a travesty to put the mugs somewhere else?" he asks. _ _

_ _Remus turns around and passes the island to lean against the open doorway to the kitchen. "Where else would they go?" he asks._ _

_ _"Oh, any of the other shelves?" Sirius raises, still straining to reach one. _ _

_ _"I like my mugs where they are," Remus says of it. _ _

_ _"I think you get something out of watching me struggle," Sirius sends him, a mere inch or two from getting the fingers of his right hand around the handle of the closest mug to him._ _

_ _Remus moves into the kitchen and swipes a hand over the small of Sirius' back, flying free due to the hem of his shirt riding up. "Watching something, maybe," he corrects, reaching up to pull the down for him and holds it out, and Sirius is out of commission for a few, staggered seconds for two very important reasons. "So, did you punch anyone tonight?" _ _

_ _Sirius openly reels at the question before context comes careening back to him. "You'll be happy to know I refrained," he returns, taking the mug by the handle and poking Remus in the chest once with the front of it. "Only just, mind. He's gunning for a good one and I'd be more than happy to administer — Remus, what the hell."_ _

_ _It was Remus' turn to reel, only he takes it a step further and looks up and around before glancing down at himself and relaxing altogether as he spots the very same welt on his left wrist that Sirius is pointedly blinking at. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

__"Yeah," he offers, passing his right thumb over it. "I had a run-in with the hot water spigot."_ _

_ _"And left it against it for twenty years?" Sirius observes. _ _

_ _"Yes," Remus relents. "For twenty full years, my arm pressed against that spigot." _ _

_ _"Go put something on it," Sirius goads him, waving him toward the direction of the bathroom. _ _

_ _"I don't have anything here to put on it," Remus says, appearing to find Sirius' behaviour both dumbfounding and entertaining in one swoop. Sirius steps over to the fridge pointedly and pens 'get aloe' in big, loopy letters on the whiteboard before underlining it a bunch. "Should put one more line down." _ _

_ _This punk-ass, handsome little shit. "How about I put it on you, hm," Sirius raises, pointing the marker toward him. _ _

_ _Remus reaches for his tea off of the counter and retreats out of the kitchen before Sirius can get the point of the marker close enough to mark him properly. "What’d he do, then?" he asks, having himself a seat in the middle of the couch. "Aside from accost you out back over breaks, that is." _ _

_ _Sirius sticks the marker back on top of the whiteboard and crosses back over to the French press he brought over months back now. "He just has to have his fingers in everything," Sirius starts up, pressing down on it. "I swear, the moment we had even a second of downtime in the mid-day, there he'd be, ordering everybody around and dolling out tasks like he's relevant.” _ _

_ _"Was he shift lead?" Remus checks. "Sometimes that's what they do." _ _

_ _"I was lead, and he was acting like he was," Sirius stresses. _ _

_ _"Well, then — yeah," Remus sends back his way. "Not sure why he felt the need to take that on."_ _

_ _Since that allowance is about as close to 'you're so right here, Sirius,' that he's likely going to win himself, Sirius accepts it for what it is, and then raises the stakes a little from there. "He's only been at ours two shifts, besides," he says, pouring from the press. "He doesn't get to just walk in and take over everything just because he feels he's more important than everybody else who's already there. He isn't, and I don't care if he's worked for the company for a day or a decade, he's at the bottom of the ladder at ours and should behave that way until otherwise stated; that's just how it works." _ _

_ _Remus gives an even hum from the couch. "I don't think there's something necessarily wrong with him making a presence for himself there, but he could easily do that without stepping on your toes in the process," he says. _ _

_ _Sirius gives himself three spoonfuls of sugar simply because he's in the mood. "He didn't just step on them, he riverdanced all over them," he takes it from there. _ _

_ _Remus breathes a laugh. "Did he now?" _ _

_ _Sirius smirks into his first taste of his cup, deems it a-ok, and carries it out of the kitchen, on past Tango hogging out in the middle of the flat, and since Mestophales has taken up residence on the couch cushion on Remus' right Sirius heads around the coffee table to get to the far side of the couch. _ _

_ _"And I'm not talking the load of us would stand around twiddling our thumbs and chattering away while there's a line to the door and the cafe’s a mess, let's make that clear," he says, slipping into the corner on Remus left and lifting his legs in prompt, garnering Remus to lift his tea higher so that Sirius could successfully drape his legs over his thighs. "I'm talking no line, cafe's subdued, nothing needs to be made or refilled; an actual, beautiful lull would be gifted to us and instead of cherishing it, he'd start right in on everybody like the twat he is." _ _

_ _Remus has a sip of his tea, his brow furrowing overtop of it. "Do you think the store he started out at didn't have much in the way of down-time?" he raises after a swallow, half genuine curiosity, half a probable thought bubble that ended up with vocals attached to them, though Sirius watches him come right back from that read quite quickly just from the skeptical face he makes. "That said, letting everybody breathe for a minute or two without pouncing on them isn't going to result in the whole place blowing up." _ _

_ _"Exactly, Remus," Sirius sends out. "I knew you were a few steps behind me." _ _

_ _Remus gives him a plain look. "I'm just trying to work out why he might be doing that." _ _

_ _"There's no secret reason, he's just a brown noser," Sirius says. He goes for another sip of coffee, uses his free hand to hold it out splayed, and turns it back on his face, using makeshift puppetry to prove his point further, "he just turns his face into my face and gets on me more than everybody else combined, saying 'this isn't how it done at my store,' and I'm like, look around? Are we at your store? No, so take the sand out of your snatch and shut it a little more often."_ _

_ _Remus' mouth twitches over his mug. "Did you say that to him?" he checks. _ _

_ _"Yeah, pretty much," Sirius confirms, and Remus huffs but his wry, I'm-not-supposed-to-be-amused-but-I-sure-am smile is on all the same. "See, you — you were different; you like things to be tidy and running smoothly while you're shift lead, and boy, oh boy, do you like your lists, but you're not a twat for no good reason and you aren't allergic to a little fun on the job, for fuck's sake."_ _

_ _Remus takes a mighty sip of his tea there, smacking his lips when he's finished with it. "I'd thank you for saying that, but you used to find me and my ways particularly twatish." _ _

_ _Sirius gives him a rather plain look. "Pretty sure I softened up on you within days," he points out. _ _

_ _"Well, all I'm saying is, this could have been another very bad first impression," Remus counters, the right corner of his lip curling up. "Maybe he's actually so frustrated by how hot he finds you that he was seconds from shagging you into tomorrow every time he went in on you, never know." _ _

_ _Sirius makes a retching noise around another sip of coffee from the image alone. "You're not getting any for at least another hour for that." _ _

_ _"Doubt it," Remus returns, striking over to the right to avoid Sirius' finger-jabbing with such a wicked grin on that Sirius doesn't really bother trying to land his forefinger in his side for much longer, settling back against the arm of the couch. _ _

_ _Remus straightens up again the moment he seems to realize he's been pardoned, reaches over Sirius' knees to set his mug on the coffee table, leans over onto his left side to place a kiss on Sirius' right cheek before snuggling up against him, and now it's Sirius' turn to hold his mug out and away from Remus, but he doesn't mind that one bit. _ _

_ _"Sorry it looks as if you won't be bosom buddies after all," Remus offers him. "Do you know whether he'll be on Friday/Saturday?"_ _

_ _Sirius shakes his head. "Will's sending out the new schedule Monday, so it's still up in the air," he says. "I'd ask to not be scheduled with him myself, but I think as far as favours go I've hit the jackpot and should probably just take that win and let the rest go, you know?" _ _

_ _Remus' eyebrows do a quick rise and fall over his forehead. "Look at you," he says. "Being all thoughtful and the like." _ _

_ _"'Course, I might still make it my mission to run him out of the shop before I make my exit," Sirius ponders, tapping his fingertips against his mug. "Haven't decided yet." _ _

_ _Remus blinks and breathes in. "It was short-lived, but the moment was there," he returns._ _


	8. 8.

Sirius finishes his coffee in two quick swigs, leans over to leave it on the table near Remus' mug, and shifts onto his right side, facing Remus head on, who has sandwiched himself between Sirius and the corner of the couch and doesn't look even the least bit regretful of that choice even with the little space he has to work with. 

Sirius leans his head on the arm of the couch, his gaze rising to Remus' scar and lingering on the fray to the stitch on the left. Remus' own gaze darts up and around as Sirius reaches up toward it, but he eases when Sirius mimes passing a thumb over it. "Might think about changing that," he suggests. 

"I’m all out of the strips I knicked from yours," Remus confesses. 

"Remus, what _do_ you have here?" Sirius asks. 

"Milk," Remus replies. "And lots of it." 

Sirius gives him a pointed smile, decides they may as well do something about Remus' thoroughly unstocked medicine cabinet, and if anything, it couldn't hurt to push tomorrow's plans forward a dozen hours or so, given the circumstances. He glances down the length of the couch over toward Tango laying hogged out on the floor by the island, and with that Sirius gives into a hearty stretch, calling on the will and drive he's going to need to leave the couch now that he's quite comfy there, and lets go of his stretch with a satisfied sigh. 

"We could take him out and do a Boots run," Sirius offers. "Make it a whole quest?" 

"For butterfly stitches," Remus finishes mystically. 

"You watched me write aloe on there, did you not?" Sirius raises. "We were going to have to make a run there tomorrow anyway, might as well kill three birds with one stone." 

Remus' brow turns in a bit. "We were?" 

Sirius gives an even hum. "With appointments and work conundrums out of the way, treatment's our next step," he says. "I don't know that I really believe in jinxing as a concept so I'm not terribly concerned about addressing it, but you're going on three days without so much as a tension headache, and while that is a relief, it'll only do us good if we use whatever grace period this is while we have it." 

For a brief moment, Sirius wonders if he has just veered left and taken the expressway into Oh-Shitsville even bringing it up the proverbial clock ticking over their heads as if Remus weren't supremely aware of it himself, but the frown that Remus gives him is more circumstantial than it is pointed, and Sirius eases just from his tone alone. "You're right, we should," he says. "Have you got your list with you?" 

Sirius hums in affirmation, lifting his left hand to tap on his temple once. "It's all in here," he says, pausing to let Remus get away with a muttered 'oh ho, 'scuse me,' for he expected something like it; Remus, evermore a fan of penning down a list so he won't forget anything, would never. "It's not the longest list in the world, and I am sorry about that, but since Big Pharma's not all that interested in you and I right about now, I can really only work with what's available in-store for now."

"That's OK," Remus says. 

"I am working on getting you shrooms, so you know," Sirius tacks on. "Only my guy has to talk to his guy, so it'll be another day or two before I'll get my hands on anything, but we can still get you a few alternative methods to that alternative method in the meantime." 

Remus nods once, takes the left side of his lower lip into his mouth, and then tries his hand at speech patterns. "I," he starts, sounding that out, "can't say I expected we would be bothering with that?" 

"You said you couldn't put all your eggs in one basket, yes?" Sirius checks, waiting a beat or two for confirmation, which he presumes he gets simply from Remus' second lower lip bite in under a minute. "Then consider this me getting you a few more baskets to work with." 

Remus embarks on a remarkably short face journey before he shifts even closer to Sirius on the couch, and if he gets any closer Sirius will end up on the floor, but fuck it; what a way to go down. "I don’t quite know how to handle how sweet that was?" he offers before a careful intake of breath. "I appreciate that you're so—" 

He pauses, seemingly in search of the right word. "Forthcoming?" Sirius offers, faux-quizzically. "Fervent? Intense?"

"Sure," Remus sounds out. "All of those, but considering that the last time we even discussed this was ages ago now, I'm going to come clean and admit that when I asked you if you had any connections to these, I was doing it mostly to smooth over a very uncomfortable moment between us, so I really think that we'd do well to think on this a little more first."

Sirius smirks, transported right back to Remus' bedroom, and nods, willing to grant him that. "Here's where my head is," he prefaces, "we've two months to either sit around and wait for the appointment or we can try other options in the meantime, and I know which one I'd rather do." 

"A strong point, I'm not denying you that," Remus returns. "Only you did actively stomp on all means of treatment that weren't oxygen related, so you can probably see why I might've thought us going _this_ particular route wouldn't be on the horizon." 

Sirius clicks his tongue three times thoughtfully. "Right, but I never did stomp on shrooms, let's make that clear," he rebuts. "And I didn't technically stomp on anything else either, if we really want to be technical about it." 

Remus hums a vague, skeptical tune. "You did." 

Sirius sends a breath out through his nose. "I said that _of_ the myriad of prescriptions she could very well sign for you when the day arrives, I considered the oxygen tanks to be your best bet, which I still do, but I'm also wickedly flexible as you well know, and completely willing to be wrong about this one if it means that the shrooms sneak in between now and the appointment and kill your clusters before we even get there." 

Remus does a substantial reel, and somebody present has been taking classes in the Sirius Black School of Dramatic Arts and it's not Sirius. "Sorry, say that one more time for me?" 

Sirius gives out the sound of a buzzer, denying him that. "You heard me just fine, thank you," he says. "I don't want another Ugly Pot incident ever happening again and I know you don't either, but realistically it will if we don't start acting smart." 

Yes, sure, the mention of Ugly Pot and all that that implies could be considered a low-blow in the simplest of terms, but if it works, it works; Remus quits holding himself so carefully the moment Sirius is finished and sinks himself down a little more into the crevice between Sirius and the back of the couch, but he drapes his arm over Sirius' side and gives him a firm squeeze with his hand, and Sirius knows that every second going between them is crucial to getting Remus on board. 

"Using them for prevention is null at this point, I think you can agree with that," Sirius presses on, waiting a beat or two before Remus gives him a knowing frown for it before continuing, "but a staggering amount of people have had luck breaking a cycle if they keep to a dosing schedule, which I think is your best bet given your actual schedule; you can pick one day a week to dose up when you know you're going to be home, it'll be a controlled amount and nowhere near the amount people need to take to start seeing ships going down the street, and with some luck, July could roll around and you won't even _be_ in a cycle anymore; how fucking cool would that be, hm?" 

"With some luck," Remus paraphrases. 

Sirius does a slow blink, nodding once. "Yes, but you're not ignoring the rest of what I said," he mentions. "One bloke I was reading about wrote that he dosed up once a week for a total of four, and after that his clusters were never to be seen from again, and I'm sorry, but we'd be a couple plonkers not to give them a shot if yours could go anything like that." 

"When did you even do this reading?" Remus asks. 

"On my fifteen," Sirius offers, "Part of why I was late coming back from it, so David can eat me twice." 

Remus appears as though he really, really doesn't want to let a smirk go, but it's a no-go. "This could still go very wrong if we're not careful," he insists, keeping to his point despite his begrudging smile. 

Sirius gives him an exceedingly blank look. "Remus, it's me," he says. "I'd literally never give you a bad batch ever in my life; I'm trying to keep you around, not get rid of you." 

Remus sends him an imploring frown. "I didn't think you'd actively try to do me in, but you can't control what's in it, can you?" he raises. 

"I trust my guy more than I trust most people," Sirius says candidly. "Been a stand-up chap since day one." 

"Good for you, but do you trust his guy?" Remus raises. 

Sirius gives him a light, if perhaps tight smile and lifts his left hand to brush it up through Remus' fringe. "So, I don't know how to tell you this, but when my guy is out he tends to get me stuff some his other guy, so you've technically have inhaled and benefited from his guys' stuff," he points out, and Remus huffs a big one for that. "Oh alright, let's just tone it down a little? This isn't peer pressure, it's me giving you another option, and moreover, if pot would even touch a cluster, how much of it would you have smoked Monday/Tuesday, hm?" 

Remus gives _him_ the exceedingly plain look this time around. "They're two very different drugs, Sirius." 

"Mmm, are they, though?" Sirius ponders, and gets a light scoff for it. "OK, obviously there are some differences, but I don't know that you'll find it all that different from a regular high? Especially considering how small the dose would be." 

"Well, I never did get a straight answer on dosage the one time I looked this up, so maybe you should tell me some more about that?" Remus bids. 

Sirius gives out a deep an agonized groan for that, feeling as if war flashbacks were upon him. "The answers were buried in discourse, but I found them eventually," he says pithily. "I.5gs should do the trick but there's room for tweakage, and _no_, neither amount will land you in a trip strong enough for you to start wiggling around starkers in the corner of the room, so you can ditch that worry now." 

There's a beat or three of silence that lingers between them wherein Remus simply stares at him with one brow cocked, and Sirius huffs a sigh. "You _may_ experience a light visual hallucination or two, but they'll be minor, I'm sure of it," he offers evenly. 

Remus breaks character long enough to click his tongue loudly. "Sirius," he huffs. 

"Remus," Sirius mimics. 

"Stop that," Remus instructs. "I've a right to know what I'll be getting into, thank you." 

"I'm telling you what you'll be getting into," Sirius insists, a throaty laugh escaping him. "Colours may go a little wonky, things might get a bit silly, but believe me, that's about it. James and me, we took way more than 1.5 and all we didn't go running headlong off of a bridge." 

Remus squints there. "Mm, but what did you do?" he inquires. 

Sirius smirks a little. "Ended up in my room spewing a thousand words per minute between each other for five hours straight and there was a parrot not unlike the one from Aladdin perched just out of my right peripheral the entire time," he offers. "And absolutely none of that is going to happen to you just from the small amount you'd be having, I assure you." 

Remus looks up, down, all around before taking a breath in. "No, you have got to give me more about the parrot." 

Sirius hums fondly, thinking back to that frankly blurry night. "I'm sorry to say this, but I have very little to share," he insists. "He was just there sitting in the room listening to us babble back and forth; no judgement from him as far as I could tell, just another ear in the room really." 

Remus promptly ducks his head down to stuff it against Sirius' chest and writhes under the force of a bout of snickers. "Well, thank God there wasn't any judgement," he says, muffled against Sirius' work blouse. 

A bright laugh bubbles in Sirius' throat before he leans down to press a kiss to the top of Remus' head. "The good thing is, I highly doubt you'll see a single bird in the room." 

Remus shifts his head enough to meet Sirius' eyes. "Are you going to be taking it with me?" 

Sirius shakes his head slowly from side to side. "It's all yours," he says. "I'm the DD, so to speak; someone has to be." 

Remus scoots himself back from Sirius' chest, lets a sigh leave his nose, and leaves Sirius with a narrow-eyed look. "Then you cannot take the piss out of me for _anything_ ridiculous I might say during it," he conditions. 

If Sirius were anyone else he might've kept this part to himself, but he isn't, so. "I'm not promising anything," he says plainly, though he breaks into a rolling laugh as Remus presses a round of finger jabs to his stomach in retaliation. "You have made me cry laughing dead sober; all bets are off when you're loopy." 

"Unbelievable," Remus calls it. 

"You're funny, deal with it," Sirius returns. "I've ideas aside from this, Remus; but this is one of them." 

Remus leans his head down on the arm of the couch alongside Sirius', mirroring him. "What're the others, then?" 

Sirius takes in a breath, thinking about how to put it exactly, and lets his breath out in a solid puff. "If a mega thread of suggestions on what to get next was an artists' discography, I simply combed through and came up with a greatest hits compilation," he raises.

Remus blinks twice. "I'm interested," he goads. 

Sirius lifts a hand to count on his fingers. "I've abortive strategies, I've tricks on how to make attacks easier on you; it's a variety," he offers. "All purely anecdotal, but that's the name of the game for now and if you'd get ready to go, we can get right on that." 

Sirius reaches to tap Remus' right side twice in prompt, and Remus appears to seek out the same will to move that Sirius already managed to find, gives out a decided breath, and lifts out from between Sirius and the couch. Getting off of it is trickier; he has to work to get himself over Sirius' frame in order to get a secure footing on the ground by the couch, and Sirius would be the first to admit that the maneuver is tough with he himself making absolutely no attempt to help, but it has always been fun to watch Remus try to pilot his tree branch limbs around and that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon. 

"Give me a minute," Remus requests, plucking his tea off of the coffee table and taking into his room with him. 

Sirius indulges in another long stretch in his wake, glances at Tango after he lets it go, and gives out a light 'psst,' to get his attention, and a mere beat or two later Tango is up on him, putting his front half on the couch while leaving his back legs on the floor. 

Sirius gives Tango's ruff a stellar rub and leans his head back as Remus' voice carries over from the other room. "What's it like out?" 

Sirius hums thoughtfully; on his own terms, it's a cool summer's night but Remus is in a simple tee and won't love that. "You'll want long sleeves," he offers. 

Remus makes a reappearance by the time Sirius is herding Tango toward the entryway, drinking the lasts of his tea and sporting a light pull-over hoodie with the hood popped. Despite the fact that the presence of said hoodie is laughable in its own right, Sirius can and does wholly appreciate its cameo appearance for a few reasons; the hoodie's his, Remus' fringe is floofing fantastically out from underneath the hood, and its frankly doing wonders for his recently acquired street urchin aesthetic. 

Sirius bites down on a laugh, focuses on getting Tango strapped to the lead once again. Remus makes a stop-off at the kitchen to rinse out his mug and Sirius clips the lead on Tango's collar, rises to his feet, and times a good old fashioned once-over for the instant Remus makes it to the entryway. 

"No one better cross you while we're out there or it's wa-pow for them, hm?" he raises. 

"How about a wa-pow for you, hm?" Remus returns, miming a sock to Sirius' gut before slipping around behind Sirius to get near the shoe rack. "We're precariously low on lube around here, so don't let me forget to grab some while we're there." 

Sirius swivels around and sticks his feet into his docs in turn. "Wouldn't dream of it," he says, following Remus out the door. 

Remus hangs back to lock up behind them while Sirius takes to an easy jog down the hall just to amp Tango up a little. Remus catches up to them in little time at all and catches Sirius up on a little plan of his very own; it'd only be in their best interests to teach Tango how to stop at each landing rather than let him tear off down the stairs and, to quote one Remus Lupin, "drag you into sure death." 

Sirius offers a mild noise of offense. "Look at his face," he says, gesturing his free hand toward the Tango even as he's quite admittedly leads the way down the stairs. "He doesn't have a concept of what or where death is." 

"He's going to get bigger," Remus says. "It'd be better to train him how to heel sooner rather than later or you're going to end up dragging behind him someday because he took off after a squirrel." 

"He's not going to do that," Sirius says plainly. 

"He's a hound, Sirius," Remus returns. "That's what they do." 

Sirius debates between the second and first landing whether this is the precise hill he wants to die on, decides there are bigger, better battles to be won overall, and stops at the next landing, emphasizing the word and waiting until Tango comes to a full stop before showering him with praise and emphasizing the word 'go' next. Sirius heads on down the stairs behind Tango, Remus follows them down looking quite pleased with that turn of events, and that's good enough for him. 

He takes the three of them on a slight detour, leading them up a few blocks in the opposite direction to their destination just to introduce Tango to the village square near Remus' complex and let him frolic about for a time before looping them back in the direction of Boots. When they come up on the storefront, Sirius walks Tango to a nearby light post that's as close to the entry door as can be done, ties the lead in a tight knot mid-way down the base of it, and leaves a warm-hearted pat on the dog's head. 

"If any strangers try to walk off with you, bite 'em," he instructs, booping Tango's nose for a dot of punctuation. 

"Brave of you, leaving him there," Remus mentions, following Sirius through the in-door. 

"It's not as if I can bring him in with us, can I?" he sends over his shoulder. 

"Well, not a chance," Remus offers behind him. "Only you don't see many like him around, which has me thinking he's just the type to get snatched." 

"You're right, that _could happen_," Sirius allows, lifting a shopping basket off of a stacker of them sitting in the foyer, "so, I could either panic that some jack is going to come scuttling out of the shadows and make off with him every time I'll have to leave him out front of a place for a few minutes, or I could simply not do that?" 

"Oh, well, who the hell knows why I didn't think of that one," Remus says plainly. 

Sirius gives a light hum of a laugh, hangs the basket loosely at the bend of his right arm, and heads a few steps over from the entryway to get himself a good view of the aisle markers. "Aloe and stitches first up," he declares, glancing over his shoulder to find Remus a step or two behind him, pulling his hood down. 

"I'd think they'd be somewhat near each other," he gives, passing a hand up through his fringe to keep it at bay, but thankfully it's no use. 

Sirius turns his smile back toward the row of aisle markers ahead of him. "My thoughts," he returns, scanning the boards for some clues. 

He nudges Remus to follow him when he's found a lead, beckons him to follow him over to aisle three, and there he splits the duty in half; giving Remus the task of finding aloe while Sirius handles keeps an eye out for butterfly stitches. He finds them quicker than Remus finds the aloe and takes a short detour, dipping out of the aisle and heading down one running parallel to the others, having a look this way and that for any and all dog-related items. 

He goes down as far as aisle six before he spots a few bags of dog food available, and though none are the brand he'd prefer, it'll just have to do for now. He makes a choice given his limited options, picks a smaller size so they'll have room for everything else on the list, and stuffs the pack of butterfly stitches to the side of the basket to make room for the bag. He heads back the way he came, spots Remus down at the other end of four and about to head onto the next one, and lets out a bird whistle to have Remus rethink that plan. 

A man standing halfway between the two of them looks up and around quickly for the source of the sound, but Sirius is more preoccupied with Remus a few steps further than the man, swivelling around to face Sirius and putting an immense effort to hide his smile and not to encourage him any surely, but when has that ever worked? 

Sirius smiles brightly as Remus waits at the top of the aisle for Sirius to get to him. Sirius holds his basket out in offering, and Remus sets a modest jug of aloe into it followed closely by a much larger pack of lube in comparison, and that bit of contrast promptly sends Sirius into a round of rushed, breathy laughs through his nose. 

Remus switches to a hearty whisper. "Oh, stop," he says, tossing a wayward glance past Sirius, though that doesn't deter a cheeky smile from forming on his lips all the same. "It's cheaper in the long run if we get the larger one." 

"Mm," Sirius manages, nodding brightly, "mhm." 

"Alright, focus, yes?" Remus prompts. "What's next?"

Sirius shakes himself out, straightening up and sniffing once. "Sleep mask," he provides. 

Remus' brow furrows slightly to that. "I've got one." 

"Which is at mine, so that's not going to help you now, is it?" Sirius raises. "Besides, someone online suggested keeping one in the freezer for attacks and swears it helps ease some of the pain and the lake of fire running under his skin, so I thought we ought to try that out since you were about a thousand degrees during yours." 

Remus lights up before giving out a resounding noise of appreciation. "That's the best idea you've stolen yet," he puts out, beckoning Sirius to follow him back the other way. 

Sirius glows a little or a lot, difficult to say for certain but he feels a lot warmer as he follows Remus over to aisle five. He’s lead upon a wired basket half-way down the aisle practically bursting over the brim with various sleep masks, spanning a wide variety of colours and slogans printed on the front of them. Sirius clicks his tongue in thought as he rolls up the sleeves of his work blouse, giving out the impression that this is certainly a tough call, and Remus' muffled snickers make it worth it. 

Sirius lifts two contenders out of the bunch, one a simple black, the other a vibrant pink, and has a look over them. "I've got _don't fuck with me_, or _don't wake the bride_," he raises loftily, looking to Remus and putting his head on a tilt. "Which one speaks to you more?'"

Remus presses his lips firmly together and shuts his eyes, not giving him an answer for it seems Sirius has put him out of commission for the moment. "Guess it's a tie," Sirius says lightly, sticking the both of them into his basket. "Now you've got one for the freezer and one for your nightstand." 

Remus shoulders slow their shaking and he recovers with a stark intake of breath before a slow exhale of it. "What's next?" he asks. 

Sirius reaches forward with his free hand, wraps it around Remus' right wrist, and tugs him down and out of the aisle, weaving him over toward the RTD&E section, and stops in front of the entire wall of refrigerated shelves. He whistles a quizzical tune, on the hunt, and perks when he spots a frankly stunning array of energy drink opens, and tugs Remus over to them with renewed purpose. 

He lets go of Remus' wrist when they step in front of them and displays both his hands royally underneath a few of them. "Et voila," he says. "As far as personal testimonies go, the tiers are," he pauses to illustrate said tiers with his palms flattened, "oxygen and shrooms are battling it out for the title of best defense strategy, oxygen's ahead by a nose, shrooms aren’t far, and following those two are these: Redbull is definitely the overwhelming winner as far as name-dropping goes, but Monster does have its diehards and will do the job just as well. And look, they’re two for five — how frugal."

Remus has himself a look over the shelf in front of them. "I saw so much of that name-dropping too, but these seem almost too easy to work." 

Sirius nods, willing to let him have that. "I won't fight you there.”

"Oh, no?" Remus raises, glancing at him sidelong. 

Sirius shakes his head once. "On one hand you've so little options around for you to sink your teeth into to the point where it can get disheartening, but on the other, these are considered must-haves in the community and can be found at any corner shop within a mile radius of you and can smack a cluster down from a ten to a three; sounds fake, but this would be one fucking elaborate lie, don't you think?" 

Remus eyes widen a smidge. "Well, well you put it like that," he returns. 

Sirius tilts his head to the right with a bright smile. "Not that you'll fall over out of surprise or anything, not much research has been devoted to why they work, but word on the street says it's all got to do with the taurine in them, which you'll find listed under ingredients in most, if not all of these." 

Remus picks a Redbull off of the shelf and has a look for himself, turning it around to look at the back of the label. "You did your homework," he observes, and Sirius wiggles his toes in his boots, feeling quite pleased with himself. Remus glances up from the label to fix him with a curious gaze instead. "How am I to use it?" 

"They say it works best if taken at the onset of one," Sirius offers, show-stoppingly grateful that Remus isn't actively poking holes into every spot he could possibly fit a needle through, "and if all goes as well as they say it will, this'll bulldoze right through one." 

"Again, too easy," Remus calls it. 

Sirius holds in a huff. "Sound it, but it might not be," he returns. "There's going to be a lot of maybes from here on out; some say the effect is near instant, and others say there's some time before it can take effect, but these things check out just from the amount of praise they get alone, so I don't see any reason to ignore them; so the moment you're sure one's coming your way, pound one of these back and we'll see what's what." 

"I don't think I've pounded anything back in my life," Remus says, sounding quite candid about it. 

Not the direction Sirius saw him going in, but alright, he'll play. "Pretty sure I rescued you from a drunken excursion _due to_ your pounding back a slew of pints, but whatever you say, hon," he says primly, reaching up to pat Remus twice on the small of his back. 

Remus eyes him pointedly. "I didn't pound those back like a row of shots," he returns. "And I’ve never been a shots-shots-shots sort of bloke." 

Sirius gives an evasive sweep of his hand. "A true shame, but the thing is, when you're smack in the middle of an attack, I've a sneaky suspicion that I could tell you that the _only_ cure for these things would be shooting heroin into your eye and you'd jump face-first on the needle without asking for any clarity," he says, not seeing any reason to sugarcoat it. "I get that right now you just want all the information you can get your hands on beforehand, which I'm fine with, but let's not split hairs here; you'd slam one of these down in no-time if it meant you could stop an attack from getting off the ground." 

Remus gives him a bland frown, but Sirius considers it crucial to note that he doesn't deny either claim so much as he lets them exist unchallenged and moves forward on the particulars. "That's if I see one coming," he mentions. "My last two were on me before I even saw them coming." 

"I know they were, but they won't always come on like that," Sirius insists. 

Remus gives him a frank look. "We don't know that." 

"We've a pretty solid guess, don't you think?" Sirius counters. "Your left eye would not stop watering the entire time we were stuck in that waiting room, and Pete said it wouldn't even open during Tuesdays, so that right there tells me if you notice anything funky going on, anywhere near here—" he reaches out and circles a hand around Remus' left eye, "—that's a warning in itself, and _that's_ when they say you'll need to start chugging." 

Remus lets a puff of breath leave the right side of his mouth before he plucks one more off of the shelf and puts both cans in the basket on Sirius' arm, making the total two. "Pick a few more," Sirius goads. "There's a thousand options here and I'll get you a variety." 

Remus pulls a few more options off of the shelf, tossing them in the basket in turn, totaling in six different flavours, three from the two most praised brands. "Not sure when you decided you’d be getting all of this, but I'm paying for it, so we're clear," he tells him, which is laughable at best. 

"Yeah, OK there," Sirius returns, hiking his basket up further on his arm to accommodate the increasing weight of it. 

"The bill's mine, thank you," Remus doubles down. 

"I've got it, Remus," Sirius sends him. "Some of this is mine anyway." 

"One thing is and we have a deal," Remus returns. "You wouldn't take my tax return, so this is how it's going to be." 

"Right, because me taking your tax return is absolutely something I'd do," Sirius nods. 

"If you'd done it, I wouldn't have to resort to paying you back in increments," Remus returns. "I'd have paid you back at once, so now I have to slow seep it toward you in chunks instead of you just letting me pay you back in full." 

"Or," Sirius puts out, "_or,_ we could forgo the entire deal and you could remember that I've got actual fuck-you money, and then take whatever you're planning to send me and put it toward literally anything other than paying a bloke who doesn't want or need to be paid back." 

"I well know you've got fuck-you money, thank you," Remus retorts. "When has that ever been the point?"

Sirius lifts his hands evasively. "We'll see who gets their card out quicker at checkout, then." 

Remus gives an equally unaffected gesture with his own hands. "There will still be a money transfer headed your way on payday as is, so you really can't stop me from adding on a little more to cover whatever this tryst amounts to," he returns, turning away from the refrigerated shelves and the conversation topic as a whole in one swoop. "Six should be good for now, I'd think; where to next?" 

Sirius lets this one fall by the wayside for he has a strong hankering that this specific battle will go on until one of them truly forfeits, and Sirius can absolutely pretend Remus has won for now; he could do this forever. "Pharmacy," he offers pleasantly.

Remus tosses his left thumb over his shoulder. "In back," he provides.

Sirius smirks, heading that way. "'Course you'd know." 

"I wouldn't be me if I didn't know where the closest place to get cough syrup is kept," Remus maintains, a step or two behind him. 

"You know what, that's perfect," Sirius sends to him. "If I'm ever forced to pick between you and your evil clone in the event of a climactic battle, I'll know to demand where the cough syrup is kept in here; it's fool-proof." 

Remus catches up to Sirius in a few easy strides, heading up on Sirius' left possibly to avoid running into the basket on Sirius' right arm and giving out an even hum. "Only hitch to that plan is, just about anyone with a lick of common sense would know to say 'the pharmacy,' so don't fall for that if that's one of the answers," he puts in. "I'll be much more specific about it, and that'll be your answer in itself." 

"Love that," Sirius returns. 

"Whoops, this way," Remus says, wrapping his right hand around Sirius' arm to change the direction Sirius had absolutely been blindly heading in. 

He guides Sirius down a few aisles further before he leads them out to a separate section of shelves from the rest; further down the way Sirius spots the pharmacy window and a lone staff member twittering about behind it, but they need not go there when what they're here for can be found on the shelves, lucky them. 

"Any idea where they keep the caffeine pills, El Phamaculo?" Sirius raises, just in case Remus' knowledge of the area extends past the cough syrup. 

Remus gives Sirius a side-eye to end them all. "What, like you're not buzzing already?" he returns, and OK, fair enough; Sirius is practically vibrating out of his skin, but the pills aren't for him anyway. 

"Nice one, but they're all yours," Sirius returns. 

"Oh?" Remus sends him vaguely. "What does legend say about them?"

"Legend says it’s another abortive,” Sirius offers. “Allegedly high amounts of caffeine can bring a cluster down to a screeching halt, so it couldn’t hurt to take a whack at it.”

Remus aims a frank stare at him. "You can't be suggesting I take a caffeine pill alongside a Redbull," he deadpans. 

"Oh, _fuck_ no," Sirius sends back, and Remus' shoulders go much more lax with that. "It's one or the other, so if you pick one, you're committing to it until the next cluster rolls around before you try testing out the other; all I'm doing is taking you down a list of suggestions you can find at your local Boots." 

"Talk to me, then," Remus prompts. "Why would those help?"

Sirius keeps an eye on the other side of the aisle, humming a little as he strolls along at a leisurely pace. "It's more anecdotal than anything else." 

"That's my favourite phrase," Remus insists. 

"Cool it, would you?" Sirius asks of him. "I caught the suggestion in a thread where a bunch of people were throwing out tips; one of them said he slams down an iced espresso with nine shots in it when he knows an attack's coming and swears that kills it before it has a chance to get anywhere and there were several others who'd replied to that one agreeing with it, so while that's nowhere near Redbull levels of an agreement party it's still something to consider, and I figure the pills could work the same way when they'll be a lot more convenient to carry around with you _and_ I won't have to bother trying to convert you over to espresso, which is a relief because I do know a losing battle when I see one." 

"Well, apparently you don't seeing as you're going to lose the Rory debate and you can't even see it coming," Remus claps back without missing a single fucking beat, the complete shit. 

Sirius reels back from the shelf he's scanning, but recovers from that devastating blow for his own sake. "Listen you, if you want to reopen that box right here, that's up to you, but did you hear anything I said?" he asks. "Anything at all?" 

Remus looks over at him, aiming a pointed smile his direction. "I heard you," he confirms. "Only if caffeine can abort one, couldn't I knock back any of the myriad of strong teas I've got in my cupboards and hope for the best?" 

Sirius squints over at him, humming a little. "I mean, technically I suppose you could, only I don't imagine you'll feel up to dragging yourself into the kitchen to brew a pot just in time for a cluster to hit, do you?" he raises. Remus accepts that with an even tilt of his head, but Sirius isn't the fussy one in the building; he'll take it. "I'm thinking if these end up helping, then they can be more of an emergency abortive that you can take with you on the go and they'll be way more convenient to carry around with you." 

"Alright, well — that's a very good point," Remus lets him have, and Sirius can't quite decide if it cost him anything to give him that or not. "I'll be honest, then; I haven't a clue where they're kept around here."

"We'll find them," Sirius says of it, scouting the shelves. 

"Could ask her?" Remus suggests, tossing a thumb over his shoulder.

Sirius' gaze darts to the lady over behind the glass partition down the aisle and quite honestly, he can't think of something he'd less like to do. "Nah, I'll find them," he insists.

The next time he looks up, Remus is gone from where he last stood, and Sirius has a fast look around before he spots him down the way speaking with the pharmacy lady, and the treachery of it all is absolutely dumbfounding. Remus gives a pleasant nod to the lady and heads one aisle over from where he left Sirius, and Sirius waits with his arms crossed and right foot tapping away for Remus to return to him, but then the little shit comes back the other way, ruining the intended intensity of the visual altogether.

"I'd have gone over to that aisle eventually," Sirius puts out there, swivelling around to face him.

"I'm sure," Remus says. "There's a few options over there, so I'll need you for this part unless you want me to start picking at random." 

Sirius gives a lofty sweep of his hand, gesturing for Remus to lead the way. When they're in front of said options, Sirius scours for the recommended dosage, picks a modest bottle to start with, and holds it up. "Now, you're not going to be taking the bottle with you on the go," he raises, rattling the bottle for a of extra flair. "I'm not saying you'll go all _Saved by the Bell_ on me, but I'm not into the idea of you downing the entire thing in a fit of desperation, so it'll be one or two in a baggie that you bring along in your book bag and I'm putting my foot down on that."

The corners of Remus' lips twitch before he seems to give up on hiding his smile. "I accept your terms," he replies, half-tipping his head to him. "Is there more that we need?" 

"Melatonin's the last of it," Sirius offers, tossing the pills into the basket. 

Remus looks altogether stumped for a moment or two before he hums endearingly and heads off up the aisle in search mode again. "Aren't you going to ask your friend?" Sirius calls after him. 

Remus flips him the bird over his shoulder and takes a right and walks out of sight, and from there he either does head off to have a confab with the pharmacy lady or simply conducts his own search, but Sirius can't see his head overtop of the shelves so it's up in the air. He heads the opposite way and turns in to the aisle right of him, figuring he might as well have a look around, but a minute or so later Remus announces he's won the scavenger hunt. 

Sirius heads back the way he came, only this time he loops around the outside of the pharmacy section to cut some time, and heads for Remus, stopping just in front of him. Remus turns the pill bottle in his hand so its face is turned toward Sirius and gives the bottle a tilt back and forth in question. 

"This is one is a bit of a mystery even to me,” Sirius levels with him. 

Remus blinks once. “Honestly, it’s refreshing to hear you say that out loud,” he says, fiddling with lip of the bottle with his fingertips.

“Well, here’s why,” Sirius prefaces. “Some say if taken before you head to bed these can help ward off nocturnal attacks, and some go as far to say repeated use has apparently helped ward off day ones, too," Sirius delivers, keeping his tone as light as it can be. 

"So if it they do help, it’ll be more of an over time scenario," Remus surmises. 

"As far as I'm aware," Sirius allows. "I somehow doubt that popping one tonight will make you cluster-free tomorrow, but prolonged use has had some alleged benefits, and I know you're sick of hearing 'he said, she said,' but I’ve also read that a lot of people use it to sleep better, and that alone makes me feel they’re worth a shot just to counteract some of the restlessness I've seen you dealing with after your attacks have come and gone; I literally can't see any reason not to work these into your nightly ritual and see what comes of it." 

Remus reworks his mouth and shuffles a bit on his feet, and Sirius watches with renewed anticipation, and then, to top it all off, there must be exactly no one in their immediate vicinity for Remus steps impossibly close to Sirius for the middle of Boots, night or day, and sticks his forehead against Sirius'. 

"You put so much thought into this," he says, his mouth twisting into a sheepish smile. 

Sirius moves his forehead against Remus'; side to side, up and down. "You've no idea." 

"I've _an_ idea," Remus says, his lips twitching at the sides. "I know it doesn't always seem like it, but I appreciate what you've managed to pull together from so little." 

Sirius snorts. "Bitch."

Remus smirks out a weak, imploring laugh. "I didn't mean it like that."

Sirius lets his eyes fall shut for a moment, for if there's anything he knows how to do, it's bask wholeheartedly. "I know you didn't." 

"I really didn't." 

"I know." 

A scuffle of shoes tapping on the flooring sounds off behind Sirius, further down the way but headed straight for them, and Remus steps back from him sooner than Sirius would've liked, but then again, if Sirius hadn't opened his eyes when he did, he would’ve missed Remus aims a gaze at him that only ever gives the sorts of things he finds supremely engaging and that would've been a tragedy. 

The source of the tapping goes to a woman who passes them by on her up the aisle, who promptly coughs a tad too pointedly as she goes by, and rounds her head back toward them with a wicked stank-eye the instant Sirius sends triple the amount of coughs her way, and really, Sirius hasn't a clue what she'd been expecting; talk shit, get hit. Remus promptly sticks the package in his hand in the basket on Sirius' arm and tosses a pointed gaze toward the front of the shop, signaling he's quite ready to leave, and it's not technically fair given that they were here shopping before Cunty McCunterson came along, but he digresses; they've rounded up the last of the list as is. 

Sirius swings around and falls into step with Remus, watching with plain curiosity as Remus eyes the basket on his arm pointedly before his face breaks open and a sharp laugh leaves his throat in a flash. Sirius, happy to hear that sound any old day, let alone this dumpster fire of a week, watches the show from front row while waiting for any and all context clues to be given to him. 

Remus hangs his head sheepishly as he spots Sirius' open expression. "Sorry, just—" he tries, biting back another laugh and gesturing at the basket. "Our cashier's going to think we're a couple of kooks trying to go out with an _intense_ bang."

Sirius looks down in a blink of a second, takes in the frankly disastrous haul that their shopping tryst has amounted to, and promptly loses every morsel of his shit; barking a laugh loud enough to raise the dead, judging by the face Remus makes, and _that_ only sends Sirius into further mayhem. 

"The rest of the stuff; jaw-dropping to say the least, but I think the dog food is the cherry on top," Remus tacks on, his tone the perfect marriage between flat and wistful, and it's no use; Sirius can't do much more than bend forward to brace his hands on his knees in order to have any chance at recovering properly.

With a resounding effort and a few long gulps of air, Sirius lifts out of his curled position and stands to his regular height, thinking he's got to get it together before they make it to checkout, or else he'll be heading on into stitches the moment he starts unloading the basket. 

Remus gives him a bright once-over. "Are we good?" he checks, beginning a light stroll. 

"As good as we'll ever be," Sirius admits, matching his pace.

They do fairly well getting from the back of the store up to the front but the moment Remus takes a look at the only register open, he right forfeits. "You know what, I think you've got this handled, so why don't I go make sure you still have a dog," he offers. 

"I still have a dog, Remus," Sirius returns flatly. 

"I'll just double-check, then," Remus insists, and before Sirius has a chance to catch his arm and tug him back, Remus makes a quick and easy break for the out-door and calls to him over his shoulder. "Get the receipt." 

"Chicken shit," Sirius sends to his retreating back. 

He looks over at the sole cashier sending a couple of bamboozled blinks in his direction and smiles lightly, heading over to the register with the sort of purpose he’s going to need to get through this part. He sticks each item in his basket onto the till counter one by one, and once that’s done he looks left of the till area as his cashier scans away and has himself a vague glances over the impulse buys sitting by the till counter, and though he wasn’t expecting a right epiphany to take place at checkout, one certainly overtakes him for there's an entire display of five-hour energy boosts ready for the taking. 

He plucks five out of the pack of twelve displayed there and sticks them on the counter in an amassed bunch, smiling pleasantly as the woman slowly moves her scanner over to ring those in on top of the rest. "That's everything, then?" she asks. 

"Sure is," Sirius replies, sticking his basket in a stacker by the till and pulling his wallet out of his back left pocket. 

He pays with a quick press of his card, declines his receipt, and puts his card back and his wallet away while his cashier divvies out his haul into two plastic bags. He says his thanks, lifts them off of the counter, hangs both bags from his left wrist, fishing through one of the bags as he heads for the foyer. He gives up on the first bag when his search brings him nothing and sifts through the second one as he leaves through the out-door. Sirius comes out to an empty store front, blinks, and looks around, finding Remus wandering Tango up the block a little ways away and perks up, heading straight for them. 

"Did you chase all the bad men away?" he coos down at the dog, who hasn't a single clue what he's saying but it's being done in a kind tone, so it's understandable that Tango does a little jig for it. Sirius finally gets his hand around one of the energy boosts which, of course, sank straight to the bottom of the bag he's sifting through, and lifts it out of the bag to show him. "Found some of these on the way out."

"Mm," Remus hums, interest piqued, and takes hold of it to have a better look at it. 

"I'm thinking they'll do what the drinks will do, only they'll be easier to keep with you and the drinks could stay at home," Sirius offers. "This, you could definitely throw back without a wall of carbonation fighting you along the way." 

"Oh, that's some good thinking," Remus says, looking to Sirius' collection of bags. "Here, I'll take one." 

Sirius holds his left arm out and Remus separates the handles of both bags hanging from it, pulling one free from his wrist and sliding it onto his left one while he keeps a firm hold on Tango's lead with his right hand. Remus starts them in the direction of his flat and Sirius heads up on his left for Tango's already trotting along on Remus' right. "Did you get the receipt?" he checks. 

"You know I didn't," Sirius returns, slipping his pack out of his back right pocket. 

Remus clicks his tongue. "How much did it come to?" 

"Two entire pounds," Sirius reveals, tapping the bottom of his pack to loosen it. 

"So, sixty-seventy?" Remus guesses before he shakes his head altogether. "No, it'd be more than that."

Sirius sighs through his nose as he plucks a cigarette out from the bunch of them. "Remus, I'm going to level with you," he says plainly. "I didn't even look at the total." 

Remus breathes out and says something a touch too low down on his register for Sirius to hear. "Sorry, didn't catch that?" he says, putting his head on a tilt. 

"I'll round up," Remus says politely, which was not what he said, no way in hell, but Sirius doesn't get much of a chance to investigate any further for Remus is overcome with a frown before Sirius gets another word in. "It would be such a shame if we got a load of odds and ends for nothing." 

"Hey, no," Sirius denies, point starkly at him with the end of his unlit cigarette. "If you have to tell yourself anything so you don't start festering, then have it be this: we covered a lot of ground tonight and the chances of absolutely nothing in these bags working for you are slim to none." 

"I don't know about _none_," Remus mentions. 

"Slim, then," Sirius amends. "Besides, you practically levitated off the ground when I told you about the mask trick, so that alone should be worth this entire pharmacy haul, don't you think?" 

Remus gives a similar noise to the one he'd done in the middle of aisle three, lifting his hands to mime dragging them over his face. "I can feel the chill of it now and it's incredible." 

"Perfect, just keep picturing that, then," Sirius offers, fishing his lighter out of the front right pocket of his trousers. 

He's exactly halfway through lighting his cigarette when his phone sings out, alerting them rather vividly to a text from James coming in and, even better, startling Remus' out of his pants in the process. Sirius smirks his haul out of his nose in a couple easy gusts, pockets his lighter to free up his hand to fish out his phone, and pulls up the text message awaiting him. 

_if you're not shagging right this very second, do call_

Sirius turns his phone toward Remus so he can have a gander over it. "Good of him to have been willing to wait," he offers, wandering Tango toward a shrub on the curb that the dog is just gunning to get near. 

"Isn't it just," Sirius says, pressing to call him as bid. 

He sticks the phone against his left ear, tries to sneak in another haul while he's waiting on the dial tone, but James goes and thwarts that by answering on the first ring. "Call me surprised," he surveys. 

Sirius lets his half-haul out easily. "You've five minutes before we're back at Remus' and then all bets are off." 

"All this talk and no action," Remus puts in, lingering by the shrub that Tango has taken to running his body across as if it's the most stellar feeling in the world. 

"I'll show you action," Sirius sends after him before refocusing in on James. "I feel like it's been all of an hour since we last spoke." 

James gives a disparaging sigh. "Well, when you announce the death of the boys as we know them," he hints. 

Sirius sends a plain look to the sky. "How did _I_ get dubbed the dramatic one out of the pair when you're right there putting on a production over this _still_? Go to bed." 

"I will not, and nevertheless, I know how we can keep them alive and well," James continues, breezing right on past what Sirius believes is a fair question. "Lily helped in bringing the idea to fruition, so do thank her for her efforts." 

Remus falls into step with Sirius as he catches up to him and the dog, and they round the corner to head the fastest way back to Remus'. "Oh, well, in that case, no to whatever you're about to say," Sirius says, lifting his cigarette to his mouth for a try at an actual, full haul. 

"You say that now," James returns in a lighthearted chime, "but her class got a spot on the Pride parade circuit and I think I know a certain someone who'd be thrilled about dusting off the ol' dancing shoes and reclaiming one-half of the title known as the Zumba Kings for such a worthy cause, but do correct me if I'm wrong; it is just a theory of mine." 

Sirius cuts his haul rapidly short, but he doesn't mind one bit. "Yes, yes, and yes," he returns on a dime. 

James lets out a celebratory whoop and drums a substantial roll into whichever surface he's on or nearest to, the rapid thuds echoing back through the line and ramping Sirius' energy up a good dozen notches. "I fucking knew you would, you giant ham," he returns affectionately. 

"Hold on," Sirius insists, tamping down on his own celebration for his instincts take over from there. "Are we not too late to join in?" 

James sends a powerful 'pfft' back to him. "We've plenty of time to catch up," he says of it. "Lily's going to find out Sunday, but she's more than happy to get us up to speed on the side, too — tell him." 

A beat and a half later, Lily's voice chimes from further away from the phone. "It's true, I am." 

"See? Easy peasy," James says, back on the line. 

"Lovely lady," Sirius forwards on. 

"And fear not, if there's anything we are, it's fast learners, am I right?" James raises.

A laugh bubbles up through Sirius' throat; it's certainly _a_ description of them. Sirius looks left, but in seeing Remus' context-less smile, the speed at which his stomach drops when his brain catches up to his vocal chords is blistering. Berk, berk, berk, he's the biggest berk on the entire planet. He looks down at the ground between his moving feet, sucks in a short breath through his teeth, and resigns himself to pulling the plug before James can get too carried away with it. "James," he starts.

"No," James replies at once.

Sirius winds the shopping bag on his wrist around to one side and winds it back again. "I just don't know that now's the best time with all that's come up." 

"You already said yes," James returns. "Three times, to be exact." 

"I know I did, but I didn't drop one commitment just to take on another."

"How could this possibly equate to that?" James returns. "One class a week, plus a few practice sessions sprinkled on the side, that's all this is; it's not even close the twenty hours you cut."

"I'm still going to have to drop and go at a moments' notice," Sirius returns. "There isn't much point in rejoining if my presence for the full class isn't even a guarantee."

"OK, one?" James starts, "no one said you couldn't still drop and go, and two, if you had to we'd catch you up another day, another time; there's literally no reason for you not to get on board so _get_ on it." 

Sirius just barely tamps down the urge to fire off a thing or two about him going and making this _that much harder_ to stick to just by making it sound so easy. Right about there is where Remus moves on from simply walking beside him and waiting for context clues and moves into the territory of getting them for himself, only this means he takes to prodding Sirius' left shoulder in a slow, repetitive motion, as if reminding Sirius that he's quite present. "He wants me to rejoin Zumba again and won't take no for an answer," he gives Remus, who ceases his prodding altogether as his expression colours over with the weight of the context cues now in place, and Sirius shakes his head firmly. 

"I heard that, git," James sends him. 

"Good, I meant you to," Sirius returns. "I can't swing it right now." 

"Hand me over to Remus?" James requests, his tune changing right quick. 

Sirius hums a bland note. "You know I'm not doing that." 

"Hand me over to Remus," James repeats, less polite now. 

"You have been wilding all evening and I'm not about to make him have to deal with it, too," Sirius denies. 

"Fine, I'll call him myself," James says of it. 

"Here's an idea," Sirius puts out jovially. "How about you don't even think about doing that, and instead take all this misplaced energy and put it into making this little venture a you-and-Lily thing, hm? Nothing more romantic than a little Zumba, am I right?" 

Sirius isn't sure how James manages a slow clap, but he has to assume he'd shouldered the phone to achieve it. "The rest of us down below you and your soapbox can only hope to be as considerate as you one day." 

Sirius clicks his tongue hard, not liking the tone James is giving him one bit. "Alright, I'm out," he says, pulling the phone away from his ear and dropping the call before James gets even half of another word in. 

He stuffs his phone into his shopping bag just to get rid of the thing, looks to Remus next, who's taken to adjusting the handles of his own shopping bag dangling off of his right wrist, shooting Sirius a deeply unsettled frown. "He'll get over it," Sirius says, waving the face off. "Don't worry about it, we're OK." 

The fast way back from Boots is a little over a five minute walk without any detours in mind, and Sirius does have to say that James mercilessly blowing up his phone with text after text doesn't have the desired effect for Shania's ground-breaking opening hook on _Man! I Feel Like A Woman_ is a punchy little tune to have as a near-constant sound along the way, and Sirius doesn't mind it one bit. Remus, on the other hand, lasts until they've made it into his entryway before he breaks. "Sirius, I'm going to need you to either call him back or put that on silent," he sends him, reaching to hang Tango's lead over one of the hooks overlooking the entryway. 

Sirius hears the I'm-Not-Kidding-Around note to his tone rather clearly and reaches into his shopping bag to conduct a search for his phone while he knocks his docs off of his feet. Unfortunately, much like even just one of the energy boosts Sirius tried to get his hands on not ten minutes prior, his phone has sunk down to the very bottom of the bag and it takes another three of Shania's twaining before Sirius can even get his fingers wrapped around the width of it. 

"Sirius," Remus sounds out, walking his shopping bag to the island and hauling it up onto the counter. 

"I'm trying," Sirius insists. "It's buried under a thousand things." 

"Of all the places to stuff it, honestly," Remus sends over his shoulder. 

"I've a great idea where you can shove it next," Sirius returns, lifting his phone out and waggling it. He heads on past Remus emptying his shopping bag one item at a time and moves around to the other side of the island to set his own bag down. He unlocks his screen, can't help but have a look at all that's waiting for him in his and James' mile-long thread, and huffs loudly at it. "_That bitch._"

"What is it?" Remus asks without looking up. 

"It's nothing but Zumba videos," Sirius spouts, silencing his phone at once. He dumps it onto the counter and focuses on getting the dog's food in order, though he'd have to be blind as a bat not to notice Remus working his mouth around a smile. "What?" 

"That's the most James thing I've ever heard," he offers to Sirius' pointed tilt of his head. 

Sirius scoffs to that, lifting Tango's food out of the bag and bringing it to the kitchen counter with him. "On brand or not, why he's chosen this as his hill to die on, I'll never know." 

Behind him, Remus gives out a vague hum. "Possibly because you two still talk fondly about the Zumba days?" he offers. 

Sirius makes a face as he brings a bowl down from the cupboard. "We talk about it in the same way we talk fondly about starting food fights in year nine, but you don't see us chucking our dinners around much, do you?" he returns, sticking the bowl to the left of him and pulling open the drawer that houses the scissors. 

"Thankfully not, but I doubt he expected you to riverdance all over his idea nonetheless," Remus says. 

Sirius lines the scissors up with the lip of the dog food bag, sliding the blade across it and slicing it open. "You didn't hear his side of the call," he points out. "He made it sound like the best idea on the planet, and it was purposefully done that way, I'd wager, just to get my defenses lowered." 

Remus hums, unconvinced, and Sirius gears up for getting clocked with a moral compass. "Do we think it's about the Zumba itself or do we think there's a little more to it than that?" 

"Thank you, Dr. Lupin," Sirius sounds out, pouring a load of kibble into Tango's bowl. 

"He hasn't really seen much of you in over a fortnight now," Remus mentions. "We could probably forgive him for the tactic he used to create a situation where he would get to—"

Sirius swivels on his feet, bowl in hand, and gives Remus a plain, imploring look as he walks Tango's dinner over to the island and sets it on the ground beside it. "He's seen me," he says as Tango shoots over to it and chows down without any further prompt; as it should be. 

"He was doing damage control most of the time he's been back," Remus points out. "I doubt he counts that as the sort of quality time he's used to getting in with you." 

Sirius returns to his own shopping bag, heaving his shoulders in a shrug. "Well, tough; we all want more hours in a day," he says. "He doesn't have to act like we're never, ever going to be the boys again just because I've switched a few things around in my schedule. He's the one getting hitched, am I stamping my feet and musing the inevitable loss of time together because of that?" 

"Maybe this is his very James-way of letting you know that there will still be time for the boys, hitching aside," Remus says.

Sirius drums the fingers of his right hand on the counter top temperamentally, knowing he's stuck when he can't allude to any specifics on why Remus of all people shouldn't feel obligated to stick up for James, tonight of all nights especially. "I just don't think that's what this is."

Remus looks down, resumes his task for long enough to pull the aloe bottle out of his bag, but once he places it on the counter he sets one hand over the other on the counter and looks back up at Sirius again. "For a minute there, how badly did you want to rejoin?" he raises, and since Remus has working eyes and ears, Sirius can't turn around and pretend he hadn't soared back there, and Remus points directly at Sirius' guilty expression with the air of someone who knows he's right. "It's OK, you just got me two bags full of things to try out in a pinch, you don't have to feel guilty about making plans in front of me, so call him back and tell him you're in." 

Sirius answers Remus' implore with a curt shake of his head. "I spoke before I even thought about it, Remus," he says, calling on a little of that reason Remus likes to sprinkle around. "He caught me off guard with it."

Remus lets out a sigh to end all sighs. "You said yes, looked at me like you'd just realized you've signed your life away, and changed your mind like _that_," he says, snapping the fingers on his right hand. 

Sirius openly reels. "_That's_ certainly not what I did." 

"Alright, well, we could argue semantics until we're old and grey, but I saw how chuffed you were so maybe we don't need to be doing that," Remus returns. "I'm telling you you're in the clear; Zumba your heart out." 

Sirius lifts his hands and ends up flapping them this way and that, trying to make any of this line up properly. "I get that I mucked up and doing it in front of you was the rookiest move I could have made, but every single one of my flubs is getting far more attention than the work I'm putting in here and I don't think that's the least bit fair."

Remus raises his own hands in a gesture for calm, shaking his head quickly. "I'm not trying to take any of that from you," he says, and Sirius puts his hands on his hips just to have something to do other than talk with them. "I've spent the entire day buried under everything you've been doing to help; it's not that I don't know you're incredible, I just don't want you feeling obligated to say no to things because I'm right there."

"I can't off and leave you while you're holed up in here counting the seconds until your next attack, that's not fair at all," he insists. Remus' shoulders drop seconds before he aims a weak, imploring look at him, and Sirius can't for the life of him figure out why that look is even there at this point. "Why are you even surprised? I told you I'm in this, I said I'd be here whenever you need me, and you were so relieved I'd even gotten my hours dropped without a fuss; I genuinely thought we were finally on the same page here." 

"I thought we were, too," Remus says, and with that gut punch administered to him, Sirius hasn't got a single note in his throat to work with.

Remus studies him for all of three seconds before his shoulders drop. He shuffles himself around to Sirius' side of the island, comes up on him with a kiss placed to the right corner of Sirius' mouth, and winds his hands around Sirius, who slowly lets his hands fall from his hips. "What did you think I'd expect you to do while I'm at work, sit here and stare at the wall until I get in?" he asks, pulling back enough to see Sirius properly. "That doesn't sound like me, does it?" 

Sirius finds his voice again in the form of a dry retort. "You caught me, that was my entire plan." 

Remus' lips purse for a few seconds before he digs his heels in harder. "I want you to feel free enough to see your mates, Sirius." 

"My mates," Sirius parrots. "Mine, like you're just some mold that grew in the cupboards that we haven't gotten around to yet." 

Remus' entire visage colours over with open alarm. "Do you mean to tell me that you would put off calling someone to come take care of mold growing in your flat?" he demands. 

Sirius tilts his head, giving Remus a whopper of a stare. "I think you know what I'm saying here, actually." 

"I think it was worth it to check, actually," Remus returns pointedly. "And I think you know what _I'm_ saying." 

"You're not taking my life away from me, Remus — kill that thought altogether, please," Sirius instructs. "I'm still teaching Dora, I've still got the venue to tackle, I'm still working, and I'll squeeze in time with the others in when I have it time, but you're the priority right now; I don't need the Zumba on top of all that, I was an idiot to say yes in the first place, I'm fine with the way things are set up."

"Who said anything about 'need?'" Remus asks. "You want the Zumba, so let's try to work it out; how much of your time would it actually take up? Not much, I'd imagine, given that I've never thought to myself, 'I just never see Lily enough and it's all because of that damned Zumba.'" 

Sirius gives him a slow blink, working with every morsel of resolve in his body not to show his amusement. "Class on Sundays and some side practices in between," he lets him have. 

Remus nods once, considering it. "Seems doable to me?" he offers, lifting his shoulders once. 

"Sunday was going to be dosing day, Remus," Sirius puts out. 

"We never did pick a specific day, did we?" Remus puts in, raising his brow at Sirius like he's effectively decimated the playing field. 

"It's your only guaranteed day off, so why wouldn't we use it?" Sirius returns plainly. 

"Well, am I going to be out of commission _all day_?" Remus asks, flicking the small of Sirius' back with one of his fingers. "You conveniently left that out, if that's the case." 

"It's _not_ going to be an all day thing," Sirius echoes just to squash that worry before it gets any bigger.

"Then I don't see why we couldn't tackle that once you've finished class," Remus says. "If that still proves a problem, I'm sure Lily would work the schedule around so I don't have to come in on whatever day we pick instead, so that's that issue taken care of, and side practices can happen whenever you three want them to; it's all doable." 

It becomes woefully apparent in that moment that this, precisely, must be close to the push and pull Remus feels between every choice he's got to make, big or small. Remus eyes him, breathes in and out of his nose before he lets Sirius go in favour of reaching for his phone on the counter. "Oi," Sirius puts out. "Little thief." 

Remus unlocks it and quickly heads back around to his initial side of the island, putting the entire rectangular block in between the two of them. "Love you," he chimes, putting the phone against his right ear. Sirius has just enough time to utter a single note of affront before Remus lifts a hand to silence him. "He would _love_ to join you two ... yes, he had a think on it ... I will, but I'll be changing the wording around quite a bit ... absolutely not." 

Remus presses to end the call at once, sticks Sirius' phone on the counter top, and calmly resumes his task, reaching into his shopping bag and pulling out the caffeine pills. Sirius can't fend off a throaty, quizzical laugh from escaping him over just how flat Remus sounded at the end there. "He asked if I'd join, too," he further provides, setting the pills down. 

Sirius leans his head back a few notches so his throat will open enough to infuse the appropriate amount of gusto necessary for his response. "If fucking only," he sings out. 

Remus ducks his head in a laugh, shushing him once. "Can you imagine these wiry limbs flying around every which way?" he raises, gesturing wildly at himself. 

"I mean, I've seen that enough times that I don't really have to imagine it, but alright," Sirius returns. 

Remus huffs, but there's a dusting of pink over his cheeks even as he tries to push past any innuendo. "Nobody needs to see me trying and failing to follow along with the rest of you with my disastrous sense of rhythm," he keeps to it.

Sirius hums in frank disagreement. "Literally would never call your sense of rhythm anything other than inspiring, so you picked the wrong bloke to side with you on this one," he says plainly. 

Remus gives him one, substantially pointed look. "Help me get all of this sorted and _then_ you can get as laid as you clearly need to be," he asserts, gesturing toward the shopping bag Sirius has hardly touched. 

Sirius nods with a pointed smile on, reaching into his own shopping bag and pulling out the butterfly stitches, and there he thinks they might as well cross that bridge now since they're here. He lifts them to get Remus' attention once again, tilts it back and forth in question, and Remus gives him an even nod of his own, moving to perch on the stool to the right of where he'd been standing. Sirius rounds the island and on past Remus to fetch a face cloth from the bathroom before heading back on Remus' left. 

Remus shifts to face him better and Sirius situates himself between his bent knees, reaching for the pack of stitches on the counter and depositing them in Remus' lap for the time being. "Wouldn't mind if you put some aloe on that burn," he hints, touching the face cloth to Remus' left brow. 

Remus huffs, pushes the right sleeve of Sirius' hoodie up, and plucks the aloe bottle off of the counter, twisting the top open in his hands. Remus finishes applying before Sirius even has the first stitch free from Remus' brow, sticks the aloe bottle back on the counter, and settles in again, letting his eyes fall shut as Sirius works the problematic stitch. Sirius' trades glances in between Remus' brow and his general visage, repeating that upwards of four times before he can't keep quiet any longer. 

"Are you sure you're OK with it?" he checks.

Remus hums blandly, his eyes remaining shut. "Would I have called James myself if I weren't?" 

"I'm only checking," Sirius says, inwardly celebrating the first stitches' surrender. 

"I think it'll be good for you to have something to funnel even some of your energy into," Remus adds on. "I don't love who'll inevitably be teaching you the Zumba, but that's the name of the game for me, unfortunately." 

Sirius puts out a long and lengthy 'pfft' for that, depositing the first stitch on the counter until he can get rid of it. "You'd have nothing to worry about there," he says, passing the damp cloth over Remus' second stitch. 

Remus offers a similar 'pfft' right back to him, though he does open his eyes now. "Pretty sure that phrase is near-meaningless to me."

"Mmkay, but that doesn't make it any less true," Sirius rebuts, meeting Remus' gaze once before he puts his own back on the task at hand. "Why would I go down the block and dig through the dumpster for scraps when I've got a fine meal right here -- OK, control that brow of yours at once."

"How am I supposed to control it when you say something like that," Remus defends. 

"Give it a go, would you?" Sirius requests, reaching up with his free hand to work at the stitch with his thumbnail and, bless, the fray to this one makes it that much easier to pull it from Remus' skin. 

Remus breathes out and evens out his brow for him. "My point was, I haven't seen this one myself but I've seen two of your previous encounters so far, and there's a running theme between them that I'll presume extends past them," he tacks on. 

"Mm, and what's that?" Sirius goads. 

"While your taste is eclectic, you don't date below a ten," Remus finishes. 

Agape and ecstatic in one swoop, Sirius reels back like he's just been blasted there by the sheer force of Remus' words alone. "That's the nicest compliment you've ever given yourself," he spouts, plucking the pack of stitches out of Remus' lap. 

"I wasn't talking about me, you shit," Remus shoots at him, going from down below to jab at Sirius' stomach with a pointed finger.

Sirius own hand move in a flash, blocking Remus' hand-jabbing. "Oi, delicate work happening here," he says, picking the packaging open. "And you should've been, seeing as the trend hasn't changed any."

Remus huffs louder than he's done all evening. "Sue me for using the word 'don't' instead of 'didn't,'" he returns. 

"Oh, I'm never letting you forget that mix-up," Sirius maintains, slipping a sheet of stitches out and stuffing the packaging on the counter. Sirius glances down at the slip in his hand and pulls a strip off of it, sticking the remaining stitches down in Remus' lap again. "I'll tell you a secret?" he offers, waiting for Remus' prompt. "I didn't even think about how he'd be at the helm this entire time, so that should tell you how low on my radar he is." 

Remus blinks once. "Was it a letdown when it finally happened?" he asks.

Sirius hums a vague, pondering note, giving it a thought as he leaned up to blow a gust of breath over Remus' scar to make sure it's dry enough for the stitch to land properly. "No, I've had better and I'd had worse," he says, lining the stitch up with the first section of Remus' scar. "I think I wanted to see if I could get him, and then there was another class due to start in the studio ten minutes from when we'd started going, so in hindsight that might've been what made it as thrilling as it was." 

Remus puts out a puff of breath. "I can just imagine how much you liked that part." 

"You might think about sending him a thank-you card, come to think of it," Sirius offers. "He is the reason I figured out that I can bend the way I can, after all."

"Mm," Remus observes. "Well, as much as I am glad I've gotten to reap the benefits of it, I won't be doing to do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the wait, november was a garbage month


	9. 9.

The next morning, Sirius rouses from sleep to a weight pressing across the face of his feet, blinks his eyes open and adjusts to Remus' room before he peers down the bed, and finds that his feet have been made a headrest for Tango's substantial snooter. 

The very moment Tango notices he's been even a little engaged with, his tail whomps like a metronome on the floor below the bed and a muttered whine leaves the dog's throat. "Don't let him fool you," Remus puts in slyly, 'he's been fed and walked already." 

Sirius peers left and finds Remus fully dressed, sitting up against the headboard with a book laying open in his lap and his legs stretched out the length of the bed and crossed at the ankles, and gives into a sleepy stretch, letting out a pleased noise through it. He lets go of it, scratches his bare midriff absently, and lifts his head off the pillow that may as well be his at this point, and glances past Remus toward the clock on his bedside table, finding it to be nearing eleven, and then Remus having already been out and about by now quickly lines up properly with common sense. 

By all accounts, he could potentially get away with a little more snoozing, but then Sirius gets a better look at Remus, his eyes travelling from curly head to sock-covered toes, and suddenly continued half-sleep isn't such a strong temptation anymore. Sirius slips his feet out from underneath the dog's chin and gives into another, wider stretch, cocking his left hip to the side and inching it over toward Remus until it presses against the side of his right leg.

While the overall goal is to get Remus' attention off of his book and promptly redirected onto Sirius, there is something to be said about the quiet, easy familiarity that comes with Remus automatically placing his right hand down in the spot between Sirius' wandering hip and the top of his left thigh while he keeps right on reading. Sirius lets go of his stretch and sticks his arms behind his head, eyeing the display beside him and giving himself a few moments to enjoy the weight of Remus' hand on him and the warmth he can feel through his briefs before continuing on course, giving out a faux-weighted sigh. 

"Oh, to be a half-finished book," Sirius laments. 

Remus' gaze pops right up to Sirius before it drops to the book and back up to Sirius in the span of a second or two, and then Remus' shoulders bob up and down as a few amused breaths leave his nose. "Did you want to trade places with it?" he asks, faux-curiously to boot. 

Sirius smacks his lips once. "Astute as ever," he puts out. 

And look, Sirius is sure the book is gripping and all, but the speed at which Remus tosses it aside suggests that he, too, finds Sirius' proposed idea a lot more provoking for the moment, and thank God for that. 

Sirius rolls toward Remus as he scoots himself closer to him and the two meet in the middle of the mattress, Remus laying back and leaving a Sirius-sized space between his legs, and that is some warm hospitality if Sirius has ever seen it. He situates himself quite comfortably in between them, remaining on his knees as he works on Remus' fly, and once he's ridden Remus of his pesky trousers and those blue plaid socks, a thin layer of cloth is all that separates Sirius from the gold and with nowhere pressing to be just yet, Sirius gets caught up with the idea of slowing things down, taking his time unwrapping Remus when this is as much a treat as it is for Sirius as it is for him. 

He settles down on his front in between his legs, plants his arms on either side of them, and bows his head, tracing the three freckles perfectly spaced out between each other to form a triangle with the tip of his tongue before trailing it lower. He nips and teases at Remus' cock overtop of his briefs until he's fully there, and then Sirius can't really stave himself off but can really he be blamed? It's doubtful. He hooks his thumbs underneath the waistband of Remus' pants to fold them down and laves over the crown of his cock, and just because he can, he keeps that up, happy as a clam just to taste him, watch feel him twitch underneath his tongue for as long as Remus will allow it. 

Twenty whole seconds is the answer, at least that's how long it takes Remus to reach up and tap on the side of Sirius' left cheek which is typically the closest he'll get to pushing Sirius' head down on him, and the sentiment is well-taken by Sirius, smirking as he pulls Remus' pants down and out of the way before descending on Remus' cock as bid.

Sirius focuses on his breathing patterns, moves quicker as each of them ratchets tighter, and cycles through watching Remus' eyes shut and his face open and bare above him, paying attention to the dual mouth and hand combo he's administering, and noting Remus' movements, but if there's anything Sirius is made for, it's multitasking. He catches Remus' left hand twisting up the sheet beneath them for purchase, looks for his other hand and finds it right where Remus left it, paused in action between Sirius' left jaw and a veil of hair before Remus takes it back quickly and grips at the mattress nearby, and Sirius pinpoints the source of the struggle rather quick, he thinks. 

Getting Remus to the point where he can accept physicality and not worry about getting immediately shamed for taking it may be one of Sirius' proudest accomplishments to date. Remus laying, sitting, standing there, thirty seconds after an orgasm and _not_ avidly picking at his fingernails because he avidly enjoyed the session they've just finished with? Unparalleled sight to see, beats a sunrise any day. Strides have been made in that department; big ones, small ones, some lines blurred and taken care of early on, some as recent as days ago which only makes it feel as if the newness Sirius felt in January won't ever quite disappear, they're all important, but there's one, stark line in the sand that, just there, grows faint for Sirius and before he really thinks on it any further, he's reaching down to pull Remus' hand back up and winding it up in his locks. 

The moment it seems to click for the both of them, the mutual silence that fills the room is louder than Remus on a Great Day. Heat floods Sirius' cheeks the moment Remus opens his eyes and finds his gaze, and there's apprehension in there, sure, but they're Remus' eyes, that's Remus' hand under his, and that's Remus' body laying underneath him, and Sirius doesn't see a point in stopping to justify it any further, not when he's got all eight inches of Remus in his mouth and certainly not when the past several months have felt the safest he's ever been. 

He keeps his hand pressed over Remus' as he starts moving again, tracing his thumb back and forth over the skin underneath his. He keeps his gaze on Remus, his eyes going between his lower lip caught between his teeth and the look in his eye softening. He only lets go of his hand when he's got a feeling Remus won't pull it back instinctively, and it says a lot about Remus, he feels, the way he doesn't take an allowance like that and run buckwild with it; he takes it slow, cupping the back of Sirius' head carefully as Sirius moves up and down over him, and the very moment that Remus' hand loosens and relaxes enough to tease at his locks as he's going, Sirius' body lights right up. 

Hearing his name on Remus' lips is and will never be unsolicited, but hearing it there in the middle of all else, it's like taking a one-way trip to paradise. Sirius can feel tingles in his fingertips, his toes, his cock is hard as rock, his hips move against the mattress under him; he's all over the place. Somewhere close to paradise himself, Remus stills the very moment his hand tightens in Sirius' hair, flies it down to the mattress and plants it there, and bucks his hips up to meet Sirius at each interval, and the moan Sirius gives around his cock is as involuntary as it is necessary as Remus rides it home. 

The very moment Sirius has his load down Remus starts tugging at his arms insistently, wordlessly asking Sirius climb up the bed to get to him, and Sirius gives a solid, college try at that, but his knees are shaky and frankly, he's packing a pipe at this point so he knows he needs to be very careful where he situates himself. Thankfully, the speed that he's moving isn't quite fast enough for Remus, so he doesn't have to move very far before Remus scoots down the bed and meets him halfway, and then Sirius isn't going anywhere with Remus' eyes being the size that they are. 

"I'm fine," he insists. "You're fine, we're fine." 

Remus nods, still catching his breath. "Yeah?" he checks between hitches, lifting his right hand up to sweep a fair chunk of Sirius' hair out of his face and behind his shoulders, and Sirius lets out a silent laugh at the question. 

"I wouldn't have put it there if we weren't, so I think the rest can just be details," he says, kneading Remus’ hand. “

Remus gives out a breath that borders on incredulous. "Shouldn't we at least have a look at the details?" 

Sirius gives a slow exhale out of his nose before lifting his right arm and reaching it up to hover his hand over Remus' mouth for show. "After you instigated that, did _you_ feel much like dismantling the reason why it was a delicate move to make once we were finished?"

Remus gives him a pointed frown. "I really didn’t think I had to." 

"_Ding-ding,_" Sirius rings out, splaying his hands out for show and sitting back on his heels to give his knees a break. "Why would I have to, then?"

The frown Remus had going behind Sirius' hand grows comically more pointed by the second. "Sirius," he puts out, managing to make it one syllable. "I could have read that moment completely wrong." 

"How, how could you have?" Sirius returns candidly, lifting his right hand to count on it. "To recap, I instigated it, you were careful, you treated me like royalty like you fucking always do, and no one went home crying." 

Sirius displays his hands as a dot of punctuation, but then, for an added bonus, he offers a grandiose tune to cap it off. "_That's fuckin' teamwork,_" he croons out, watching with a bright smile on as he watches Remus go from a moment of monumental confusion to promptly switching his facial expression once recognition kicks in, and right onto hiding the entirety of his face behind his hands as he succumbs to a muffled laugh behind them. 

"I mean, I can hear you behind there," Sirius points out, smirking all the while, but all he gets for that is three quick shushes. Sirius wets his lower lip, watching Remus' shoulders shake for a few more seconds for his own entertainment before he shifts closer to Remus on the bed, reaches to take hold of Remus' wrists, and tries to coax his hands down from his face. 

Remus' expression is a tad sheepish once he relents, but there's a reluctant smile there that Sirius wants to try and bloom, and if it means talking, then fine, he'll talk. "You've been so good about not crossing that line, but I'll be honest, I'm running out of reasons to keep it drawn so thick," he says, swiping his right thumb over the side of Remus' wrist. "So long as you don't take this as permission to start going at it like you're pulling out weeds, which I really doubt you'll do—" Sirius cuts off at Remus' resounding head shake to leave a kiss the tip of Remus' nose, "—then I don't see a reason not to blur the line a little more; if the two things you take home from this trial run are that I felt safe enough with you to try that out and that you don't have to panic whenever either one of your hands get near my head when we're going to Poundtown, let's let those—"

Sirius could and did have more to say on the matter, but his last few words get drowned out by Remus' lips, and then, with a kiss warm enough to keep a fire going in the dead of winter he thinks any more words will just get in the way of it.

Remus can move at lightning speed when he feels called to, Sirius learnt that wonderful tidbit quite personally one Christmas morning in his very own kitchen of all spots, so by all accounts Sirius isn't surprised at all that Remus manages to get Sirius down and onto his back in seconds flat; if anything, Sirius works to rid himself of his own briefs in a time manner that'll match up to Remus' speed. He does quite well on his own, he'd like to think, but he won't complain about Remus taking over once Sirius' briefs are about at his knees, hitching up Sirius hips by one quick lift around the back of him, tilting his legs this way and that to get his pants down and out of the way so that Sirius really doesn't have to do much of anything other than whine, and even that, Remus leans down to swallow almost gratefully. 

Sirius hitches his legs up on Remus' hips, winds his own back to give Remus enough room to ride his right hand over his cock as freely as can be done, and if Sirius won a gold star for multitasking, Remus gets two, it's only fair when he's managing to balance three separate paces at once; the swift move of his wrist as he plays his right hand along Sirius' cock, the middling pace of his tongue and lips catching each and every one of Sirius' muttered cries, and the careful, so so careful tousling of his left hand up in Sirius' hair. He deserves that much. 

Remus has learned a thing or two about Sirius' own patterns, Sirius knows it as is but it's lit up on display the moment both he and Remus know he's close; Remus breaks their kiss just at the right moment, leans down in the crook of Sirius' neck and speaks love just by his left ear, and Sirius twists his hands up into the back of Remus' shirt as he comes hard enough to see dotted lights flicker behind his eyelids. 

Remus is there with him for the come down, propped up on his left elbow and leaning some of his weight off of Sirius and onto the mattress instead, but he certainly can't get very far with Sirius' legs still hanging loosely off of his hips.

He searches Sirius' face quietly, lifts his right hand up to smooth a section of Sirius' hair past his ear, and holds him there. "OK?" he checks, a lot like he did Christmas morning, and back then, Sirius didn't know what to do with any sparks short-circuiting in his brain so speaking wasn't an option, but now?

Now he nods, breathes in and out without much of a hitch, and unwinds all ten of his fingers from the back of Remus' shirt, stretching them out behind Remus' back. "OK," he gives him. "My fingers might be broken, but I didn't need them anyway."

Remus smirks a little, his head resting in his propped left reworks his mouth around a smile, and then simply gives into a full one. "I'll miss them, if that's any consolation," he offers.

"Mm?" Sirius hums, putting his head and his own smile on a tilt.

"_Mm,_" Remus returns quickly, leaving absolutely no room for debate. A small laugh sounds off in Sirius' chest before he reaches up and floofs out Remus' fringe just because it's there and he can, and Remus lifts his gaze amusedly before he puts it back on Sirius. "Looks like they're working fine."

The two of them let out too-similar startled noises as Tango, who Sirius truly forgot was even in the room with them, decides enough is enough and plants his top half onto the edge of the bed, and now that Sirius is laying the wrong way along the bed all thanks to Remus' placement of him, he's that much closer to the dog, who puts his snooter right up against Sirius' left cheek.

"Excuse you," he sends him without much inflection.

Remus shifts in the space rather tight space between Sirius' legs. "We might want to clean up before he starts nosing anywhere he really shouldn't."

Sirius lets out relenting sigh at a fair truth spoken aloud, lets his legs fall off of Remus' hips and onto the mattress on either side of him with a decided plop, and then simply lays there as Remus shifts off of him, half-basking and hoping his legs won't cave underneath him if he tries walking on them, half-blocking Tango's snoot every time he attempts to nose at Sirius' face, which is upwards of four times before Remus questions him.

"Need any help?" Remus asks, propped up on all fours over him.

Sirius gives an undecided hum, having a look at his exit options before deciding that he'll exit the bed on the left since trying to leave by the edge of it would require a somersault and 9.5 or higher of a landing to pull off. 

In seeing Sirius scoot himself over to the left, Remus heads right, leaving the bed by that side while Sirius swings his legs over the side of the bed, plants his feet down on the floor and pushes off of the bed, and promptly wobbles for an entire millisecond before his noodle limbs otherwise known as legs go out from underneath him.

From his spot on the floor beside the bed, he can really only see the top half of Remus paused on the right side of the bed, his expression the exact meeting between horrified and elated before Sirius lets out a rolling laugh, laying in a useless heap on the floor and pawing at the side of the bed for aid.

He can hear Remus snickering as he rounds the bed but he must not be all that pressed about Sirius' predicament when he takes the time to stop by the edge of the bed and pull his pants on, the little shit. "Oh, I see, I see," Sirius sends him, draping himself on the floor. "Far be it for me to expect speedy service while your modesty is at stake, take your time."

"Fuck off," Remus sends him, snapping the waistband of his briefs for punctuation, and then he does come get Sirius off of the floor and into the bathroom without another hiccup, so all's well that ends well.

Since Sirius' hair got its typical and — says Remus — lengthy treatment the night before, Sirius pulls his hair up into a bun to begin a careful operation of not getting it wet while rinsing off, but the whole op could go a lot easier if Remus' shower head were detachable, and he says as much to Remus who's only a step or three behind him in the tub passing a loofah over himself.

"Take that up with my landlord?" Remus offers, shrugging once.

"Don't joke or I might," Sirius sings back to him.

"Here," Remus says, holding his loofah in his right hand while he coaxes Sirius back with his left, switching spots with him, "I'll go first, and then my hands will be free to block out any wayward splashes when it's your turn, hm?"

A worthy compromise, Sirius deems it, grabbing the free loofah and working on soaping it up while Remus rinses off. "Careful there," Sirius warns him, eyeing Remus' stitches when Remus looks over his shoulder, and smiling brightly as Remus leans his head back and away from the shower stream as bid.

Eventually the two of them switch spots again, Remus playing such a solid game of defense while Sirius washes the suds off of his body that Sirius gets lulled into such a sense of security that Remus' sharp noise of remembrance knocks him right out of it. Sirius looks over his shoulder, freezing with his hands up in the air, signalling that he wants to hear whatever brought that noise out of him.

"I can't believe I didn't think of this yet," Remus says, shaking his head at himself. "I decafed a man yesterday."

Sirius hears the words and it's as if an alarm goes off in his head. "You did not," he returns, trying to turn his whole head around like he's an owl.

"It's true," Remus says, his mouth quirking, "I did."

Sirius swivels around at once, only the maneuver might have worked out better if he weren't standing in a wet tub, but since he is, he has to grab onto Remus avoid slipping.

"Careful," Remus tells him, steadying him.

"Wh—" Sirius starts. "Who? Was it Satan? Did he pay a visit?"

Remus tilts his head evenly at that. "It could have been him, but even if it wasn't, I think you'll agree the bloke had it coming," he says, and Sirius drops the loofah in his hands, uninterested in that thing anymore when he needs the both of his hands to flap them back at himself in order to fully signal just how badly he needs more information, and Remus bites his lower lip and eyes the display brightly before continuing, ridding Sirius' body of suds while he goes. "If he'd shown his cards sooner I really think Lily would have understood if I refused him, but he waited until I was already in the middle of his drink, so I did exactly as you say; used about the only power I have behind the counter."

Sirius reaches his hands out and sets them on Remus' shoulders, tapping all of his fingers in anticipation. "What did he do?" he asks.

Remus gives him a bit of a face, making a bland hum, but Sirius only drums his fingers harder, and to that Remus decides it'll be easier just to tell him now rather than go through hours and hours of subtle to not very subtle at all questioning until Sirius gets the answer out of him either way. "Elise had just rung him through and she was wearing a, err, rather bright shade of red lipstick last night," he says circumstantially, turning Sirius so his lathered front could get a chance at some rinsing, "and he decided to tell me that the shade would look even better around the base of his dick, you know, because I'm your regular man's man and all."

Sirius dips his head and barks out a laugh so strong that it echoes off of the walls in Remus' respectable but tiny bathroom. "Better he tell me than her, but I still don't know what he wanted me to do with that," Remus adds to it, and Sirius can hear him working his mouth around a smile without having to see him. "Chortle, maybe." 

Sirius huffs loudly, working on getting himself some clean air as he turns his rinsed front away from the spray, "I wish I could have seen your face," he says longingly.

Remus smirks a bit, sniffing once. "I think it was — wait," he says, relaxing his face before giving Sirius a placid expression save for his right eyebrow cocked and a slow blink, but the addition of Remus lifting his right hand to mime pressing decaf without a word just wraps the entire thing with a bow on top, and never_fucking_mind, Sirius just won't have air, who needs it? 

It takes a few seconds longer than Sirius even figured it would to settle down, but once he does he lifts his hands and drags them over his visage, feeling lighter than air. "Why you're never this spiteful around me, I'll never know," he says, dropping his hands. "I'm incredibly attracted to your spiteful side and I'm not willing to lie about it."

"When have you been willing to lie about it, though," Remus returns flatly,

"Never, Remus," Sirius returns plainly, "because your spiteful side comes around as often as Nessie does, that's what I'm getting at here."

"You know, if it was forever on display it might get a bit old, whereas if it's once every half-century or so, then you and I both know it's a big deal," Remus offers, giving the sides of Sirius' hips a pat. "You're done."

"That's another for the books, I think," Sirius decides, turning and lifting his right leg to pop the shower knob down with his foot before he can freely bend to switch the taps off without his hair becoming a casualty in the process. "It's at least top five on the list of shit your barista did not ask for."

"How long's the list at this point?" Remus asks, pulling the shower curtain aside to get at the towels hanging nearby.

"Four years strong," Sirius raises,"I've over a hundred by now."

"'Course, what goes under your list tends to be anything other than someone telling you how they plan on paying," Remus returns, handing over a towel to him, which Sirius accepts along with that take for Remus isn't even close to wrong about that, "but I'll agree this one should be right at the top."

Sirius dries off and gets to brushing quicker than Remus does, mostly due to the fact that Sirius suddenly remembers time as a concept and thus realizes that it has to be at least noon, and furthermore, he's going to have to head out sooner than Remus will, which is a fact he's then quite evidently expected to pass along to Remus, who is openly eyeing Sirius' speediness.

"Have to stop by mine before work," he offers, mouth full of toothpaste.

Remus nods, turning his towel over to the dry side to tackle his hair. Sirius finishes the job, rinses out his mouth, and shuts the tap, looking over at Remus just as he pulls his towel down flat over his head so his face is visible, though the way the towel falls beside his head and down onto either of his shoulders has him resembling a decidedly male and quite thought provoked Virgin Mary. 

"Did you want to come back later?" he asks.

Sirius sticks his toothbrush back in the cup that houses the both of theirs and turns from the sink, going with coy. "Well, someone went and their housecoat at mine, so it would only be on to return it to its rightful owner, don't you think?" he offers airily.

Remus' eyes light right up. "Could you?" he asks, moving his towel back and forth over his head. "I've been missing it."

"I figured as much," Sirius nods, giving him an easy smile. "Is there anything else there you want me to bring back?"

Remus breathes in as he gives a glance to the ceiling in thought, originally goes with a minimal head shake, only to cut that off with another bolt of remembrance. "I left one of my books there," he says.

Sirius gives him an easy nod. "Where's it?" he asks.

"Last I saw Pete was reading it in the kitchen, so that'd be my best guess," Remus extends.

"Done," Sirius assures him, heading for Remus' room.

He dresses, gives Tango a load of pats to get him through the rest of the day without, and heads back out into the main room after a quick look over himself in the mirror above Remus' bureau. Remus finishes up in the bathroom as Sirius is getting his shoes on, but if Sirius were pressed, he might say he has a hunch that Remus did his own routine rather speedily so that he could meet him at the door for the timing is a little too convenient.

Sirius straightens up after his second shoe is on and smiles; Remus has his towel hung around his waist instead of over his head, but Sirius wouldn't have minded if Remus went about nude more often, truly — wouldn't bother him one bit. "Thanks for taking him out, hey?" he says, nodding toward the bedroom where he left Tango.

"Yeah," Remus nods, unruffled or at the very least not bothered enough to say so. Sirius squints, half searching him, half pretending to be, and Remus huffs a laugh when he realizes it. "I don't mind at all; you picked a good one."

Sirius sways easily in one place, feeling that even a sentiment that small feels bigger than it sounds, and then he takes the one step that's between them to close the gap, leaving him with a longer, deeper kiss than maybe seems necessary for a quick goodbye at the door, but if Remus doesn't argue it, neither will he. 

If given the choice between riding the bus all the way down to his place and calling a vehicle to come bring him directly to it, Sirius is going to pick the latter. He has an Uber ordered before he has fully descended the stairwell and stands out on the curb through the two minute wait before his ride to turn up. He zones into his phone the whole ride back to his, pretty certain he's overshot his time frame and ultimately happy about that development when it means he likely won't have to rush to work to make it on time.

Out front of the flat, Sirius blows a kiss to Priscilla on his way past her and vows to come back for her in due time. On his way up through the stairwell, Sirius is treated to a colourful batch of notes unmistakably coming from a set of bagpipes, soaring down from level three and drowning out any sounds of passing traffic wafting in from out on the street. Sirius lets out a long huff; if Remus were here, he would say something akin to 'at least it's mid-day and not midnight?' and put on a tiny shrug, but Remus is not here, so Sirius is free to bitch and moan about the earth-shattering sound as much as he damn well pleases, which roughly translates to Sirius uses his own pipes to yell obscenities all the way up to his door and into his flat for good measure.

Suddenly quite set on keeping this visit home as short as humanly possible, Sirius is quick about finding a bag to stuff a few changes of clothes into, leaving it open on the foot of his bed to toss articles into from his dresser drawers. One thing he'll say, as far as wacky neighbours go, Remus struck gold with Minerva on one side of him and a gent on the other whose worst offense is smoking pot inside and thus making the hallway smell like a music festival from time to time, big deal.

He stops for Remus' housecoat hanging on the back of his bedroom door and stuffs that in the bag, then stops everything he's doing to head on through the flat and down to the kitchen to retrieve Remus' book. Once there, he stands in the middle of the room and takes a long look around, but five to ten seconds go by before Sirius pulls out his phone and dials 1 on speed dial, waiting two rings before Remus picks up.

"I don't want to call you a liar, but there's no book in this kitchen," Sirius offers by way of hello.

Beat. "There isn't?"

"Nothing but our Rory binder," Sirius says, pulling said binder off of the kitchen table and stuffing it between his right arm and side to take back with him; that, they're gonna need nearby should any further developments arise on the topic.

"Pete had it there the other day," Remus says.

"Want me to call and interrogate him on where he left it?" Sirius offers. 

"Certainly not," Remus says, semi-mildly. "Either the book sprouted legs and ran off or Pete knicked it so he could finish it; either way, it'll turn up eventually."

Sirius pushes a breath of air out the left side of his mouth; if Remus were a country, he'd be Switzerland. "Well, I did my best," he says of it, shrugging the both of his shoulders.

"Duly noted," Remus offers him.

"Want anything else while I'm here?" Sirius asks. "I'm thinking I'll leave your other mask here, unless you really, really want it?"

"Mmm, no, three in one place is just excessive," Remus returns, and Sirius thinks he can hear him smiling away all the way over at his place, but the sound of the bagpipes wafting in through the kitchen window drowns it right out.

Sirius shoulders his phone at once, leans his left palm on the kitchen table to pivot himself closer to the window and slides it shut with a great whomp. "Hank's at it the fuck again and I've half a mind to think he's walking around while he does it," he offers brightly, taking his phone back into his right hand. "And before you say a thing about how it's better than hearing it deep into the night, it's no consolation."

Another beat. "I really was going to say just that," Remus says, a dry laugh cutting in on the last word.

"Well, it wouldn't have worked on me anyway when I'm about to head right on up there to break those pipes right over his head," Sirius manifests.

Remus huffs a sigh. "I would just really like it if you made it to at least twenty-five without a felony charge, and you can't do that if you're going around breaking peoples' property over their heads, now can you?"

Sirius blows a long and lustrous raspberry directly into the receiver. "I could haggle it down to a misdemeanor easily."

"I don't think that should be your response to that," Remus returns primly. 

"In any case, if this pattern of his continues, someone else in this building may very well beat me to the punch."

"And if that's the case, you can celebrate then," Remus allows. "Mestophales has not stopped talking since you left, you should know." 

"Oh-ho?" Sirius prompts, heading out of the kitchen when his presence in it is more circumstantial at this point than necessary.

"Mhm," Remus chimes. "Just wandering around, talking away."

"Looking for me, I bet," Sirius says, reaching up to touch the beam going over the archway to the living room with his left hand.

"And," Remus drags out, "now she's attacking the end of my broom."

Sirius snorts. "Good," he says, crossing through the living room. "Doing some — very, very late spring cleaning?"

"Tango sheds at a rate that I can't comprehend," Remus returns.

"He's been there one night, Remus," Sirius says, moving into his room.

"Exactly, one night and it's everywhere, and if I don't keep on it we're going to end up suffocated — _enough,_ you; I'm trying to sweep," Remus says, no longer talking to Sirius, who lets out a couple of fast gusts of air out of amusement as he shouldering his phone to free his hands enough to work the Rory binder into the bag along with the rest of his stuff. "My mum's trying to Facetime me, too."

"It's all happening for you," Sirius observes.

"To me, I should say."

"Why Facetime specifically?" Sirius asks, zipping his bag up. 

"She's finally got herself a mobile that can handle it," Remus provides.

Sirius lifts his bag off of the bed and shoulders it with a snort, happily living with the new image of Hope excitedly pouring over the multitudes of promise located inside her new smartphone. "Go on, then," he tells him, moving out into the hall and plucking his helmet off of the chair to the left of the front door, "I'm about to head down out again and I can't talk and ride, unfortunately."

"No, no — I mean, you do what you have to do," Remus tacks on, "but if Tango so much as borks I'm then going to have to explain whose dog he is and come up with a fast reason as to why he's here." 

And wouldn't that be just tragic. "Say I'm out of town," Sirius says instead, stopping for Priscilla's keys laying in the otherwise empty dish near the door that hasn't got James' car keys sitting in it. 

"Mm, no, that won't work either because I'd have to come up with a really fast excuse as to why I've been dodging so many of her calls all week, too."

"Have you been?" he asks, paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"I saw later on that she called during Tuesday's attack, which was freakish timing to say the least," Remus gives him. "And Wednesday she tried again, only that wasn't the best day of my life so I wasn't about to answer, and I still don't really know what to tell her right now."

The thing about that Wednesday is that there haven't been many days in the time Sirius has known Remus where he'd seen him quite that low, but Sirius doesn't love that the entirety of the day, or the week even, seems to have a black stain painted over it even when great strides were made, particularly by Sirius' own hands. "Well, had the appointment been made by the time she called?" he mentions, shutting his front door behind him and moving for the stairs. "I get it; I know you don't want to have to give her bad news, but the fact that we have something lined up a good thing; could start there?"

"I'm not saying it doesn't have the potential to be a good thing," Remus says.

"Remus," Sirius returns.

"There's still two months to go before we even get in the door, and you haven't seen the sort of helicoptering she can do," Remus emphasizes. "She will call, every single day if she knows what I'm up against." 

Sirius takes a long look at the ceiling as he heads down the first flight, tamping down on the sudden and powerful urge to suggest Remus should be so lucky. Once he swallows, and once he's calmed the turn of his stomach and made it out through the lobby door and away from the overwhelmingly unwelcome sound of a piper piping away, he tries to find a tone to speak with that won't sound so accusing. "Could leave out a few of the grimy details?" he offers out. 

"She knows how to use a search engine, Sirius," Remus says. 

Sirius doesn't see a white flag in Remus' future and lifts his own hands, more symbolically when Remus can't see him to know he's doing it. "Fine, then at least text her so she knows you're not lying somewhere in a ditch," he raises. 

"I've texted her since Tuesday, Sirius," Remus says. "She knows I'm alright." 

"Good," Sirius says, backing up off him. "It's not the holidays by any means, but muggers are rampant all year round, I've heard."

Remus sounds almost grateful for the laugh that springs out of him, and really that only has Sirius feeling like a tire tread. His newest goal first and foremost is to keep Remus above water, and stacking their losses to pinpoint who had it harder isn't going to help with it. "I have to get going," he adds, heading for Priscilla sitting perfectly haloed by a ray of sunlight, "but keep your sunnies nearby, yeah? It's a bright one out."

"I will," Remus says. "You have a good one, OK?"

"Have an even better one," Sirius sends him, swinging his right leg over Priscilla's bulk and settling himself on her cozily.

He ends the call, sticks his phone sideways in his back right pocket so it won't go anywhere, and rests his helmet in his lap while he pulls the elastic free from his hair, intent on leaving it down for the ride so his helmet won't sit wonky on his head the whole time. He snaps his helmet on, sticks the key in and gets her all revved up and ready to go, and waits for a break in traffic before he takes off into the street. 

The ride to the shop is woefully short and when he comes up on the mall strip his shop is located in, he's briefly seduced by the idea of taking her for a few more spins around the block, but he did forgo the chance at a morning coffee in favour of getting laid so he is running on zero caffeine, and that is a problem; he'll have the whole way back to Remus' tonight to ride on. 

He's pleased to see the parking lot blessedly devoid of parked cars, at least out in front of the shop, so Sirius rides on up to the spot left of James' car to park. He stays seated as he takes his helmet off and reties his hair, checks the time from there, and with twenty to spare before one o'clock and the start of his shift, he'll have time for a cup _and_ a cigarette; how 'bout that. 

He swings himself down and onto the pavement, hikes the strap of his bag up further on his right shoulder, and heads across the parking lot with his helmet tucked underneath his left arm. He passes two separate group of patrons strewn about the terrace out front and the first impression of the cafe once he steps inside is a lulled, easy atmosphere — at least until James looks toward the door from till and springs to life, draping himself over the otherwise unoccupied till counter to beckon Sirius to him longingly. 

Sirius heads up behind the counter via the pastry case route, sends a smile to Charlotte over at the bar, and saunters over to James with a lofty expression on. "Forgiven me, I take it," he observes.

"Keep your word and yeah, we'll move right on past this," James says cheerily. 

"Remus' word," Sirius clarifies, pulling a large cold cup off of the stack near the till. 

"He helped, no denying that, but I've a feeling the moment you hear the first Zumbatastic note bursting out of a speaker there'll be a glint in your eye that's all your own," James wax-poetics, and Sirius has nothing to the contrary to say to that claim, and, since he feels he's been given the room to actually _be_ chuffed, he lets himself get a little giddy in his veins about the prospect. 

The door to the shop opens and brings Miranda into the picture, calling James to begin plugging her order in. Sirius heads for the bar with a spring in his step, sticks his helmet down on the counter, and slips in on Charlotte's left to lean in to get at the syrup stackers. 

"She just gets your regular brew, yes?" Charlotte raises, eyeing Sirius with a note of subdued skepticism while pointing below the counter toward Miranda. 

"Mm, she'll want the soy," Sirius passes on, pressing a two pumps here, a pump and a smidge there; an right smorgasbord of them. "Leave it over there and she'll just pour it herself." 

Charlotte pulls the soy out and goes behind Sirius to leave it on the counter for her, returning to her spot on bar one. "Quieter than I was expecting," Sirius observes, having a look out over the floor; there are speckles of people sprinkled about the seats, but certainly nothing major. 

"The freakishly good weather might be doing it; almost everything's been taken to-go," Charlotte says. Sirius gives an easy nod, willing to put stock into that theory. "It's honestly kind of a relief; Saturdays were always shit at my last job." 

"Mmm?" Sirius hums for details. 

"Mhm, complete free-for-all," she says of her stint at Sainsbury's. "One time a bloke came in, unnoticed during a rush, stuck an ice cream sandwich in the microwave out on the floor and left, and we had to find it once the lines died down." 

Sirius bends inward, balancing both collapsing himself on the counter and tries to keep his cup of syrup upright in the process while his laughter dies down. "Sorry," he says, coming up for air. "I'm not laughing _at_ you but that's fucking hysterical." 

Charlotte works her mouth around a smile. "I've had enough distance to appreciate it, but I'll tell you it wasn't so funny finding melted ice cream seeping from the inside of the microwave and all over the counters."

And that certainly doesn't help Sirius' state whatsoever. "How long are you on 'til?" he asks, moving to bar two to set his cup on the espresso tray. 

"Just two," she provides, and Sirius frowns a little at that. 

"How long are you here 'til?" he asks, aiming it past Charlotte toward James, who has wandered over to them once he realized there's laughter to partake in, by Sirius' best guess. 

"Seven," he offers. "David's on 'til six." 

"Joy," Sirius puts out blandly, queuing up six shots to pour. 

James smiles real big and takes in a light breath just before David's voice sounds off from the door to the backroom. "You're all going to have to start lining up if you want drinks," he puts out, suddenly there on Sirius' left. 

For a brief moment, the only sounds present are the slow pouring of Sirius' shots and the churn of the espresso machine working to get them out. "Anyway," Sirius says, facing the bar again; an ultimately great move to make for he takes one look at the decaf button and promptly reaches to slap James on the arm. "_Guess_ who fucking finally decafed someone." 

James, who had been right in the middle of whacking Sirius back for the manhandling, takes his arm back real quick and reels back with an expression of prime wonder. "He did not," he returns. 

"Did," Sirius affirms, raising one brow proudly. 

"Impossible," James spouts. "The same bloke who helped the crossing guard in his youth; great Scot. We'll have to throw a party."

Charlotte lifts her hands to rub at her temples. "Oh, no no no," she says lowly. "No, he didn't really help the crossing guard, did he?" 

Sirius smirks as he pulls the milk out of the fridge. "He really did," he affirms. "Purest soul around, that one." 

James coughs loud, loud, loudly to sound off his general opinion on that one, but David's voice sounds off yet again from the hand-washing sink. "You really shouldn't be discussing that on the floor." 

"Discussing _what_," Sirius sends him, looking over at him finally. 

"Oh, I don't know, something as juvenile as decafing someone?" he raises. 

"Why'd he do it?" James presses on, flapping his arms back toward him in a presentation of spirit Sirius deems quite appropriate for the circumstance. 

"I can't; I won't do it justice," he insists, capping the milk and sticking it away. 

"Balderdash," James calls it. 

"Share with the class," Charlotte says, in plain agreement apparently. 

Sirius hums an airy no, walking his cup over to the ice bucket. "Maybe he'll come by soon and tell you himself," he says. "You'll need it to be face to face so you get the full weight of it, in any case; it's a doozy." 

A commotion sounds off as a group of four enter the shop laughing away, and David turns to the lot of them. "Is anyone actually on shift going to ring them in?" 

James blinks once. "You've hands, no?" he checks. 

"I'm the floater," David sounds out. 

"Float on out of here, then," James sends him with a pronounced wave-off, heading for the till. 

Charlotte and Sirius exchange a quick expression of mirth as Sirius takes a long sip of his lid-less drink and swivels on his hell, heading down the hall to the backroom and spotting Will down at the other end of it facing the computer monitor. 

"Is there any way you could not schedule me with that festering turd of a human?" he asks, stepping into the room with a plonk of his shoes in added punctuation. 

Will looks round at him as he scratches his beard. "You know I can't promise that." 

"Could you try at least?" Sirius sends him, strewing his things on a chair by the table in back and allowing himself a decent gulp of his coffee now that his drink isn't so close to the rim of his cup. 

"I've already reworked the schedule for weeks and I'm not redoing it," Will says adamantly. 

Sirius hangs his head back with a pronounced huff before heading Will's way, but at the very least, the schedule has come together two days ahead of the projected day. "Let me see the damage, then," he says, moving over by the computer desk.

Will pulls up a few spreadsheets on screen and Sirius leans in to get a look at them while Will cycles through weeks ahead. "Saturdays are with Mary and same as ever, but you're on with him Fridays," he says, and speaks louder over Sirius' scoff, "there's nothing I can do about that." 

"This punishment?" Sirius checks, eyeing Will sidelong.

Will shoots a puff of breath out the side of his mouth, flying a hand toward the screen. "You wanted Friday/Saturday," he maintains. "No one else is available Friday nights so someone's got to close with you, no?" 

"I'd close up alone over closing with him," Sirius says of it, standing up straight. 

"Well, they won't let me do that, so it is what it is," Will returns, minimizing the whole tab with a click and resuming from where he left off. 

Sirius digs his pack out of his pocket and pulls out a cigarette, freshly stewed. "At least admit that you know transferring him in was a mistake," he insists, and then, to Will's plain expression, he adds, "blink once if yes, twice if no." 

After a beat or three, Will blinks once and Sirius taps the tip of his nose in understanding, feeling a fair amount better about the situation even though Fridays will be known as Doom Day for the next six weeks, and yes, Sirius is counting. 

Sirius takes a sip of his drink, sends Will a closed-smile, and heads for the back door. "How's he doing?" Will asks, a beat or two later. 

Sirius swallows his mouthful quickly, paused in the doorway. "He's alright," he says. "There hasn't been another one since Tuesday, so we're just gearing up, getting ready for the next one so we aren't caught blind again."

"Right," Will returns, nodding. "Erm—"

Sirius reads his uneven expression to the best of his ability. "Godspeed?" he offers in aid, liking the sound of that a little better than good luck. 

Will points his way. "Yes." 

Sirius points right on back and pushes the door open again, sticking his cigarette in his mouth and pulling out his phone. He knocks the door shut behind him with the heel of his right foot, settles down beside the door, and lights up, intent on leaning back and chilling right on until he's expected to be on the floor.

Their time with Charlotte for the day is woefully short, and since Sirius didn't get _that_ that good a look at the upcoming schedules when his brain was busy imploding at the mere thought of spending eight hours with David each and every Friday, he laments to himself over the fact that it wasn't her he got paired with, and then laments to her, too, for good measure, and that does two things: it gets Charlotte shining brightly at the comment and commiserating his lesser hours come tonight at 9pm, and it gets a scoff out of David, so it's good he said it, really.

After Charlotte takes off, James is really the star shining above Sirius' shift, and his presence makes it all the more easier to block out all of the '_umm, actuallys'_' that come their way. This dynamic topped only by Mary walking onto the floor at three to start her shift, making it three of the OG crowd around there versus one, snivelling transfer-in, and that's a difficult ratio to beat. 

The only drag about it is James is slated for preclose, meaning he's popping on and off the floor and on the floor and off the floor again, running garbage out, taking care of the floors behind the counter, so he's constantly on the move but the consolation is that he does leave the sanitizing, which is really more of a personal gift to Sirius and one that Sirius plans on using a little later on in the evening, just to break his shift up nicely. 

Will heads off at four, perhaps sensing little need to stick around when there's four viable employees traipsing around the place, and from there the time flies right on by quicker than Sirius really even realizes it, Mary's headed off on her fifteen while David's popping onto the floor, sans apron, to clock out on the unoccupied till. 

Sirius sticks a cake pop in a pastry bag for a little kid who barely passes the till counter in height, leans over the counter to help the kid grab a hold of it, and watches him scamper off to rejoin his dad at a table in the corner, and promptly beats back a bolt of envy with a stick. Beside him, David turns his way, freshly clocked out and for some reason still standing there, and it's somehow more irksome than anything he's done and said in the five hours Sirius has been made to spend any sort of time with him today. 

Sirius inches his head a little closer to him, blinking once. "Bye?" he says, dragging the 'y' out.

"I'm opening tomorrow, so if you two could try leaving the place decent, it'd go a long way," David says, getting right to it. 

Over at the coffee station, Sirius both sees and hears James set the vat of coffee he's carrying down with a thwack and look round at the two of them with quite a slow turn. Sirius, on the other hand, puts on a grin so bright it could guide lost travelers home safely at night. 

"Yeah, we'll do our best," he says, nodding. 

Whether David realized he'd just made a grand and glorious mistake and thus made a quick exit, or whether he just simply found Sirius' grin off-putting and ditched as soon as he could make his legs walk quick enough, but either way, it got David's out of his face.

In the wake of David's presence, Sirius reaches for the receipt printer and presses the button on it, printing out a veritable streamer of paper. From there he uncaps his marker, sticks the cap on the back of it, and leans forward onto the till counter, repeatedly writing the word _cunt,_ one after the other in altogether beautiful penmanship, if he may be so bold to say. 

James steps up on Sirius' right, perhaps getting a peek at Sirius' mini project, but when Sirius flickers his gaze up to him, he finds James staring off out the window and blinking repeatedly. 

"Having a stroke, there?" Sirius checks.

James shakes his head clear, dropping his gaze to Sirius bent over the counter, and takes in a quick breath. "I knew he reminded me of someone, but I couldn't put my finger on it." 

"Lucifer's child?" Sirius offers. 

"Close, but no," James provides. "He's Reg incarnate, full stop." 

The moment the words reach Sirius' ears he drops the marker in his hand in favour of cradling his face. "Oh, I wish you hadn't said that," he shoots at him from underneath his hands. 

"Well, am I wrong?"

Sirius drops his hands, pushing his frame up to rest on his elbows. "No, you're right," he huffs. "Of course you're fucking right _again_." 

"Right?" James sends him resoundingly. "It's uncanny."

Sirius pushes himself off of the counter and does a foot stamp on the floor. "Yes, he's literally everything wrong with the guy wrapped into one, but now I have to fucking _think_ about why the fuck I'm having such a grand old time goading him to shit, so thank you for that, _James_," he returns huffily. 

"Do you," James starts, squinting at him, "really have to?" Sirius gives him a pointed look, head tilt combo that really needs no more than that for James to get the picture. "OK, you could totally do that, or instead you could remember that I'm literally always on your side and maybe we don't need to pick all that apart? What do you think?"

Sirius shuts his eyes and aims a disgruntled noise James' way, clasping his right hand over his left wrist, but there's a similar noise parroted back to him that, for whatever reason, hits Sirius directly in the funny bone. There's a quick pop that sounds out a mere beat or two later, and when Sirius opens his eyes again, James has his forearms set on the till counter and his marker at the ready as he observes Sirius' work. 

"Artisan," he supplies. 

Sirius presses his lips into a firm line, holding back a laugh. "It felt necessary at the time." 

"Still is," James says of it, putting the tip of his marker to till paper, so to speak. He adds to the existing row of 'cunt's going down the page until there's room for no more, and from there takes to ripping each and every one free from the next until there's a pile of them on the till counter, and lifts one of them, puffing a few tiny breaths out in thought before he places it right above the till screen. "Hm?" 

Sirius' snort can probably be heard from space. "Give me the tape." 

James reaches between the tills with his free hand and passes the tape deck over to Sirius, who pulls a strip clean and pastes it overtop of the written obscenity, tapping the finished product with an air of finality. "Parfait," he calls it. 

By the time Mary reappears on the floor from her fifteen, James and Sirius have succeeded in finding an array of hiding spots for the rest of the pile, ranging from right out in the open to tucked away for a lovely little surprise come morning, and James waves Sirius off to the back to start on sanitizing, and, if Sirius is honest about that, he could use a break from the floor as it is.

Mary swaps posts with Sirius, takes one look at the lettering tapped to the screen of till one, and lifts her right hand, pointing at it in question. "It's for David," James provides brightly. 

Mary's mouth reworks in the span of a beat. "Apt," she forwards, and, perhaps owing to the fact that she's been around a long time, goes on to ask, "are there more?" 

"So many more," Sirius assures, moving for the bar to begin plucking syrup bottles free of their stackers. 

-

One of the many benefits Sirius appreciates about a shift alongside Mary is that she, too, has a life outside of work and little to no interest in staying past close. Because of this particular benefit, the two of them split the duties up and tackle their respective ones in between volley-balling customers at each other; Sirius has the coffees downsized and the money in the drawer counted up so all he has to do is close down the last vat and enter the numbers into the till once they lock up, while Mary hacks away at the dishes, and closing up for the night feels precisely as it should when the time comes; short, sweet, and to the point. 

They do linger in the parking lot for a post-shift cigarette before parting ways, but that's as inconsequential as it is essential, really, when it truly is the warmest evening they've had in ages. The ride back to Remus' is glorious in and of itself, and Sirius would be a liar if he said he didn't find the supreme urge to remove his helmet and let the warm night air breeze through his hair, but he holds of on that purely due to the fact that the moment the urge surfaces, he can plainly hear Remus' loud aversion to carrying that impulse out. 

By the looks of it, Remus beat Sirius to his flat by literal seconds given that Remus is only taking his shoes off when Sirius gets in the door, and that is a little odd, considering he had a tad longer trip to make than Remus did. "Did you get out late?" he asks, blocking Tango's intense hello which amounts to a lot of half-jumping in the quite tiny space Remus' entryway has to work with and thumping his own shoes off near the mat. "I'll take you soon, hold on a second." 

Remus gives a hum of affirmation to Sirius' question, stooping to put his shoes on the rack, and while he's there, puts Sirius' on the rack beside his own. "We got a last minute rush we weren't accounting for and that put us back a good ten minutes," he supplies, straightening up. 

"Gross," Sirius forwards him, reaching to hang his helmet from one of the hooks by the door. He flickers his gaze to Remus as he does it, looks away as he snaps the straps together, then looks back immediately, sending Remus' pointed smile a suspicious look. "What?" 

Remus sways his shoulders easily on the spot. "I got you something," he reveals, pulling an exhilarated trill out of Sirius. 

"What is it, what is it," he asks, bobbing in place. 

Remus right beams at him, inching his book bag closer to himself with his left leg before bending to flip the flap open. "I had some time before work to dilly around a little bit, and lo and behold, I came across something that is so appropriate for your current situation that I literally couldn't leave without it," he details, pulling out a plastic shopping bag that is perfectly sealed-tight around around a square item, and already Sirius had found spiritual enlightenment through Remus' prefacing, but the fact that the item is so clearly a record is — too much and just right all at once. 

Sirius' trills yet again, only now he seal-claps as Remus stands tall again and pulls the record out, loftily displaying the face of it toward him and showcasing the title; 'Bagpipe Blues' by one _Rufus Harley,_ whoever he is. Sirius sets a gape/grin hybrid on his face and bobs in place again, though much springier than even before laying his peepers on such a find, and reaches for it just to have something to fan himself with. 

"I'm never listening to this," he informs him, in case that isn't clear. 

"Didn't think you would," Remus says, breaking into a laugh halfway through it. 

"OK, OK, OK," Sirius sends to Tango profusely shoving his snooter against his hip, and holds the gift out to Remus. "You take this and bask in your genius, and I'll take him down, deal?"

"Deal," Remus returns, taking hold of the record. 

Sirius plucks the lead off of the hook to the right of the one his helmet's on, stoops to latch it to Tango's collar, and flicks one of the two plastic bags tied near the loop of the lead. "Did you do this?" Sirius asks,

"I did, but it'd be good to get into the habit of replacing them whenever you get back in from one, that way there will always be a couple spares hanging about," Remus offers. 

Sirius gives a strong salute to that, takes his shoes and stuffs his feet back into them before pulling the door open, and lets Tango head out into the hall first. He takes him for a loop around the square, thinking it only fair given his size and the size of the flat he's currently staying at, and gives him a chance to really stretch his legs. He takes Tango back a different way just to spice it up a little and races him up through the stairwell, but that bit he won't share with Remus, he thinks. 

He heads back in through the door, spots Remus sitting crossed-legged on the right side of couch with their stash, grinder, and from the looks of it, a pack of rolling papers all in his lap. "Yes," Sirius drags out. "I love your mind." 

Remus snorts from where he's sitting, while Sirius hangs Tango's lead back up in its spot. Sirius stops in at the washroom to give his hands a wash, heads out and around Remus' side of the couch where he's currently tinkering with the grinder, passes round the coffee table, and plops himself down on the other end of the couch, stretching his legs out the length of it and tucks his socked feet in between Remus' back and the couch. 

"Oi," Remus says, shifting forward a little, "delicate work happening here."

Sirius stretches long before settling in comfortably. "You could do that with your eyes closed," he says, nonplussed. 

"Maybe so, but not with some feet in my lap," Remus returns. 

"They're behind you," Sirius whispers. Remus sends him a plain look, but there's a hint of a smile there too. "Tuckered out?"

Remus hums to agree, pausing his grinding to rub at his eyes with the side of his left arm since his hands are a little preoccupied. "I'm a little stuffy, too," he says, sniffing. "I hope this isn't where I find out I'm actually allergic to your dog." 

Sirius gives a wan noise. "Don't even," he puts out. 

Remus resumes from where he left off, giving the grinder another few turns before looking Sirius' way. "Did you have a good shift?" he asks. 

"Mhm," Sirius chimes. 

"Who was on?" Remus asks, leaving the grinder set open on his right knee in exchange for hands to pull out a brand new sheet of rolling paper free from the pack. 

"James, Charlotte, Shitdick, Mary," Sirius lists off. 

Remus' shoulders bob up and down as he tries to balance laughing and rolling at the same time. "Sorry, who was that sandwiched in the middle?" 

"David, of course," Sirius provides. 

"Ah, mhm," Remus nods, "and now I've just encouraged you tenfold; grand." 

Sirius brings his right hand up to pull twice on his hair tie before it loosens enough to pull it free from his hair, and combs his hand up through it. "Told James a little tale of yours, by the by," he mentions. 

Remus pauses, looking straight up in thought, and a wan laugh escaping him a beat after that. "Mm?"

"Certainly did," Sirius affirms. "I did leave many of the specifics out so that you can freely tell the tale yourself, as is needed, _but_ you should know that James is so incredibly pumped about it that he's talking about throwing a party in your honour." 

"Good Lord," Remus puts out, smiling profusely. "You know what? I thought I'd feel a little guilty about it later on, but I really don't?" 

"Good," Sirius puts out plainly. 

Remus tilts his head back and forth. "I do wish I'd done maybe a little more than just press the decaf button," he admits. "In hindsight." 

"Right, because it's up to you and only you to make that bloke less of an incel," Sirius returns blandly, but Remus pauses his rolling to rub his left arm over his eyes yet again and that's a bit much. "OK, do we actually have to get you in for an allergy test?" he asks. 

"I don't know," Remus says candidly, holding the joint in his right hand to better rub profusely at his left eye, and that prompts Sirius into sitting up to inspect him more closely; thing's watering a lot, yes, but he can't see Remus' right from this angle to see if it's both of them or not. "It's like when your throat's itchy but you can't scratch it to stop it from doing it." 

Sirius sits rod-still, hums a flat note to that omission, his eyebrows all the way up by his hairline by the feel of it, and waits for Remus to look at him again, only the deflate he gives into the moment he reads Sirius' expression is deeply saddening. "No," he says quietly, shaking his head softly, "I was so good today, really — I was so careful." 

"OK, I believe you," Sirius says gently, scooting down the couch toward him.

He quickly takes hold of all three items set carefully in Remus' lap and right hand and moves them to the table before scooting closer. "No, I don't—" Remus tries. "I don't know what I did." 

"Well, we'll get there, OK?" Sirius says, reaching to clasp Remus' left knee. "We'll go over the day when it's over with and we'll figure out what happened, but for now let's just focus; yeah? We knew more were coming, we're all set, and you got home in time; these are all good things."

Remus nods, his breath coming out faster than before, but whether that's a true symptom or a symptom of the scenario itself, Sirius can't say for sure, but he puts it his his back pocket for now, so to speak. He lifts off the couch in no time at all, but he has to force his feet to work properly. "Do you want a say in which option we pick first, or does that matter?" he asks.

Remus gives out a noise that's halfway between a discontent breath and a ponder. "Boost?" 

Now standing, Sirius leans down and in to kiss Remus' left temple. "Read my mind," he says, booking it to the the kitchen to pull one of the many options out of the cupboard they were put in, reads the time on the stove top and repeats it thrice in his head, and books it right back to Remus. 

"Here," he says, handing the boost over to him, which, thankfully, Remus cracks open and knocks back faster than Sirius was even banking on. 

"What if it doesn't work?" he asks, back to his regular scheduled breathing troubles. 

"Then it doesn't and we'll try something else next time," Sirius says. "I know that's not enough right now, but I need you to try to remember that it won't last forever and I'll be beside you the whole time, OK? Now, do you want to stay here or would you rather be in your room for it?" 

Remus shrugs heavily, sniffing hard, and Sirius nods to that, thinks about where _he_ would rather him be, and wraps his right hand around Remus' wrist a beat later, giving Remus a tug to get him moving. "OK, you go sit in there, middle of the bed, and I'll bring the rest to you, OK?" 

Remus nods again as he stumbles up to his feet and Sirius waits until he's steady on his feet before coaxing him to move some more. 

Sirius waits until Remus is en route to his room before he swings around and shakes his hands out erratically, willing the spooks to leave his body when they're not going to help at all. He heads for the fridge, pulls the freezer door open and takes out the hot pink mask laying in it, and that — that's a detail is enough for a smile, he decides, on route to the island; just the thought of having it as a splash of colour in the middle of the rest of it. He grabs their notebook off of the island, a pen from out of the cup of many on the counter, and heads around the side of it, but stops short when he looks up and finds Remus just standing a step or two into his room, wringing his hands in front of himself and his expression all torn up, and Sirius genuinely can't decide if it would be better or worse if he was made to see that expression with both of Remus' eyes open. 

"The pick's starting," is all he says; clipped, quick, and the worst octave known to Sirius' ears. 

Sirius logs that away and crosses the space between them in the span of a second, crowding Remus further into the room, but Remus blinks his one working eye shut, cutting off his rapid fire breathing to take in a deep one, and Sirius has to wait through ten awful seconds before Remus opens it again and his voice even comes through. "You shouldn't be here for it."

Sirius lets out a breath that could've been a laugh if this was the least bit funny. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, shuffling his items into the crook of his arm so he can shut them into the room properly.

"I don't want to hurt you, ever," Remus returns, statement of fact, no room for arguing, except for the fact he chose to take up with a bloke who could argue for a living and make bank for it. 

"Good thing you're not going to," Sirius returns, coxing him backwards toward the bed. 

"We don't know that," Remus puts out incredulously, thankfully moving with Sirius' urging hand though he's certainly not done making his point known, however bated his breathing patterns are while he tries it. "I _threw_ Peter off of me last time, and nobody seems to want to even acknowledge that."

"That's because nobody fucking blames you, where have you _been?_" Sirius sends him, urging him down onto the bed and backwards on the mattress, kneeling on the end of it to make his point clear as glass. 

"That's not a consolation actually," Remus snaps.

Sirius flings the items in his arms onto the side of the bed, lunges for Remus' right wrist, and tugs it up, but the moment Remus realizes where it's going to he wrenches it back so quickly Sirius almost grab hold of it again. "Why would I have _ever_ done that if I was afraid of you?" he asks. "You _know_ I'm not and you want me here, I know you do; you're just scared right now so I'm going to do everything I can not to take your attempt at banishing me personally, if you lay the fuck down and quit fighting me on this." __

_ __ _

_ __ _

Remus pitches himself backwards fitfully, but at least he's down. "Nicely done," Sirius says, more for himself just then, and moves back off of the bed. 

He heads round the right side of it, set on tackling the sturdy fixtures close by the bed, and leans over Remus' nightstand to unplug the chords for both the lamp and the clock before dragging the entire back toward the far wall. He eyes Remus, taking in his breathing and twisting around on the bed as he rounds the bed to repeat the process on his own side of the bed, and quickly unplugs everything he needs to in order to get his nightstand up against the opposite wall. 

With those out of the way, he heads back to the bed, situates himself directly in the space between Remus' head and the wall, crosses his legs and gears himself up to play defense if it so comes to it, and reaches to pull the notebook closer to him on the bed. He flips through to the last two attacks, starts from the top of a blank page, and puts the starting time down before he'll have the chance to forget it. 

Next, the icepick. _icepick drilling out the center of left eyelid_. "Remus?" he puts out, quietly when Remus in cluster-mode doesn't much like noise, though the chances of him answering in speech are slim to none. "Is the clamp happening, too?" 

Remus quits rocking back and forth long enough to twist around so far the opposite way his body is supposed to lay that if Sirius weren't supremely prepped on what this can look like, he'd think he was present for an actual possession. "I just need a confirmation, answer any way you can." 

Remus does rapid fire of his right fist into the mattress a solid five times before Sirius can get a solid grip on it and hold it down until the urge to do that stops. A yes? Difficult to say when it could have just been Remus' recent pattern of generating pain elsewhere when the pain in his head gets to be far too much, but Sirius switches hands, holds Remus' own down with his left while he scrawls with his right one; _clamp's probably closing around the left side of skull, but we'll have to reconvene at a later time._

Sirius chances letting go of Remus' hand after a bit, leaves it hovering over Remus' for a good twenty, thirty seconds in case there's a spur of further punching yet to come, presses his hand up to press it over Remus' forehead. A thermometer might've been a clever thing to grab while purchasing half of Boots' inventory, but Sirius can't think of everything, can he? It'll be the next item to buy but for now, he thinks '_temperature hotter than a thousand suns'_ will do the trick; point is, he's burning the fuck up, as per usual. Sirius takes his hand away and reaches for the mask, puts a pause on his scrawling to maneuver the mask onto Remus' head, and shifts forward so Remus' head is resting the crook of his crossed-legs, and shifts the notebook closer to him, set on resumes his note-taking scrawling notes at an angle and while he gives Remus' left temple a rub-down since this is just about the only place he feels of help; whether it even really helps at this point, he hasn't got a clue, but fuck if it doesn't help _him_ a little. Whether the mask truly helps, also difficult to pinpoint, but Remus sounded so pumped about the prospect Sirius feels he has to give it a whirl. 

He puts pen to paper again, moving on from guessing games and focusing on what's happening presently that he can indeed say for certain. 

_ \- left eye shut tight, watering profusely_  
_ \- right one shut as well, can't confirm whether pain is present there too _  
_ \- breathing so fast one breath can't finish before the next one starts _  
_ \- twisting, churning, cannot stay completely still for longer than five to tend seconds, give or take_  
_ \- possibly generating pain away from ground ze _

As if sensing the particular topic he's on, Remus surges his own right arm up quicker than Sirius move a muscle, sandwiches his wrist between his teeth and bites down on it sharply, and Sirius drops his pen, scoots his legs out from underneath Remus' head, and quits his temple-rubbing completely just to have the double-grip he needs to successfully pry Remus' unrelenting jaw open without breaking it in the process, and then has to perform a mad quick pull back on Remus' wrist to get it out of the fray, but the dual maneuver isn't an easy feat with Remus fighting Sirius' hold the entire time, but he isn't about to budge until Remus lets up, however long that takes. 

A long time is the answer. Perhaps it feels longer because that's the nature of the situation, or it could have to do with the divots on Remus' arm and crimson beads trickling down his arm that Sirius can't even get to from his angle, but Sirius is willing to call it a lot of both. Remus ends up kicking the living shit out of the end of the bed soon enough, thundering his heels into it, and by Sirius' only guess, he's likely attempting to set off pain receptors there instead, but doing the math doesn't make the answer to the equation any easier to stomach, and the longer it goes on, the more he feels he owes Peter something shiny and expensive, but he'll have to think more on that when he doesn't have a 6'1 bloke underneath him. 

Remus' breathing ratchets up until they're one humongous cry that peters of into hordes of shorter, sharper ones, and where he even has the time to breathe in between them, Sirius will never know. He does however know deep in his gut that this one has to be a knockout, but his frustrations lie in his inability to become pure elasticity, but since that's not in the cards for him, he can't really hold his arms down and reach his legs to stop their rapid kicking _and_ find him something to bite down on that isn't his skin all at one go, so something has to wait for a few and Remus' legs are, unfortunately, the furthest from his position, so those will have to wait. 

Sirius sweeps his right arm out past Remus' frame and brings it down to press it across Remus' front and keep his arms in place, brings his free arm to himself and stretches it up the bed to paw at the pillows, doesn't matter which, he'll take either one, and gets a solid grip on one of them and drags it down from the head of the bed. He shifts onto his knees, sticks the pillow down on Remus' chest so he won't smother himself in the process, accidentally, purposefully, what have you; not part of Sirius' plan whatsoever. He lets Remus have a single corner of the pillow to bite down on and once his teeth are attached to it and his cries are muffled, he settles himself beside Remus' left hip on the bed so he's within arms reach from the pillow if he has to interfere, and close enough to keep Remus' legs in place. 

And that is the precise spot where Sirius lives for upwards of two hours; he knows it because he checks the time right as Remus' breathing stops being so harried. Sirius jots the number down for reference, tosses the pen aside, shifts closer to Remus on his knees, hovering over him and his pillow chest piece, and reaches to peak underneath the mask with his left hand and presses the fingertips of his right hand through Remus' sweat-soaked fringe. 

"Remus?" 

A response might've been nice, but a few things can be said for certain; Remus has opened his good eye, his breathing has evened out, and an hour and forty-four minutes isn't _great_ in the grand scheme of things, but that's it's yards better than the last two, and Sirius lets out a quiet breath of relief, sinking himself down on Remus' left side and along the line of Remus' body, unable to quite pin which of those three points he's most grateful for. 


	10. 10

The next few minutes could easily be a firm lesson in not celebrating too soon. Remus laying beside him, pressing his mask down against his left eye with the both of his hands, breathing long before a hitch interrupts it and he has to start all over again from the top; there are enough details there for Sirius to pick out that Remus isn't out of the woods yet, but while the backdrop is certainly a little different, the details are strikingly familiar. 

Sirius scoots a smidge closer than he already is, leaving maybe an inch of space between his chest and Remus' right shoulder. “Remus?” he tries.

“Pick, pick, pick,” Remus puts out tightly, and while it's not all that eloquent, no, Sirius doesn't mind that one bit when at least Remus is talking. 

Despite feeling oddly comforted by finally seeing as side of this whole ordeal that matches up to the sort of attack he witnessed last year, Sirius does feel a tad purposeless as Remus shakes beside him, at least until Remus puts too much pressure down on his left eye for comfort, and at that point Sirius can't not intervene here; he'd like it if Remus came out of this with his eyesight intact. 

This time, when Sirius inserts himself into the mix by tugging down on Remus' wrists, he's much more malleable to his touch. He doesn't fight Sirius' grip on him, doesn't kick out from underneath them, and that makes it all the more easy for Sirius to shift the notebook onto Remus' chest and jot live-notes down while rubbing the print of his left thumb over the bit of mask covering Remus' left eye, moving it in a small, rotating circle. 

Given the fact that he's in a prime position to feel Remus underneath him, Sirius hones in on the exact moment Remus' body goes lax, and after a minute and some change, Sirius is now profoundly aware that Remus has conked out. Sirius shifts off of him carefully, aiming not to rouse him while he reaches up the bed to grab his phone and make note of the time. He scrawls that down beside what he first thought was the end time, circles the numbers four times over, and then once more each, just for the hell of it.

Sirius taps the end of his pen against the page as his mind goes a mile a minute. He knows what he saw with his own two eyes, feels justified in it, but something in his bones has him feeling like Remus is going to want some receipts before he gets on board with Sirius' theory, and those are going to take some time and research to gather up. 

What he really wants just then is a well-earned cigarette, but Sirius can't quite justify slipping out for one before he gets the house back in order first. Remus is the first item on the docket, poor thing, and namely his right forearm which has seen a lot in the past few days. With that in mind, Sirius ducks out of the room and into the bathroom to gather fixings. 

A washcloth is easy enough to find when there's usually one hanging on the wall by the sink, but after some digging around in the cupboard underneath the sink, Sirius can't help but think it a little rich that Remus knocks Sirius' first aid supply when Remus' own isn't anything to be impressed by. Sirius will be speaking to him about that in due time, but for now he's going to have to make do with what he's got, and that is a band-aid typically reserved for large knee gashes which, at the very least, will likely cover all of the teeth marks on Remus' arm. 

Sirius grabs the bottle of aloe and pack of stitches that had been shut away in the cupboard the night before, rises to his feet and wets the cloth in the sink before carrying his bounty back to Remus, who, Sirius is glad to see, hasn't woken up and wandered off in Sirius' absence. Sirius moves onto the bed, shifts across it on his knees, and plants himself beside Remus' head, tucking his legs underneath himself and sitting cross-legged. He leaves the pile of fixings beside him on the bed, pulls on the pillow now laying forgotten on the other side of Remus, and lifts Remus' head up enough so he can slide the pillow in underneath it, thinking if the roles were reversed, Remus would undoubtedly think of Sirius' comfort before anything else. 

Next up, Sirius maneuvers Remus' mask up and turns his head toward him so he can have better access to his left brow, taking the clean cloth to Remus' stitches and working them off of his skin. Once the two stitches have come free, Sirius presses two new ones down over Remus' gash in turn, and finds the whole process going a lot smoother without Remus' thinking face making the job more difficult, oddly enough. 

With the stitches out of the way, Sirius slips Remus' mask back down over his eyes and moves onto Remus' right arm, coaxing it closer to him and setting it laying face up in his lap. He takes the cloth to it, cleaning off the divots in his skin first off and moving onto working out the red drip stains going down his arm. 

He has to get a little creative when it comes to placing the band-aid on Remus' skin; Sirius already considered Remus' jaw substantially powerful for other reasons, but tonight has given him a slight reverence for it in a way, and since Remus wasn't all that bothered with precision when taking a nice chomp out of his own arm, Sirius has to place the band-aid in a quasi-diamond in order to cover all the divots properly, but in the end, once he's smoothed the edges of the band-aid down, Sirius looks over his handiwork and considers his it up to par. Last up, Sirius squeezes a glob of aloe onto his right middle and forefinger, applies it to the welt on Remus' forearm, a few inches up from the bite mark. Sirius wipes his fingers off on the cloth, shuts one eye as he takes aim, and launches the cloth into the air, landing it into Remus' hamper on the other side of the room. He gathers up the band-aid wrapper along with Remus' old stitches and bins them, and begins restoring Remus' room to its prior, homey state. 

He starts with Remus' side of the bed first, picking the nightstand off the floor and bringing it back to its spot by the bed rather than drag it there and risk waking Remus in the process. He goes back for Remus' lamp and the digital clock laying by it, plugs the both of them in, and flicks the switch on the lamp. He heads round to the other side of the bed to repeat the same process for his nightstand, but stops at the light switch on the way to turn off the overhead light, leaving the room dimly lit by Remus' lamp before carrying en route. He rights everything on his side of the bed, leans over the edge of the mattress to pluck the aloe and pack of stitches back up, and brings them back to the bathroom cupboard before deciding that, without anyone or thing needing his immediate attention, he's free to enjoy one hell of a cigarette before he'll need to hunker down for research mode. 

After his little break, Sirius resets his focus on the task at hand for the night — or morning, since the clock struck midnight a good while back. He stops for Remus' laptop laying on the island and brings it back to the room with him, sits himself at the top of the bed and diagonal from Remus' head, and creates a makeshift work station around him; laptop on his left, notebook on his right, Remus all but a reach away from him if Sirius is needed — a perfect little setup. 

The next item on the docket is to find anyone, anywhere whose had some luck bringing a whopper of a cluster down to a quasi-manageable one by using an energy boost. A positive about that is Sirius knows he saw quite a few posts discussing the merits of energy drinks on his last search, a negative is that those threads are saved on his laptop, which is sitting back at his flat of no use to him at the moment, so the only thing left to do is to start all over again and fine tune his searches a little. 

It takes a great deal of time and energy just searching through the first wave of results he drums up, cycling through a load of posts that have little or nothing to do with the topic Sirius is after, which is an unfortunately familiar feeling from the very last time Sirius took to scouring websites for answers for a bundle of topics pertaining to clusters as a theme. After a good while of searching and realizing that he may have started off a tad too specific, Sirius decides to go back to the basics, make his searches more broad, and work his way back to specifics. He goes forward with the topic of energy drinks as an abortive method, opens tab after tab up to as many as he can open and still have Remus' laptop run, and keeps his eyes peeled for mentions of energy boosts while he looks through a number of posts. 

He finds one, single person raising the topic of boosts, which isn't bombastic but sure is something, and then Sirius thinks, well, he's sitting on multiple threads with numerous anecdotal evidence to suggest anything with a bit of taurine in it has a shot in bringing clusters down, and Sirius can't deny that these multiple testimonies echo what he's nearly positive Remus just experienced. Some posts are more direct; short, sweet, and to the point, while others are lengthy and go into far more detail, but Sirius thinks if he keeps these pages open for Remus to have a look at once he's awake, Sirius has a good chance at getting Remus on board with his theory. 

Reinvigorated, Sirius takes his resurgence of energy and puts it into gaining traction for said theory. Anecdotal evidence from strangers on the internet are one thing, but what's happened to Remus should be the focal point here. He pulls the notebook into his lap, picks up his pen again, and starts off by highlighting and penning down the stark differences between Remus' last two clusters versus the one tonight. 

_this time around, Remus' behaviour is the key difference. Remus didn't grab for hard fixtures in attempt to bludgeon himself, and while I might've contributed to that by removing anything within reach and making it that much harder for him to pull off, the biggest point to take home is that Remus didn't seek anything like that out. Remus in-cluster, if pressed, has used just about anything near him when unable to move, but tonight he didn't try somersaulting onto his own head like he did during Tuesdays attack, nor did he wiggle free from Sirius' grasp and find a window to hurdle his head into, as he did during Monday's attack, and that has to be highlighted in bold. _

_if Remus wants to crack his skull open, unfortunately I'm now aware that in true moments of hysteria, Remus will simply keep trying to break free from someone's hold or — like he did Tuesday night with our dear friend Peter — drag somebody along as he searches for something to get the job done, but that did not happen tonight. Remus certainly tried to alleviate what was going on in his head by causing a great deal of pain in other areas, which is arresting in and of itself, but that leads me to believe this cluster couldn't have reached the severity of the last two, and the only things done differently this time around was prepping in advance for an attack, and feeding Remus a five-hour energy boost. _

_whether the boost was so fast-acting that it squandered what could have been another knock-out, as Remus has come to affectionately call the severity of his last two attacks, or whether getting the boost in Remus sooner than we did could have curbed better results, is still too early to tell. we aren't going to have substantial proof until we try it again, but despite some unanswered questions, the facts of the matter are: I saw Remus' cluster drop to a much lower notch, so much so that it echoed the first ever attack I ever saw Remus struggle through, and while that isn't perfection by any means, it won't do us any favours pretending something good didn't come from using the boost as an abortive method. _

_if I'm to include the substantial drop-off in severity before the whole attack seemed to peter off to the point where Remus had a shot at sleeping, then all in all, Remus' cluster clocks in at two hours and seventeen minutes and, I'm stressing this politely, that is yards ahead of the time frame Remus' last two were_— 

The bed dipping takes Sirius right out of his note-taking and puts his attention back on Remus directly, whose gone and rolled onto his right side. Sirius blinks over at him a few times, figures that may be all his turning over will amount to, but before he can get back into the flow of his notes, Remus lifts his hands and pulls his mask off, blinking in the room around him. 

Sirius remains quite still, quietly celebrating Remus stirring awake so soon when he was well and truly prepared to wait until well into the morning. Remus aims quiet, calculating stares around the room before honing in on Sirius' presence, and for a moment Sirius gets too caught up in how swollen his left eyelid is that he forgets to aim even a slight smile his direction, and that, he realizes, is a huge mistake for he must have looked petrified of Remus for a moment there, and that is the absolute last notion he wants Remus to take in. 

Sirius tosses the pen in his hand aside and all but slides in between the laptop and notebook to get to him. Remus reaches up for him with a hitch of a breath locked tight in his throat, stuffs his face against Sirius' chest the moment Sirius is close enough for him to manage it, and Sirius knows he hasn't got the right to celebrate Remus reaching for him in plain distress, but Sirius needs to see Remus wanting him here more than anything, selfish as it may be. Sirius holds him around the small of his back with his right arm, holds the back of Remus' head with his left hand, curling in and finding it the most natural position they've found to date. 'Course, Sirius went and thought that seconds before the dam opened up, and then the urge to stop Remus from weeping is suffocating once he really gets going. He holds Remus tightly, but for a few long and frankly embarrassing moments, Sirius isn't certain what sort of care he's supposed to be giving him; if he's even meant to stop it or if he ought to just let Remus cry it out of his system, but the moment he registers Remus apologizing against him, Sirius can't keep silent anymore, his body won't let him. 

“Don't,” Sirius denies, scooting down and tipping Remus' head back to clear a path for his lips to go, pressing them over both of Remus' shut eyelids in turn. “Don't be sorry.” 

A few beats later is right about when Sirius wonders if the eyelid kisses might've been too much for Remus in the state he's in, for the speed of his convulses hit double speed, but then again, Remus holds him so much tighter a the back of Sirius' shirt that Sirius thinks the eye kisses might be just the right sort of thing for the occasion.

Sirius gives him another two just because he can. “You're my hero, know that?” 

Remus' convulsing lets up enough for him to digest the words properly and send a long, very long, so so long _pfft_ directly at Sirius, and oh, that's his man in a nutshell right there, Sirius can get him back, no sweat. “Stop it,” Remus says, sounding perhaps the quietest he's ever before, and that won't do. 

“It's true,” Sirius doubles down, leaving another kiss on the tip of Remus' nose. “Toughest lad this side of London, you.” 

Remus goes ahead and places a hand directly over Sirius' face to shush him, but all that does is get Sirius snickering against his palm. “I don't feel particularly tough right now,” he says, lifting his left hand to give his eyes a solid rub-down with his forefinger and thumb. 

Sirius leaves a kiss on Remus' palm since it's right there, then reaches up and tugs down on Remus' wrist gently so he can speak. “Go easier on them, please,” he requests.

“'Time is it?” Remus asks, slowing down the pace of his hand over his eyes. 

Sirius automatically looks to the clock on Remus' nightstand and that's when he realizes he never reset the time on it. He shifts a little and reaches up the bed for his phone, “umm,” he hums on key as he lights his screen up. “Almost four.” 

“PM?” Remus asks at once, dropping his left hand from his face altogether and looking wildly around the room before finally setting Sirius with a pointed look for the fit of snickers Sirius fell into.

“You're fine,” Sirius insists, reigning it in. “Still the AM.” 

Remus eases enough to lay the side of his head back down on the pillow below it and, more importantly, quit giving Sirius such a look of plain offense. “How long was I out for?” 

Sirius hums another note as he clocks it. “Four hours, about,” he offers. “You officially conked out a little past midnight.” 

Remus blinks at him. “You've been sitting up this whole time?” he asks.

Sirius gives him a wild look, half-smiling at the audacity of the question. “Monsieur,” he addresses, “I had work to do.” 

“Did you?” Remus asks after a beat. 

Sirius aims a coy, enticing smile at him before reaching up, pulling the notebook toward them, and ceremoniously, fluttering it about before he sits up in one-go, holding the two-page log open in front of Remus so he can see them.

Remus' brows pop up his forehead a little. “You have been busy,” he observes, having a long look over them. 

Sirius aims a quick smile at him for that, looks down at the pages below him to locate the right spot to tap, and taps all four of his fingers against the page beneath them. “Check that run-time,” he suggests. 

Remus refocuses his gaze to where he's being directed to and Sirius watches in real-time as Remus takes it in, and oh, is he feeling justified at feeling quite celebratory about the time-frame they've just dealt with when he notes the intensely round shape Remus' eyes take on. 

“That has to mean something, doesn't it?” Remus asks, looking up to Sirius' gaze now. 

Sirius nods brightly, loving the feeling of being even half of the reason for Remus' engaged stare to make a reappearance. “I say it does,” he says. “We did it, we aborted one.” 

The wheels turning in Remus' head are nearly audible to Sirius' ears, and the last thing either of them need is for Remus to start backtracking in fear of jinxing everything, or for him to side those fast-turning wheels straight off of the road and into the woods, and maybe crash into a truck of a tree all because Remus found one small hole in the argument. 

“I also found you eight different people who have had the same luck I think we had here, and they're all waiting on your laptop for you to have a look at when you feel up to looking at a screen again, OK?” Sirius raises. “This isn't a fluke situation, and yes, we could spend hours coming up with holes to poke through our argument, but I think instead we should celebrate that you're not the only one whose experienced this first-hand, and I know that a run-time of a little over two hours is far from perfect; we obviously aren't done here, but I watched a significant drop in severity happen right before my very eyes, and that is something to hold onto for now. I haven't lost focus, I'm still gunning for the shrooms to do their part and I'll contact my guy first thing to find out where we stand on those, you have my word on that.”

“You can't do that,” Remus says blandly, and after hitting every single mark Sirius knew he ought to hit so Remus wouldn't run off in a different direction, Sirius simply looks left, right, and back at Remus, out of gasoline and puttering there alone on the speedway until Remus seems to realize how badly Sirius took that. “I'm kidding, Sirius; you can't call a dealer first thing, you madlad.” 

Sirius blinks off-beat at the sheepish smile tugging at Remus' lips before he tosses the notebook aside so he'll have both hands available to successfully jab the hell out of Remus' gut with both his forefingers. “I meant after noon at the earliest, you absolute shoe,” he tosses out, jabbing at Remus wildly. 

Remus comes alive to bat Sirius' hands away. “Shoe?” he echoes, fighting a wave of laughter alongside Sirius' retaliation methods. 

“Yes, shoe,” Sirius buckles down, popping Remus in the left side once more for good measure. “My point is, we're not changing course, but I think we need to stop and enjoy the scenery a little at each rest-stop, if you know what I mean.” 

Remus nods once, reaches for Sirius left wrist, and pulls it close to him to press his lips to the inside of it, and Sirius' chest tightens almost violently. “What should we do with the rest of the stuff we got?” he asks, entwining his fingers in with Sirius' and seemingly quite set on keeping hold on Sirius' hand, and Sirius is rather versed in obliging Remus on several other counts so he isn't about to deny him this either.

Sirius weighs their options internally before taking in a semi-careful breath. “I don't know,” he says candidly. “Part of me wants to suggest that us trying out Redbull next time wouldn't be all that different from using the boost this time, so I'm willing to experiment on that much, but I'm not sure we should even bother with the caffeine pills at all.” 

“No?” Remus asks. 

Sirius shakes his head evenly after a beat. “I know how much easier it was to get you through this one, and I don't know that I want to risk trying something that we don't know for sure will work versus what we've already had luck with—”

Sirius peters off when Remus hones in on the band-aid on his arm, possibly just because Remus' arm is folded in a way that might've made it harder to ignore, but in a way, Sirius can't help but think that's some choice timing for the point he's trying to make. Well, at least until Remus starts working one of the edges of the band-aid back. 

“Can you,” Sirius starts, “maybe not pick at that?” 

“Just,” Remus says, still picking, “having a look.” 

“I really wish you wouldn't, though,” Sirius insists, and Remus ceremoniously drops his left hand, but if he were that fucked off about it, he wouldn't still be holding Sirius' hand with his right one, so Sirius doesn't take the 'tude too hard just there. “Do you remember doing that?” 

“Vividly,” Remus answers. 

Sirius nods once. “How much do you remember the lead up to Ugly Pot's demise?” he further asks, though he backs off as Remus sends him a whopper of a stare. “These are relevant questions, Remus. We're past the point of embarrassment, everything now is symptomatic and needs to be looked at from a different lens.”

“I'm not embarrassed anymore,” Remus returns, and Sirius really has to work so his skepticism doesn't read plainly on his face, “I just don't think I should have to remind you again that I'm not braindead when it's happening.”

“I don't think I said that?” Sirius points out. “I'm telling you I saw a huge difference between the hysteria you were in during Monday and Tuesday's attacks versus the kind you were in for last night's, and I'm checking to see if you felt the difference, too, or if it was all just me, going absolutely mad.” 

The funny thing about Remus' character as a whole, and by funny Sirius means not very at all, is that he will stand rooted to the ground if he feels ragging on himself is necessary, but the instant Sirius shows a single second of that same vulnerability in his own abilities, Remus will practically barrel-roll his way through it. “You weren't going mad,” he says, sounding hurt by the suggestion put out there at all, interestingly enough, “it didn't feel the last two at all.” 

Sirius nods again, swallows, and squeezes Remus' hand still holding his left one captive. “Good, I'd hoped I hadn't gone round the twist on that one,” he says. “Which is why I'm hesitant to mess around here; the caffeine pills could help, but if they don't or they don't work as quickly, then we'll have to turn to one of the boosts again, and if that happens we could be in for another ten on the scale again, as opposed to the severity of the one last night, _and_ have to wait another two hours on top of that to make up for the time we spent waiting to see if the pills would do the trick. Do you see what I mean?” 

“I do,” Remus says, pausing on a breath, “only we don't know that it'll always be two hours and seventeen minutes every time, do we? That was just the once.”

“Well, no, we don't,” Sirius allows, “but you asked me why I'm not interested in trying the pills out, and that was my answer.” 

“We don't know if the boost actually kept this one down,” Remus says. “Maybe I was just in for a less intense one tonight and the boost had nothing to do with the severity of it. We don't really know much more than we did six hours ago.” 

“We know your last two clusters were through the roof, and were between four and five hours,” Sirius rebuts. “You're right that we're not going to see a pattern until we have more attacks to go on, but the only thing we did differently this time around was funnel an energy boost into you, and your cluster was strikingly different, so that's it, that's my point, and I'm voting for Redbull or boosts next time around so we can actually start tracking patterns.” 

“A lot can happen in two hours,” Remus says, which isn't what should have came next, as far as Sirius is concerned, and he wears that confusion he feels openly on his face rather than hide it, and Remus reads him like a book. “I can do a lot of damage in two hours, so I don't know if celebrating is smart right now.” 

Sirius feels heat riding up his spine at the mere reminder that they're bound to the laws of time and that he himself is only human and not a miracle worker, and he has to breathe deeply, quite similar to Remus coming down off a cluster, oddly, so not to spit fire about the room. 

“I know,” Sirius says, working to keep his voice even, “but if I start thinking about all that can happen to you in a split second, I'm never going to sleep again, so I would rather you have a cluster that's tame enough for me to actually get in there and stop you quicker from hurting yourself, then I choose that over the state you were in for the last two where I could barely keep a hold on you—” Sirius doesn't do so well at swallowing the waiver in his voice down, and it takes him another few seconds to get some control on that back to close out his argument, “—so, there; you've now heard me make myself crystal clear on where I stand on this.” 

Remus has his lower lip pulled into his mouth by the end of Sirius' spiel, but at least he let him finish. “Now, I know it's late, but we're at the point where I need your input,” Sirius adds on. “Do you have the brainpower to talk rating this one, or do you want to take me step by step through your day to figure out what could have brought this one on; pick one.” 

After what looks like quite a bit of internal weighing, Remus lets go of his lower lip. “First one.” 

“Perfect, I've some notes right here,” Sirius chimes, reaching for the notebook again. He reaches for his phone, pulls up a screenshot he'd taken of the Kip Scale that depicts the defacto pain scale of clusters from one to ten, and flips back to the two most recently filled pages. “Now, I think we have established that last night's never made it to a ten, and if I'm honest, a nine also seems a bit too high in terms of your behaviour, but again, I wasn't in your head, so I will need you to let me know where you think it clocked in at, so jump in any time, OK?” 

Sirius looks up there, waiting on a confirmation of words rather than just the nod Remus went with, and four and a half seconds pass by before Remus clues into the fact that he's waiting on him. “OK,” he echoes. 

Sirius gives him a smile for the effort, looks down at the notebook in his lap, and thinks he might do well with putting out some symptoms and letting Remus weigh in where he sees fit. “For this one, I've written down the ice pick, and I have to assume the clamp also made a reappearance,” he says, leaving the last word with a curious lilt and getting a hum of affirmation for it before Sirius looks back up at Remus. “So, that bout of bed punching was, in fact, you answering me, I take it?” 

Remus looks down and back up at Sirius in a short moment. “No offense, but your voice is really hard to hear when I'm in the middle of one,” he says carefully. 

Sirius blinks once. “Depends if it's my voice or voices in general.” 

“In general,” Remus gives him, not missing a beat.

“Well, then, no offense taken and I'll try to learn morse code in the future,” Sirius says of it.

Remus puts a breath of air out through his nose that could have been considered a smirk, but it's the quirk of Remus' mouth that is really what cements it. “Why don't we wait until I'm out of the woods before asking questions from here on out?” he suggests. 

Sirius nods once, glad for a little give and take. “Deal,” he says, leaving Remus with a smile as he pours back over his notes. “On top of those, I put down restlessness, no real forms of speech, and I'll just add in here, 'a steadfast inability to stomach voices in the room,' if you think that's worth a mention?” 

Sirius looks up in time to catch Remus' amused nod and quickly jots that down verbatim before continuing on. “Rapid breathing, you definitely didn't love it when I started interfering with your teeth and arm, but you didn't fight my hold so much as you tried to generate pain elsewhere, and that would be your feet, but I imagine you were quite present for that decision,” he says, looking up at Remus again and faltering as Remus slides his head off of his pillow so he can better use it as a face-cover. “Remus, it has to be put down—” he reaches over to tug at Remus' pillow, “—good thing? You didn't treat your head like a crash-test dummy this time around and I really like your head in one piece, so you can imagine how thankful I was for that, can't you?” 

Remus sniffs as he comes out from hiding, and after a few beats, meets Sirius' warm gaze, and there is where Sirius thinks of another anecdote to share. “Although I do have to ask if you remember doing this, because at one point you twisted your torso around so violently that it looked like a wet shirt getting wrung out—”

“Alright, fuck you,” Remus sends him, rolling onto his back with a decided plomp. “See how pretty you look when there's an invisible clamp closing around your head.” 

“You were very pretty, the whole time,” Sirius insists. Remus leaves him with the two-finger salute and a supreme effort not to smile, but that's enough for Sirius to figure he isn't in deep shit for poking some light into the situation. 

Sirius picks his phone up again to match the symptoms he put down to the various numbered descriptions on the picture of the Kip Scale, but gets caught between the descriptions between numbers seven and eight.

“Help me out here,” Sirius requests. “Eight says 'time to scream, yell, curse, head bang, rock, whatever works,' only I didn't see any headbanging myself, but seven says, 'wake up, sleep not an option, take the beast for a walk, and finally fall into bed exhausted,' and while that is some, err, choice imagery, that still seems a bit tame for what I just watched you in, so. Do you think we could get away with putting it at a seven and a half, or will she laugh us out the door because we wouldn't commit to a number?” 

Remus drops his gaze from the ceiling, blinks at him, and Sirius assumes that means he's free to explain his hesitance. “I don't know,” he says, candid. 

Sirius clicks his tongue three times, not loving the lack of input coming from the peanut gallery, but in all fairness, this is likely one of the least fun parts of the entire process and Remus wasn't exactly overjoyed for this part last time they scrawled some numbers down. “Well, aside from the headbanging part, the rest of eight's descriptions check out,” he says, “so I'm just going to go ahead and call it that, for sake of argument, deal?” 

Remus nods, his shoulders lifting and falling in a quick moment. “Seems fair to me.” 

“At least for Act I,” Sirius mentions, penning down the number ‘8’ all the same. “Act II, was quite similar to the one I was there for last year; your restlessness let up, though you couldn't stop yourself from shaking a little, your breathing slowed down by a ton even if you were still doing it through gritted teeth, you were much less verbal this time around, which I didn't love, if I'm honest, because at least with the one in October, you could direct me on what was happening and what to do, but you still spoke a little and mentioned the pick, so what I'm wondering is, where did the clamp go and when did it lift?” 

Remus blinks hard at Sirius. “How did you—” he starts. “How did you even figure out it was gone?” 

Sirius lifts his eyebrows once as he taps the forefinger of his free hand against his temple. "Plain, ol' observant over here," he says, snorting at the plain face Remus pulls at him. "For one, you talked about the pick, not the clamp, and your body language changed completely for that last bit.” 

Remus lifts his right hand and passes it up through his damp hair, leaving his fingers woven into the curls at his fringe. “I don't know when the clamp lifted, it was more like, suddenly the pick was all I could feel.” 

“Alright,” Sirius replies, nodding as he looks down at his notes. “I mean, I don't want to celebrate the pick taking longer to fuck off than the clamp did, but one of them leaving is still something, isn't it?” 

Sirius looks back up at Remus in time to catch him nodding. “The pressure on my eye helped,” he says. “And the cool of the mask, so. Thank you for both.” 

“Anytime,” Sirius says, nodding. “You were going a little harder at your eye than I'd have liked, so, it felt like it was my turn to put the pressure down so you might still have an eye coming out of it.” 

Remus gives him the saddest little smile. “Thank you.”

And that is, frankly, too many thank yous for something Sirius is going to take upon himself to do whether Remus thanks him for it or not. “All that said,” he says, steering them back, “act II could should slot in nicely _at_—” he elongates the word as he scans the Kip Scale once again, spots the description, 'Wake up, sleep not an option, take the beast for a walk and finally fall into bed exhausted' and calls the corresponding number out resoundingly. “—a seven.” 

Sirius squints down at his phone screen as the word sort of lingers pathetically in the air in the room, moves his befuddled stare to the far wall, and drops it to meet Remus' placid stare. “I'm not going to lie, I was expecting that to sound much more impressive than it did,” he says. “I felt so much relief seeing you at a place I knew I could weather you through, but a seven? That doesn't have any of the oomph I was going for.” 

Remus keeps his gaze trained solely on Sirius as he shifts onto his right side to face him, bunches up the pillow underneath his head to prop it up better, and taps the mattress between them with his left hand decidedly. “Don't you think it's a bit odd that it seems that everything else to do with these things are on a case by case basis, except for the pain?” he asks. 

Sirius blinks once. “I hadn't, no." 

“Only, if everything else to do with clusters are so variable from person to person, then how did all of these people from all corners of the globe come together and decide that the pain of it is the one universal experience in all of this?” Remus raises, putting his last question up with some different words. 

Sirius studies him for a few moments, putting particular focus on Remus' eyes, and though they're rimmed red and his left is much more swollen than his right one, they're right saucers at this point in shape, and by that alone, Sirius has to assume Remus isn't high as a kite, and even if the size of Remus' eyes weren't a dead giveaway to whether or not Remus has had a few tokes, Sirius would have noticed him up leaving the room to take a hit or two, and all of that points to Remus being entirely sober. 

“I don't know how they did it,” Sirius answers, quite genuine in tone when he's really but an onlooker than one of the chess pieces in this situation, and altogether quite new to the world of clusters and the people who've got them by extension, even with all the information he's managed to accumulate in his research. 

Remus goes and smirks there. “I mean, people can't agree on anything,” he says, smiling fully now, “and yet, this group of strangers seem to agree on this scale, and that isn't a bit weird to you?” 

“Well, _now_ I think it is,” Sirius returns heavily. “If you're trying to tell me that we're caught in a conspiracy, I'm going to need at least six hits before I can address this.” 

Remus snorts. “I don't think we're in a conspiracy,” he denies. “I'm just starting to think that Kipple was one bloke, who sat down one day and penned a scale describing the different heights of pain he felt depending on the severity of an attack, and somehow that one scale got so much traction that enough people read it and went, 'yes, that's the ticket,' and now it's hung up as a banner on any site related to clusters, it's been made so a part of the language used to describe them that you almost have to in order to decipher what you yourself just went through, even though pain isn't actually a collective experience; it's much more varied than that.” 

“How high,” Sirius enunciates, “are you?” 

Remus gives him a huff and a plain look, respectively. “Quite sober, thank you,” he affirms. “I don't actually need to be off my arse to think pain is subjective; if two people bashed a shin against something at the same time, they'd both feel something, but would they feel it the same way exactly? Probably not.” 

“What are they bashing their shins against, though?” Sirius asks, placating him a little. 

“Anything,” Remus drags out huffily. “Leg of a desk, for the sake of argument; one of them would probably howl and curse on impact, while the other might shrug it off and keep going — people feel pain differently, and Kipple was just one bloke, and I don't necessarily feel like we should be referring to his scale as the Bible of cluster pain.”

“Creative analogy,” Sirius compliments, “but if I thought it was the Bible, then by that rule alone I'd have drawn six or seven dicks all over it by now.” 

Remus really ought to be used to Sirius' colourful additions, and yet, he seems to need a moment or two to digest the comment before he wipes his face clean and doubles down on his point. “I'm also a bloke out there in the world who’s got clusters, so by that standard alone I could pen the Lup scale that describes how _I_ feel when I'm in one, and it could have just as much legitimacy, but is there a Lup scale out there that everyone agrees on? No, there isn’t.” 

“OK — fucking stellar point, I will give you that,” Sirius offers, “but please, yes, let's pen a Lup scale just for the fuck of it.” 

Remus reworks his mouth around a laugh. “It would be four points,” he says decidedly, lifting his left hand to count on it. “One; no pain, two; migraine, three; what I just came out of, and four; Ugly Pot. And that's just because we're in the early days; who knows what number I could come up with next; it's the worst game of Pop Goes the Weasel I've ever played, really.” 

Sirius will never, ever get used to Remus' ability to effortlessly deliver dry comedy that can render him flat-lining in seconds. Sirius sets the notebook aside calmly enough as he writhes through a rolling laugh and curls in to touch his forehead to Remus' left side, drowning his hoots out against Remus' shirt. 

“That wasn't supposed to be funny, I'm making my case,” Remus says, but that just gets Sirius' laughs coming in at double time. 

“Stop being you then, Jesus,” Sirius sends out, lifting his head to get a good gulp of air and reigning himself in. “Well, look, I don't think I can get away with putting the Lup scale down and also have your doctor take us as seriously as we need to, but do you want me to find you another scale? I saw others, Kip's was the one I just saw everywhere.” 

“No, see, that's at least half my point right there, so thank you for saying that,” Remus says, pointing fiercely at Sirius. “And it's not one pain scale I'm uncomfortable with, it's all pain scales; I thought I knew what a fifteen used to be to me in November, and then Monday's happened, and Tuesday's followed that up, and now I don't even know what to call anything because I have peaked; every attack from this point on, I will automatically compare it back to those two because those two _are_ my ceiling.” 

Sirius probably knows that he could have simply asked Remus to elaborate via using his vocal chords, but flapping his hands toward himself seems to do the trick just fine for Remus shifts even closer to Sirius and keeps right on. “Once, when I was nineteen, so years before I knew what clusters even were and all I had were tension headaches at most, I was working at the Antique Mall and helping Angela move a chesterfield down from the second level, and my wiry wrists gave out on me, no surprise there, and I took most of that chesterfield's weight to my left foot.” 

“Christ,” Sirius spouts, wincing hard. 

“My words — sort of,” Remus tacks on. “I said some words I don't think Angela nor anyone at work expected to come out of my mouth, but in my defense it fucking hurt and it was after operating hours so nobody customer-related heard my swears.”

Sirius can't help but grin at all that. “You're forgiven,” he teases. “Why's it always your left side, to boot?” 

“If I only knew,” Remus says, lifting his hands at that particular side-step. “Point is, I fractured that foot in three places and had to amble around in one of those boots until it healed properly, and it still twinges if it gets humid out, but that's a forever problem and I'm used to it now, _but_ at that point in time, I only had my ulcers to go on when it came to where pain peaked for me. That was a prolonged, twisting sort of ache that had a shelf life of anywhere near two to six hours, depending on a thousand factors, but then, the chesterfield landed on my foot and that sharp, sudden pain was debilitating in a way that my ulcers wasn't and that took first place. Am I making sense at all so far?” 

“Yeah?” Sirius says after a beat, and he's really more confused when he knows he has to look like he's eight years old on a camping trip and it's Remus' turn to tell a campfire story to end them all, and Sirius reaches over to prod him in the side with his right forefinger. “I am literally always going to be up for tales of Remus' yore, so you don't even question it here.” 

Even now, it takes Remus a few lagged seconds to continue, why is Sirius even surprised, he doesn't even know for Remus from day one always considered monopolizing a conversation as an unforgivable faux-pas. “Well, since then, no foot-related injuries have matched up,” he says, quickly, like there's a teleprompter behind Sirius telling him to make it short. “And barring something like getting my foot run over, I'm not sure much else would? I sprained the same ankle my first term out here and that was a walk in the park, comparatively.” 

“You did?” Sirius asks, putting his head on a tilt. 

“Yeah, but — I stepped off of the bus funny, it wasn't all that bad, but I can tell you I think it might've been because I took a chesterfield to that foot already,” Remus says. “So, in that same vein, if I was to drop something else on my foot, I'd have likely think one of two things; 'at least it wasn't a chesterfield,' or 'this is very familiar,' but now, I know that I'd take thirteen chesterfields to the foot over a cluster, any day, any time.” 

Sirius didn't come into this room thinking he was going to be dismantling pain as a concept at what's got to be close to five in the morning at this point in time, but fuck if Sirius isn't quite provoked by the topic. “I broke a rib once," he offers. "After that, a wayward limb going into my gut accidentally just never quite measured up to that.”

Remus gives him a grimace paired with a guttural noise. "When?"

"I was eighteen, little younger than you were," Sirius says, lifting a shoulder.

Remus gives him a frown for that. “How did you do it?” he asks. 

Sirius saw the question coming a mile away, it's what would get asked even if the story weren't precarious, and he also knows he could easily give numerous excuses like he gave to various people at the time; a fall on ice, the rib was an unforeseen casualty in an attempting and failing to hop a fence after a prank gone wrong, a foreseen casualty in a scuffle at school to name a few, but this is Remus and aside from a few white lies in the early days, Sirius hasn't truly lied to him yet, so there wouldn't be much point in starting now. 

“A swift kick can do the trick, but you should see the other guy,” he says of it.

Sirius watches Remus' frown deepen, though the squint of his eyes are what he's really enthralled by. “Give me a name,” he says, each word it's own sentence, and alright, his Neeson impression needs a bit of work, but in all fairness the man's had a rough night and that sentiment behind it does quite a bit for the butterflies living in his stomach thanks to this man's existence near him alone. 

“You'd have to dig him out of the ground to fight for my honour, and I just don't have my shovel on me,” he says commonly, pairing it with a shrug and a quiet smile. “It's appreciated, though; believe me.” 

Despite vying for a sparkle of levity in a disconcerting situation, Remus chews his lip with the saddest little face on. “Reg did it?” he asks, barely above a whisper.

Sirius shakes his head once. “Please, he couldn't catch up to me if he tried,” he insists flatly. “Pops had the speed and the lead foot to go with it, _but_ seeing as he's the one laying laying in a cold grave, I'd say I won that fight in the end.” 

Sirius has never once wanted to be his father, let him make that crystal clear, but he definitely doesn't want to be him now, not with the way Remus is looking. If he's honest, seeing that gaze there puts him right back into his bedroom months back now, with Remus looking just like that, and spitting bullets disguised as words about Sirius' mother dearest, but Sirius didn't bring up the rib tale for that.

Sirius lifts his right hand and pets the crease between Remus' brows with the point of his forefinger, looking to make it disappear. “Where the break came from isn't really why I brought it up,” he says. “ I get what you're saying — I pretty well figured that out mid-way through your story, but I like it when you talk, so, I wanted it to go on a little longer.” 

“I want you to talk, too,” Remus says weakly.

“Ah-ah, my turn, then?” Sirius says. “I get what you mean by sharp, sudden pain taking the cake, I mean; that knocked the wind right out of me. And it was by and large the worst I'd felt at the time, yes because of the sudden impact, but also because it lingered for weeks after as it healed up; hurt to breathe, hurt to laugh, which...was sort of an issue because, have you met James?” 

"Oh," Remus breathes out, a reluctant smile budding at his lips. "Oh no."

"Oh yes," Sirius affirms, smiling for him. "That little shit kept trying to make me laugh because in all fairness, I kind of needed the levity right around then, but I kept having to tell him to quit it because my chest would about implode every time he succeeded, which was quite a lot on this particular day, so I said, 'I mean it, James,' and then he mimed sewing his mouth shut, tried to act natural, I'm sure, but in doing that he leaned one of his arms onto this wall shelf of his room and ended up knocking both it and everything on it off of the wall—" Sirius cuts of with a grin has a full, rolling laugh tumbles out of Remus, "—the entire shelf, decimated, meanwhile I'm over on the bed, losing my fucking mind; I thought I was going to pass out, I really did."

Remus brushes his right hand over his face as he settles down. "Thank God for James," he says.

"A mantra I can get behind," Sirius calls it.

Remus aims a sheepish smile over at Sirius. "Sorry," he says. "I should've known you would understand that."

Since he hasn't got long sleeves to play with, perhaps that's part of what calls Remus to return to fiddling with the edges of the band-aid on his arm, but even if that is the case, Sirius takes Remus' hand and offers his own for Remus to fiddle with instead. "If you want to forget about pain scales, I can get behind that," he says. "I can just keep making notes while I'm keeping an eye on you, and you can tell me how it felt to you once you can, and that can be it. I still think we can't really avoid how widespread Kip's scale is, so I may still have match what you've said to a number on it so we're still using a language that your doctor is going to be familiar with, but you don't have to touch that scale with a ten foot pole, if you don't want to. That work?"

Remus nods, his lower lip caught between his teeth again, and this time he looks so grateful for the pardon that Sirius thinks perhaps they've done enough work for now. He moves up the bed to set the notebook on his nightstand. "We'll pick up again tomorrow, alright?" he says. “I'll get your melatonin and some water for you, and then you'll be right as rain.” 

He waits for a nod, blink, any form of acknowledgment, and the moment he gets Remus' hum of affirmation, Sirius heads across to the kitchen to bring a glass down from the cupboard. He lets the water run for a good half-minute before deeming it clear enough to stick the glass underneath the stream, and steals a sip off the top of the glass on the way back because he can and it's there. He takes a quick stop off at the island to grab the pack of melatonin and one last stop off at fetching his duffel that's still out by the entryway. He slings it over the shoulder that hasn't got a full water glass attached to the end of the same arm, and brings the lot back toward the room with him. 

“I have a feeling you'll dry swallow the pill like the seasoned champion you are, so the water's just a perk,” he says, nudging the door shut behind him with a foot. 

Remus lifts off his back to reach for both items being held out to him, knocks the water down in seconds, and promptly does exactly as Sirius said he would, poking a pill free and knocking that back like it were nothing. 

“OK, clearly I thought of just about everything but the water glass, but you could also have told me you were _that_ thirsty and I'd have grabbed you one sooner,” Sirius says, standing at the edge of the bed with his hands set in a double point toward him. “You do know that, yeah?” 

“Honestly I didn't realize how thirsty I was until you brought it up,” Remus says of it, reaching to stick the glass on his nightstand. 

With his hands free, Sirius unzips the duffel and fishes in it for Remus' robe, procuring it with a substantial fluff-out of the attire. 

Remus' mouth works around a budding smile as he sits up to fiddle with the fastens of his slacks. "Thanks for remembering it," he says, working his trousers down his legs. 

"First thing I took care of," Sirius assures, sticking the housecoat on the foot of the bed and moving for Remus' set of drawers to find Remus something to put on that hasn't been sweat-through. "Think I might have to get myself one, too; that thing looks so comfortable it should be illegal."

"It is that comfortable," Remus affirms, head down as he maneuvers the legs of his trousers over his ankles, and that's that; Sirius needs a kitschy housecoat stat. 

Sirius fishes out a lightweight shirt and a set of briefs before hip-checking the last of the drawers shut and carrying them over to the bed while Remus lobs his clothes into the hamper. Sirius rounds to his side of the bed, perches on it while he waits for Remus to get his change of clothes and housecoat on, and once he's settled, Sirius reaches for switch on the lamp and clicks it off so that the only light in the room stews in from the lamps out on the street. 

He moves down and closer to the middle of the bed to lay down and Remus scoots back enough to even give Sirius a little room to share the pillow, which is a small detail, but so big at the very same time. Sirius'll let him have the pillow to himself in due time, but for now, he's happy to bask in the closeness as Remus gets comfy, lifting his arms up in between the two of them and tucking his hands up underneath his chin. 

Sirius lifts his right hand up to swipe his thumb over Remus' left cheek, and though his vision is a little compromised, Sirius can tell Remus' thoughts are going a mile a minute without him. 

“Talk to me?”

Remus' breathing is a little hitched as he grants Sirius that. "None of this wasn't part of ten-year plan," he says, his breath doing it again. "I'm not having an easy time accepting that tonight is my best case scenario, and this is my foreseeable future, and I'm really not chuffed about the fact that I learned where my pain tolerance split in half at twenty-three."

"Remus," Sirius says, sounding to his own ears as miserable as Remus does.

"It's true, there's nowhere up from here," Remus says thickly. "Pain doesn't feel the way it used to or the way it should; these things have messed that all up for me, I barely felt this—" he says, budging his right arm up to showcase it, "—neither of them, I didn't feel the burn the way I should've either. I didn't know I had it pressed against the spigot until I saw Elise staring at me as if I'd grown a third head and that's when I looked down, and where does that end? Am I only going to know pain in comparison to the knock-outs from now on? Is everything going to get delayed too? And if I'm losing sense of what pain even is at this point, then how long until anything good around me starts feeling lesser, too?"

Sirius doesn't actually know how to talk Remus down from discussing a pain he'll never have to sit through, and he doesn't even know how to sit with the fact Remus is already feeling desensitized to day to day pain, and he's really going to have to keep an eye on that, but he does know a thing or two about Remus' last worry. 

"The good's going to stick out from the rest," he says, aiming for calmly.

“How can you just, say things, and have them be true?” Remus asks. 

“Because it is true,” Sirius says, quietly. “So, let's start with this week: has it really been the worst series of events in your life, or did you feel there was a bunch of bright spots in between all that muck? Say, every twenty minutes or so after we get talking, and one of us makes the other laugh so much he tears up? Those are some of my favourite moments of a day, and I've a sneaky suspicion when the same happens to you, for a few moment there, as long as the laugh lasts, you're feeling pretty weightless, or am I wildly off track?” 

Remus nods. “No,” he grants him, and maybe he's choosing words to go with his actions because he hasn't got the advantage of light illuminating from above, but Sirius will take any and all engagement at this point.

“Did last night's cluster negate all that came before it?” Sirius raises, moving on to the now of it. “This morning, perhaps? That still gives me tingles, and not just the dirty kind even — the schmoozy kind, too.” 

Remus breathes out a breath that could have been a laugh if Sirius eyes hadn't adjusted enough to the low light in the room to notice the horrible look Remus gives him, and Sirius wonders if it would have been better if the look was born out of skepticism and not pure, unmistakable guilt. “This isn't Guilt 101 Remus, I'm just reminding you of my secret, and it's done me good for years now,” he insists. “Me? If I'm smart, I'll see light and I'll go toward it, and if I'm not very smart about it, all I'll see are tunnels. After the funeral, I was catatonic, I'm sure you remember that part better than I do even, but my vision went black, and thank God you two were there to just get me out of there, but I still couldn't even really see that well on our way back, my vision kept going out, and it was still really foggy when we were back in my room, but I had you, and you touched my hair, and I swear I could see again.” 

Certainly not for the first time and assuredly not the last either, Sirius prides himself on being able to pick up on which parts of Remus' life bring him the most joy and engagement, and Sirius prides himself on knowing he's one of them, even if Remus' vision is too cloudy to see it, and even if Sirius lets himself forget it now and again, too. 

He can't really not pinpoint it now, the way Remus is looking at him makes him feel bare, and real, and seen, all in one go, and right now, for this very moment, Sirius may actually be the only thing in the room to him. 

“After that, it was like I was seeing everything through infrared?” he raises. “I've never actually said it out loud so I know that sounds bizarre as fuck, but that's the best way I can describe it; the whole backdrop to the room were dull greens and yellows, except you, lit up red against everything else, being my lighthouse. And then you left the room, Lily switched spots with you, and you eventually came back, and I know Lily was talking to me, and I love her, truly, but I heard none of what she was saying because you were behind her and I couldn't take my fucking eyes off you.” 

Remus gives out a tight breath, like he's been socked straight in the gut. “I couldn't either,” he says, like it's been a well-kept secret that he's finally getting off his chest. “I could barely breathe looking at you there.” 

Sirius can't help but breathe against a butterfly hatching and taking flight right then and there. “I did think that look was particularly charged,” he says, putting on a posh accent. “I'm glad to hear I wasn't actually alone in that, like I thought for, oh, weeks and weeks after that.” 

“You weren't, you shit,” Remus huffs, already sounding better than he did mere minutes ago. “I didn't mean to take so long to fucking snog you into tomorrow, but I still don't think it's hindered us any.”

“I am going to bring that up whenever, wherever I can until the day you quit huffing back at me immediately, and not a day sooner,” Sirius manifests. “You know I like your huffing, so just get comfy and prepared for it until you get a handle on that.”

Remus sends a long breath out through his nose, a wry smile forming on his lips, and Sirius lifts his right hand and brushes it up through Remus' fringe, leaving it there so he can have something to hold onto with his heart so high in his throat. “I've the best sort of people around me, and when things get cloudy, I still don't always see that even when I've trained myself for so long to look to them and the light they bring me,” he says, his breath hitching like the breath taken before a plunge. “I still forget with you, too, even when you really haven't let me down yet, and I still somehow automatically assume I'm the darkest stain on your life, and I'm too much of a mess for you to actually want to stick around to see the better parts of me, and it isn't fair to you when I do that because I'm stomping all over the first man I've been with to ever see me properly.” 

“Sirius,” Remus says haltingly, but he's not finished yet. 

“No, just — let me say it,” Sirius says. “No man I've tried would ever braved a torrential downpour just to make things right with me in-person, no one's done that. That's not real, that's rom-com levels of a gesture, you could have just rang me if you wanted to, but no, you showed up, and you didn't expect anything out of it; that's how good a man you are, you don't expect anything in return for a good deed, you just — you know when you're needed above all else and you show up, and you deserve so much better than the shit I gave you last month, you really do—” 

Remus pushes past Sirius' hand, scoots underneath his arm, and curls up close to him, and Sirius knows he's milliseconds from telling him he's forgiven, it wasn't his fault, it was weight of the situation, but Sirius doesn't want to hear it and sticks his right forefinger over his mouth right as Remus makes to speak. 

“It's my turn,” he insists. “I need to show up for you, so, let me finish, please?”

All Sirius gets is the quick press of Remus' lips to the print of his finger, but that's a free pass as any and Sirius isn't about to waste it. "When I take my head out of my arse for five seconds and remember who I've got in my corner, I'm light years ahead. It doesn’t take much; sometimes it’s literally just James bounding into the flat with a story he’s got for me, and I really do love singing in Lily’s car and I love that she’s gone and made a playlist for me just in case, and even something as small as waking up and finding out you've already walked and fed the dog is so much bigger than it sounds. You? You don't have to do much; you can just walk by and I'll just be glad you chose to walk that way—” Remus gives a heavy _pfft_, reaching out to clasp his left hand over Sirius' mouth, but there's such levity in that movement that he knows Remus isn't actually in that much disarray, “—I'm not kidding. Those little things are so much bigger than they sound and they keep me from feeling like I'm treading water; you all do, in your own ways."

"You're an anomaly," Remus says. "I don't know how you manage to pick up and keep going the way you do, but I'm not wired that way."

"Yes, you are," Sirius returns emphatically. "Who the hell are you even kidding, telling _me_ that? I've been around, seen you do it; you've done it all week."

Remus doesn't argue that, but it may be because Sirius spoke with enough conviction that he might've felt there wasn't room to, and good, there isn't any here. "You're so much less of a pessimist than you think you are and I'd be in no better spot than you are right now, and cool, you need more light than any of us right now and that's what I'm going to keep bringing you,” Sirius keeps on. “I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing; you have a bad week, day, hour? Fine, but fuck that, I'm going to make sure you have better ones straight after that. We'll just turn the good up higher, get you really sunken in it, and I will be your light whenever you need me to be because if what I've read is true, you're right on the time for feeling this gray and I know how rough this next bit is going to be, but these things can't beat the life out of you if we don't let them, and we're not going to. Are we agreed?”

Remus nods his head up and down erratically as he leans in and fuses his face against Sirius' chest again, and this time Sirius snatches him up quicker than he did the last, and this time, Sirius is just going to let Remus get it out, and tomorrow? Tomorrow they'll start over again.


	11. 11.

Sirius wakes on his side to a quiet room, a dozing Remus laying beside him, a light breeze coming in through the window, and that's about all he can decipher for the moment. After about thirty seconds of uninterrupted, bleary blinking, the amount of light in the room suggests it's late morning at the very least, which is rather unsurprising given how late the two of them finally turned in.

Sirius pats around for his phone, finds it behind him, and drags it closer before bringing it around front of himself to have a look at it, and seeing as it's exactly three minutes from hitting noon, that's another win for Sirius' intuition.

With that information, and with a renewed purpose coursing through his veins along with his blood, he glances sideways at their notebook laying on his nightstand and he can't ignore the fact that there's still one question that needs answering before they can retire this case. He taps the bottom corner edge of his phone against his right collarbone rhythmically as he draws out a plan of action.

Interviewing Remus about his day could be one of two things: enlightening, or a chore, depending on where Remus' head is at, and to help ensure that the task falls under the former category, Sirius has a feeling a bit of enticement is needed to pull that off. He could simply bring Remus a cup o' tea and trade said joy for information, but no, he thinks he has to go bigger than that, and whipping up a breakfast dish may be the ticket. Who, Sirius asks, can realistically have a shit day when they're woken up with breakfast in bed, and bringing Remus said breakfast in bed could only help Sirius' chances of getting some valuable information out of the guy along with feeding the poor bloke; it's a win/win, in its purest form.

That decided, Sirius gives Remus a quick, hearty squeeze around the middle before making a hushed exit, thinking he may as well let Remus catch as many Z's as he can while Sirius handles gathering a breakfast together. He slips out of the room, leaving the door open a crack, and crosses the main room of the flat to get to the kitchen, having himself a look in the fridge. After some inspecting, he finds there's exactly one egg left in the carton inside it and, worse even than that, exactly zero bacon at his disposal, and that just won't do. Sirius is pretty well convinced a trip to the shop is in order, but he has a quick gander at Remus' bread situation and finds there's a good half a loaf chilling in the bread box, so that's one item that he doesn't have to fetch.

Sirius heads back into Remus' room and changes out of his sleep clothes quietly, pulling out a pair of jeans and a plain tee from his duffel, and then knicks a pair of socks from Remus' top drawer because he can. He leaves the room again, herds Tango toward the door, and takes him down for a frolic before eventually steering them back up toward the corner shop nearby Remus' building.

Tango's frolic takes longer than the actual mini shopping trip does, and soon enough Sirius and the pooch are back at Remus' and Sirius leaves his shopping bag on the island for a few moments, intent on feeding the pets and getting their breakfasts out of the way first. Once that's done with, Sirius sets himself up in the kitchen for go-time. He gets the bacon strips cooking first so they'll do their thing while he gets the kettle filled to the brim so they'll both have ample amount for their respective morning cups, and Sirius has a look over the various options for tea in the cupboard and ends up picking Remus' favourite, thinking that starting Remus' morning off with a cup of oolong would be starting his day off on just the right note.

Sirius then refocuses on the meal at hand, having a think on what egg-related dish is best for the occasion. Scrambled seems an easier style to contend with while eating in bed, and while the image of serving Remus sunny-side up and watching him try to eat them and not drip yoke everywhere _is_ absolutely delightful, Sirius does manage to hold off on that just to see the image play out in real time.

Scrambled it is, then. Sirius digs out another pan from the drawer underneath the stove and gets that simmering while he selects the lone egg from the former carton and picks two more out of the new one. He whisks the three up in a bowl and about halfway through his stirring, Sirius realizes he's got himself an audience of the furball kind. He keeps on stirring as he moves a step or two toward the archway to Remus' kitchen alcove, has a peek around the corner toward the two, very full bowls of kibble being supremely ignored for the dish being prepared in the kitchen, and resigns himself to having both the dog and cat sitting side by side at the entrance to the kitchen for the rest of the preparation.

Sirius steps back to the stove and upends the bowl of stirred yokes into the pan, leaving them on medium. Since he has a few minutes to spare while the eggs cook and a full kettle waiting to be used, Sirius pours Remus' tea first so it'll have time to steep to his liking, then whips himself up a cup o' black coffee, and soon enough Sirius has a cup of joe in one hand and a strip of bacon in the other while he waits for the right moment to start scrambling the hell out of these eggs, and all in all, this is Sirius' prime state.

Once the eggs are ready to go, Sirius has had himself three strips of bacon and is in a profoundly cheerful mood as he pulls a large plate down from the cupboard that houses them and piles the eggs onto it with a substantial pile of bacon to go with. In a perfect world, Remus would already have a tray to eat his breakfast in bed on, but it isn't one and Sirius is absolutely certain that Remus would consider it a fringe item to have in his modest kitchen, but Sirius would be a liar if he said he wasn't currently quite seduced by the idea of finding a tray for him so that breakfasts in bed can be a well-rounded, complete experience in the future.

Getting Remus anything is, in the simplest terms, a task, and one that Sirius quite often has to get a bit creative with. Sirius even being permitted to spot Remus the amount needed to win himself a term abroad took days of pussyfooting around the issue after Sirius' initial offer to help out until Sirius finally just walked a blank check over to Remus' flat and demanded Remus fill in the amount it would take to get his foot in the door; it was an assertion that then sparked an intense negotiation process wherein Remus made sure to distinguish that the transaction was a loan and therefore would be paid back as soon as reasonably possible. Going forward, more and more negotiations were agreed upon, Sirius offering to tweak the rules a bit and, oh, maybe nix the entire deal altogether and let Remus save solely for the fall, but that hasn't worked out so well for Sirius, unfortunately.

Sirius could easily acquaint agreeing to Remus' terms to selling his soul to the devil, only in this case the devil is a tall, fit boy who cannot take a favour lying down and will absolutely dig his heels in, and the consequences are that Remus had been and will continue to slow-seep the money back to Sirius' account in small bursts that won't cost him rent, food, or heating until the amount is paid back in full, no ifs ands or buts about it.

'Course, that's money, not gifts. Getting Remus gifts is a whole other ballpark and a task that Sirius finds much more fun than writing Remus a check as it requires him to think outside of the box a bit more. Par exemple, the case of the coffee table. Initially Sirius found Remus' continued use of his travel trunk as a makeshift coffee table quite simplistic and so very Remus that he didn't mind it so much, but by mid-March he got so sick of seeing it and doubly sick of Remus insisting his trunk did just as well despite the fact that – and Sirius made sure to voice this part – going out and getting an actual coffee table wouldn't break the bank, Sirius simply went out one fine day and found one for him, and then had to enlist James' help in transporting it from the store and up to Remus' floor.

On the way there, the two of them hatched a story they could use, which ended up being that Sirius just walked by the store and saw the table, just really liked it and wanted to snatch it up before somebody else did, and since the coffee table at theirs is rightfully James' and still in perfectly good condition, the new table would only end up in storage until it could be put to use and Remus needs one, so why not house it at his until the day comes that James inevitably moves on from The Flat and takes his coffee table with him when he goes? A perfect story. 

Remus didn't buy it for a second, but he let the two of them tell their tale spiritedly before moving back to let the two of them amble into his flat with it, and — the most important detail to note — he uses said coffee table to this day, as he does the new(er) kettle Sirius just so happened to put in Remus' kitchen, and the extremely vivacious orange armchair Sirius brought over as recent as early May so they would have a spot to sit while outside on Remus' perch. 

And in the event that a, oh, perhaps a dark oak breakfast tray appears in Remus' cupboard one day soon, what, Sirius asks, is Remus going to do about that? _Not_ put it to good use? Hardly.

With all that in mind, Sirius adds dark oak breakfast tray to his burgeoning list of items to get and refocuses on the last and arguably most important part of the meal prep; toast. He sticks two slices in Remus' toaster that looks straight out of a kitchen showroom circa 1942, pops the switch down, and while he waits for them to do their thing, he checks the time and finds it quickly inching on one o'clock, and seeing as he has now waited forty-five minutes past the stated time, Sirius has no qualms about firing a text off to Braun requesting an update on the shrooms situation.

He slips his phone back into his pocket once it's sent, waits another half-minute more before the toast pops, and butters the both of them before cutting them into triangles for he thinks that'll look better than simply slapping two full slices of bread on top of an otherwise quite presentable plate, and in the end Sirius has to say he's made up an attractive wake-up call. Sirius attempts to take his coffee alongside Remus' own cup and plate, but two steps from the counter finds him revisiting that bright idea and ultimately sensing his coffee may be destined to slip out from between the crook of his left arm and side and wind up being a live glass bomb for the pets to have to dive away from as it hits the floor and scatters across it, so Sirius ends up leaving his coffee on the counter to come back for it in a few.

He crosses the flat with both pets circling his feet like a pair of furry sharks, stops at the door to nudge it open with a knee, and finds a still-sleeping Remus has rolled over onto his left side, facing the far wall. Sirius changes course right then, heads round to Remus’ side of the bed, and perches himself by Remus’ hips, leaning over to push Remus’ tea onto his nightstand for safekeeping before straightening up again. Holding the plate by the bottom with his left hand, Sirius has such a vivid image of Remus starting awake and shooting up in bed only to send the plate flying in the process that it may very well be a premonition of sorts for how clearly it plays in his head. 

Sirius decides to hold the plate higher and more to the left of Remus’ body to avoid that image playing out in real time, reaches down with his right hand to budge at Remus’ right shoulder, and has to do that twice more before Remus stirs, but thankfully he doesn’t shoot up in bed so much as he remains quite still as he blinks in the scene in front of him, but Sirius is relieved to note Remus visibly eases the moment he registers Sirius sitting by him. 

Remus peers up at Sirius through lidded eyes, and Sirius eyes the left one, relieved to find its swelling has gone down substantially over the past few hours. “You’re looking better,” he says, reaching to swipe his right thumb over the sweet spot between Remus’ left lower eyelid and the top of his cheek. He works his mouth around a smile as Remus simply kneads his hand sleepily, the plate Sirius is holding off and away from him going unnoticed. 

“I made you a plate, but you might have to sit up to have it,” Sirius says. 

Remus blinks once, hones in on Sirius’ left arm extended out behind Remus’ back, and looks over his shoulder, giving out a bleary, but excitable trill as he takes in the plate hovering there, and instead of sitting up like Sirius was gunning for, Remus curls into a quasi-fetal position to touch his beholden little face to Sirius’ left thigh.

Sirius laughs inwardly as he whisks his right hand through the hair at the back of Remus’ head. “There’s some oolong over there too, but that you’ll definitely have to sit up for.” 

Remus trills once again, only now he looks up and around for said tea, spots it on the nightstand, and shifts to push himself up the bed to get to said mug at a much quicker speed than he’d been going at, but that is the power of oolong against Remus’ mortal body for you. 

“You think of everything,” Remus says, propping himself up against the wall behind the bed and reaching for his tea once he’s situated. 

“I try,” Sirius says, a butterfly hatching and releasing in his stomach. 

He scoots up the bed with the heaping plate still in his hands, waits for Remus to finish his trial sip of tea before holding it out to him like he’s a waiter bringing a patron an expensive dish, and Remus lights right up, smiling as he puts his tea back on the nightstand and takes hold of takes hold of the plate, crossing his legs underneath himself and using his lap as a tray. 

For now, at least. 

Sirius pushes off of the bed, heading around the end of the bed to get to the doorway, and garners a bemused noise from behind him. 

“Where are you going?” Remus asks. 

“I need my coffee,” Sirius sends over his shoulder, already passing the island en route to the kitchen where he left it behind. “I couldn’t take all three with me at once.” 

“But I bet you tried,” Remus returns, a smile audible from all the way over there. 

Sirius hums a tune that’ll neither confirm nor deny the suspicion, plucks his coffee off of the counter, and heads right back to the room, relieved to find Remus already working on a strip of bacon. He heads around the bed again, perching himself a little further up the bed since Remus has freed some space up by seating himself at the head of the bed, and smiles at Remus overtop of his mug before taking a good sip. 

Remus eyes him curiously, swallowing his mouthful and passing his left wrist past his mouth. “Did you already have a plate?” 

Sirius gestures toward Remus’ plate with his mug while swallowing. “I checked on the quality of the bacon,” he offers. “Three times over, in fact.” 

“So, three pieces of bacon versus my full plate,” Remus raises, holding his plate up and out to him. 

There’s a short standstill, no more than a few seconds overall, where the two of them simply stare at each other, the right corner of Remus’ lips twitching the only movement in the room before Sriius gives in and plucks a triangle of toast off of the side of Remus’ plate. 

“The rest is yours,” Sirius asserts, pointing at Remus with one of the longer points of the piece of toast. 

Remus obliges him, using his fork to cut the mass of scrambled egg on his plate into smaller pieces. The method itself reminds Sirius quite plainly of Remus trying to get through even a single pancake Wednesday evening, and while seeing it happening again gives Sirius a twisty feeling in his gut, at least Remus is trying; he has to give him that. 

Sirius waits until he’s finished his coffee and Remus is about a third of the way through his plate before he sticks his empty mug down by the side of the bed and promptly sprawls himself onto his back, reaching over upside down to pull their notebook off of his own nightstand, and rolls back up to his prior position in a beat as if he hadn’t moved at all. 

Remus eyes the charade openly, working on a mouthful as he does it, and speaks up when he’s got a free mouth to do it. “Is that a faint note of bribery I’m tasting?” he raises, pointing to his eggs with the prongs of his fork. 

“That’ll be the pepper I added for zest,” Sirius offers, tucking his left foot underneath the bend of his right knee, leaving his right leg dangling off of the bed. “Thank you for noticing.” 

Remus gives him a plain look as Sirius sticks the notebook down in his lap and flips to their current case. “We’re just going to talk, alright?” Sirius adds, pushing for ease. 

“It’ll be more like an interview than a conversation, I’m thinking,” Remus says. 

“You act like I can’t talk and take notes at the same time,” Sirius tutts, pulling the pen out from the spiral binding of the notebook. “Why don’t you start by telling me about your day? Skip the morning, I was quite present.” 

Remus breathes out his nose, turning to pull his tea toward him. “I went by Reckless before work,” he says, going for a sip. 

“Incredible idea on your part,” Sirius compliments him, jotting it down. “Sunglasses on while you went there?” 

“Yes,” Remus says, a little blandly. “I’m now one of those people who doesn’t take them off when they're idling in a shop.” 

“Were they the mirrored ones?” Sirius asks, thinking of his favourite pair of Remus’ shades, and Remus hums an affirmation around another sip of tea. “In that case, those take you from a ten to a twelve easily, so you’re really just doing anyone who sees you in them a favour.” 

Remus gives him a wan smile as he turns to put his tea back on the nightstand, and Sirius sends him an exaggerated smooch noise before jotting down the sunglasses detail. “Anything of note happen there?” Sirius asks, moving this wagon along. 

“Nothing I haven’t already told you,” Remus says candidly, shrugging his shoulders to match. “I just moseyed around for a while filling time, found _Bagpipe Blues_, and immediately prospered.” 

“Would you be at all offended if I repurposed your gag gift by slipping it under Hank’s door?” Sirius checks, putting his head on a tilt. 

“A little, yeah,” Remus answers, picking up another strip of bacon and bidding it up into smaller pieces. “Besides, he might take it as a hint he needs to practice more, and you’ll be in a worse situation than you are now.” 

Sirius blinks once. “You’re really good at foresight.” Remus smiles around a piece of bacon, shrugging one shoulder while his speech is a tad compromised. “What happened from there?” 

Remus swallows, puts his gaze on the ceiling in thought, and looks back at Sirius. “I walked to work,” he says, a tad more mystical a tone than Sirius had been banking on, but listen, Remus’ cheekiness easily makes the top five of Sirius’ favourite things about him, so it’s really only welcomed here. 

“And I trust you didn’t stop in at the pub on the way and knock back a few before your shift?” Sirius asks, putting on a more exaggerated curious lilt. 

“I managed to hold off on that,” Remus returns, tipping his head to him. 

“Glad to hear it,” Sirius forwards him, jotting that detail down and underlining it. “How was the shift, then? 

Remus lifts a shoulder again, giving Sirius a slight frown. “It was a pretty regular shift,” he says. “Not much stands out now.” 

“Well, talk me through what you remember,” Sirius coaxes. “If we find nothing of note, then we find nothing and we’ll have to assume the cluster was slated to come last night without anything triggering it, but we should at least comb through and see what we can find before we call it a day.” 

Remus nods, turning to pick up his tea again. “It was a full house when I got on,” he starts, folding his hands over the front of his mug. “Then the morning crew went home, and Lily headed off, and it was Elise on preclose, and Agnes closing up with me; so, already a good day on that front.” 

Sirius nods for that. “How’s Agnes faring?” he asks. 

Remus' face brightens there. “She’s doing really good,” he says. “Catches on really quickly, it’s refreshing.” 

“Bless,” Sirius extends. “You two fire off at each other in the backroom yet?” 

“Not yet,” Remus returns, a half-smile on and a rather rose tint making it to his cheeks, which really only fuels Sirius’ teasing more. 

“Oh, alright,” Sirius says, slyly. “Mind, if _Kiss Me_ comes on overhead right as you two are just about to snog each other into tomorrow right there on the floor, I do hope I’ll be the first to know.” 

“The very first,” Remus nods, biting the right side of his lower lip. “And really, if that happened to me twice, I’d need to tell you so I could get a second opinion on how wild that would be.” 

“Deal,” Sirius gives him. “Smooth night, then? Apart from the snag at the end, ‘course.” 

Remus grunts around a sip of tea, making a face that Sirius can’t help but rejoice over. “One or two runners at the last minute, I’m really fine with,” he absolutely _has_ to mention, “but an entire group waltzed in at an actual minute to close, and they all wanted fraps, every single one—” Remus pauses to smile for the noise Sirius puts out, “—and not only that, one lady was adamant she get something off the Secret Menu, which I’m sure you’ll just love—”

“My fucking favourite,” Sirius puts out, taking on the air of a game show host. 

Remus gives him a grin and a tip of the head for that addition. “And I did mention that we don’t actually have a Twix frappucino on the menu, but if she got me the rundown of what goes in it I could get that going for her, but if not we’d be there for hours while I tried to figure out what even goes in a Twix frap,” he keeps on, taking on a punchy diction that really only comes around when he’s genuinely fucked off and always, _always_ gets Sirius wiggling his toes in anticipation for Remus’ version of tearing a customer to shreds, “and I know she wasn’t impressed by the fact that I didn’t just, randomly have a drink order made up online memorized by heart because she went and found the recipe and stuffed her mobile in my face like—” 

Remus reaches out in the space between the two of them, hovering his right palm in front of Sirius’ entire visage and garnering a rigorous scoff from him for it, “—that, and I have never had that happen to me before, so I wasn’t really all that prepared for her mobile to fuse with my face? So I really just, backed up really quickly and had to blink the spots out of my vision before I’d have a hope of reading whatever was on her screen, and can I just say, it was on the brightest setting I could’ve ever imagined, and I don’t actually know how she can look at a screen so bright upwards of a hundred times a day without feeling woozy, and so for that, I have to assume that she wasn’t of this world and that I actually just took the order of a representative of a far-off alien species; I have no other theories that can explain it.” 

Now, that stellar rant that Sirius had the privilege of hearing went places he didn’t prep for, and for that, he might’ve exploded into laughter over such a colourful take on the situation if he weren’t quite preoccupied with a particular detail to the whole tale. 

He stares pointedly at Remus, who takes a sip of tea, seems quite finished with his rant for he looks left and aims a smile at Tango perched nearby the bed for scraps, no doubt. Since Remus seems to be lagging a few seconds behind him, Sirius drums begins twiddling the pen in his right hand, rapping it back and forth rapidly against the page beneath it in attempt to bring Remus to his level, and soon enough Remus looks to Sirius’ drumming, up at Sirius’ face with his right eyebrow cocked, and promptly drops the entire bemused face altogether, replacing it with a plainly imploring expression. 

“It couldn’t have been that,” he says, assured. “It was three seconds, if that.” 

“Mm,” Sirius hums. “On Monday, it took you stepping out into the sun without your sunnies on for you to get slapped with a knockout.” 

Remus takes in a quick breath, shaking his head. “Someone’s mobile screen flashing in my eyes for three seconds is not the same thing as coming out of a dark theater and stepping out into a debilitating bright day outside,” he returns. “And we don’t even know if that’s what did that one, I could have just been blinded for a few seconds and the gin and juice was what did it.” 

Sirius nods distantly. “Right, but I remember saying it could have been either, and protecting you from either outcome going forward was our best option, without having any concrete proof of which actually triggered that one,” he reminds him. “There’s some overlap here; for booze we had Monday’s gin and juice and we had Tuesday’s brewskies with Pete, and for light-related possibilities we had Monday’s retina-searing power of the mid-afternoon sun, and now, since you didn’t go on a bender yesterday and we can’t really put the blame on alcohol this time around, you staring into that twat’s piercing backlight and ending up with a cluster coming on a half-hour or so later is a little suspect.” 

“It could have easily been a fluke,” Remus insists. 

Sirius puts his mouth in a line. “Alright, maybe you’re right and the screen incident had nothing to do with it, but I don’t think it would hurt to avoid situations like that happening again, on the chance that it did have something to do with it.” 

Remus stares openly at Sirius like he’s received the worst news on the planet. “So, what, I can’t look at a screen now?” 

“Not one bright enough to make you feel ‘woozy,’ I’m thinking,” Sirius returns. 

“How am I supposed to avoid that?” Remus asks, looking so out of sorts for something Sirius really just thinks isn’t a huge task to ask of him. 

Sirius goes back to squinting at Remus, then smacks his lips after a few beats of pressured silence. “Do you,” he starts, “find randos tend to stick their phones in your face often?” Remus clicks his tongue at him, or the airy tone used for it, Sirius can’t quite tell. “Well, you literally just said that’s never happened to you before, so I doubt it’ll be a common occurrence for you going forward, but it’s something to try and avoid.” 

“I can’t be going around, acting flighty and jumping back from people every time they try to show me something on their screens,” Remus insists, looking right appalled at the mere idea of it.

Sirius takes a long breath in, puts it back out slowly, and reaches over to lay his left hand over Remus’ right knee. “I love you, but you’re backtracking and I need you to quit it,” he says. 

Remus’ eyes pop to two perfectly rounded spheres. “How am I doing that?”

Sirius smiles tightly, taking his hand back. “Well, just a few minutes ago, you weren’t calling what she did ‘an attempt to show you something on her screens,’ were you?” he raises. “If my memory’s any good, I remember the general sentiment was that she suddenly reached across the till counter and stuffed her phone in your face, so backing off her right now and pretending she was actually just some sweet lady who just really wanted her order put through isn’t going to help when what you’re really doing here, is trying to change the narrative around so it sounds more like a fluke than it might’ve actually been.” 

Remus’ brow turns in on a snap as he puts a breath out through his nose, and then he promptly sticks a forkful of scrambled egg into his mouth and chews pointedly rather than answer that call-out with words, but hey; at least Sirius survived this one. 

“It’s another maybe situation, Remus, that’s all,” Sirius insists, trying to put his case in while his window of opportunity is still open. “The good news is, that’s not going to be a situation you’ll be in very often—”

Remus swallows his mouthful right quick, slamming Sirius’ window shut. “How am I supposed to predict and plan around other people’s actions?” he raises. “I didn’t see it coming at all.”

Sirius halts the course he was on and takes a moment to find an answer Remus might actually receive. “OK, let’s take the possible trigger out of this for a few seconds and just think of it on a base level” he says, waving his left hand for added visuals. “That was wildly inappropriate of her, yes?” 

Sirius waits for a sign of agreement and presses on when he gets one in the form of a reluctant nod. “So now that that’s happened to you, I’m about ninety-eight percent sure that if you see a single sign that someone, someday is about to reach over the counter and make contact with your face in any way, you’re going to see it coming and your body is going to take over for you in a way; you’ll automatically step back,” he says, assured. “Now, if we bring the possible trigger side of this back into it, if someone ever tries that with you again, you have my expressed permission to shut it down and back the fuck up, and _fuck_ whoever might think you’re overreacting, you’re allowed to avoid an attack, Remus.” 

Sirius watches Remus chew on the inside of his lower lip, waiting for him to respond with something, anything really. “I don’t want to be afraid every second of the day, Sirius,” he says eventually, which shaves a good five inches off Sirius’ spine. 

“Then we won’t look at it like that, OK?” he says, reaching up to tap on Remus’ left knee with his forefinger. “I’m not asking you to walk around on eggshells and feel like every second of every day is crucial to you not ending up slapped with one later on, so let’s try to see this whole experience as a learning one, and maybe try to see it as a fair, attainable rule of thumb to live by; not letting people shove things in your face.” 

Remus mulls over that through another sip of tea, flickering his gaze to the ceiling and back to Sirius as he swallows. “Can we still shove some things in each other’s faces, though?” he checks. 

It takes a moment for the question to register, and a beat or two past that for the levity behind it to land, but Remus’ budding smile cements it, bringing a bright one to Sirius' face, too. “We’re exempt from that rule,” he tells him. “Finish your food, and maybe there’ll be more where that came from.”

Remus perks right the fuck up, which is an entirely welcomed reaction, Sirius has to say, but then it seems the condition washes over him for he puts out a weighted breath as he has a look over his plate. “You gave me a lot to work with here.” 

“Well, you’ve a reward waiting for you if you finish it,” Sirius chimes, putting pen to paper. 

He leaves Remus to work on the rest of his plate while he jots the whole end of shift tale down before putting an emphasis on linking it back to Monday’s fiasco, and slaps the notebook shut with gusto once finishing up, looking up at Remus who seems to be fighting to finish the last piece of toast on his plate. 

“You do not have to finish that,” Sirius says, half-smiling at the effort being put in here. 

Remus gives a noise of relief through his plight, reaching to hold the last bit of toast out to Sirius, who takes care of it via his own mouth. Remus turns to grab his tea, finishes that off in one full swig, and Sirius extends himself along the length of the bed to stick the notebook back on his own nightstand, and simply stays where he is, laying flat on his back diagonally on the mattress and sticking his hands underneath his head. 

He turns his head toward Remus, aiming a content smile up at him. “Now, I suggest having a look through this later on and if you feel called to add anything I might’ve missed, then you have at it, but apart from that, I think we’ve done our best here,” he says. “I left quite a few cases similar to yours open on your laptop, so whenever you feel up to looking at them, they’re there for you and I do think that could help you feel less like a complete loner in this whole thing.” 

Remus smirks around a bit of toast. “Lovely closing statement,” he says. 

“I’m a wordsmith, after all,” Sirius says. 

Remus sticks his empty plate on the nightstand, sets his equally empty mug on top of it, and uncurls his legs from underneath him, moving on the mattress to lay down beside Sirius, facing him. “Thank you for doing all this,” he says, and the very instant Sirius opens his mouth, Remus does a staggering impression of him by pressing his left forefinger to his mouth to shush him. “You didn’t have to stick around after I tried booting you out, so I really appreciate you staying.” 

Sirius shakes his head, swallowing. “I did have to,” he says, but he has an inkling Remus didn’t hear it. 

“I just really appreciate it, that you stayed,” he keeps on. “For a few seconds there after I woke up, I didn’t see you there and I really thought you’d gone—”

“Yeah, no,” Sirius says, much louder than his last phrase. “Never in a million years, Remus.” 

Remus’ exhale hitches in the middle of it. “It’s baffling to me how good you’ve been about it,” he says. “You didn’t sign up for this.” 

Sirius looks left, right, and back at Remus with an idle blink. “I didn’t?” he asks airily, getting a pointed frown for it. “I mean, I knew you were having clusters day one, Remus.”

Remus clicks his tongue, prodding Sirius in the side. “You didn’t _know_.”

“I fell upon their Wiki page, saw the similarities, and my gut did the rest,” Sirius reminds him. “Not my fault it took you weeks to pull your head out of the sand, but I knew from the get.”

“I’m trying to compliment your loyalty right now, thank you,” Remus returns. “You say I can’t take a compliment to save my life, and what are you doing now, hm?” 

Sirius puts immense effort into hiding his amusement over a fired-up Remus. “I’m trying to tell you I knew you’d be dealing with these for a long time,” he says. “Didn’t expect the clusters to take a few months off, I’ll give you that, but I called it day one and I will go to the grave celebrating that, thanks much.” 

“Yes, alright; you were right,” Remus grants him, like it’s the hardest thing on the planet to let Sirius have, “but you can think you have an idea of what’s coming down the line and still find it overwhelming when it finally comes to a head; I know you didn’t expect them to come like this, I know Monday hit hard, and most people wouldn’t think twice about getting out of this as quickly as they could, and here you are, staying anyway.” 

“I signed up for you,” Sirius says, listless now. “If I want you, the rest comes with, and staying with you through this has never been up for debate, not Monday, not now; I’m not scared of you or this one bit.” 

Remus gives him such a wounded expression, Sirius' spine goes cold, and of the things he expects to come out of saying that, tears would have been the winner, but Remus taking hold of Sirius’ chin and pulling it in so he can plant one on him and it’s the best option possible, now that Sirius has it. 

He drops his hands to Remus’ hips and hoists them closer to him, seeking the feeling of his body from every point that can be done in their position, and drinks Remus in, not minding the taste of tea so much at all when it’s on Remus’ lips. He has a few more tastes because he can, drops his head to trail a row of kisses over Remus’ neck, and pulls gorgeously tight breaths out of Remus that have him latching on tightly to Remus’ pulse and working his mouth against it, and right, right, right when Sirius has found the exact rhythm that drives Remus fucking wild, Remus goes and pushes on Sirius’ upper chest haltingly. 

“Wait,” he says, breathless and tight, “hold on, I’m gross.” 

Sirius snorts in the crook of Remus’ neck, works the skin underneath his lips harder in reply, and Remus seems to settle in and waver in his resolve for a good thirty seconds before he starts wiggling around incessantly, pushing himself out from half-underneath Sirius and over toward the side of the bed. 

“Oh, come _on_,” Sirius sends him, sitting up to catch Remus’ left wrist. “I don’t give a shit, Remus.” 

Remus shakes his head insistently, slipping out of Sirius’ reach and stepping onto shaky feet. “There’s a limit and it is here; I can’t let you reach it,” he says, scampering off out of the room and taking a sharp right into the bathroom, calling over his shoulder. “You’ll thank me, trust me.” 

Sirius gives out a huff loud enough for Remus to hear in the next room, but unfortunately he didn’t time it well for the spark of the shower sort of drowned it out instead. Since it is a bit too late to submit any further grievances about waiting, Sirius plants himself at the head of the bed and waits there, pulling his phone out and using that to pass the time. 

Despite knowing quite plainly that he hasn’t heard a text tone, Sirius can’t pretend he isn’t a little perturbed by finding absolute proof that zero replies have come in since he sent his request off. It isn’t entirely unheard of for him not to hear back right away, it takes time, now and again, for his guy to deliver the goods, and Sirius has never been a two request sort of bloke; he’s more a ‘he’ll see it when he sees it,’ type, typically speaking, but there’s nothing typical about this request.

He bats his options back and forth since he’s got nothing else to do, but in the end, he can’t bring himself to be a pest; if he pushes too much, he could easily wind up in the category of rather fucking annoying and Sirius can’t, in good conscience, muck around when he needs him. 

That decided, Sirius pulls open a few apps and cycles through them, kills time, and tosses his phone aside the very second he hears the shower turn off. He settles in and waits for Remus to return, which is another or minute or so from there before Remus rounds the corner into his room, towelling his hair off and just giving Sirius a free show, kind bloke he is. 

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Sirius says anyway. “Just over here, waiting.” 

A loud _pfft_ sounds from underneath the towel. “I went as fast as I could reasonably go,” Remus maintains, his voice muffled. 

Thirty seconds or so is how long Sirius has to further wait for Remus to pull the towel down from his head and deem his hair dry enough to leave be, and all in all, it’s actually a blessing that Remus took the time to towel-dry it for if he hadn’t, his hair wouldn’t be one gigantic mushroom cloud of floof, and that would have been a travesty. 

“No no,” Sirius denies, the moment Remus lifts his left hand to pat it down. “I’m going to have to request you keep it as is for the duration of the trip.” 

Remus huffs with a smile on. “I am going to have to get it cut soon.” 

“Absolutely not,” Sirius returns. “I won’t allow it.” 

Remus flies his left hand around the vicinity of his head. “Look how ridiculous it’s getting,” he insists. 

“I’ll sue you for damages,” Sirius tacks on. 

“You’re unbelievable,” Remus tells him plainly, turning to hang his towel on the doorknob. 

“Fine; if you lob a chunk off yours, I’ll just have to lob twice as much off mine,” Sirius decides, light as a feather.

Remus turns back to him in a snap with a pair of squinted eyes and a pointed frown on. “You drive a hard bargain.” 

“Why don’t you come here and find out.” 

Despite the open invitation, Remus gets across the room quicker than Sirius saw coming, and Sirius should really just always assume Remus is going to accelerate ten times his normal speed if goaded like that. That very acceleration spurs Sirius right back to life, inspiring him to wrestle Remus off balance and pin him to the bed, coming out on top and the winner of this round, though he has a sneaky suspicion Remus didn’t fight him all that hard. 

“You or me?” Sirius asks, casting a quick glance toward Remus’ drawer and back to him. 

Remus smirks, looking quite comfortable where he is, and doesn’t so much as answer with words; letting the slow spread of his legs do the talking for him just fine, and Sirius snaps his right arm out and yanks on the drawer while Remus works his hands at Sirius’ fly. 

Yesterday, Sirius didn’t mind letting Remus decide on the volume of their morning tryst, but truthfully, he doesn’t feel much like letting Remus decide that today. Nah, today he wants the whole gambit, and to get that he has to be a bit of a trickster, stopping the moment Remus tries to stifle himself, starting again when Remus gives up on that, kissing Remus as a reward for giving in, and pulling his mouth off of his the second he gets a sense Remus is using them to drown himself out, and the longer that goes on, the more Sirius gets the feeling Remus is working twice as hard to keep quiet as a method of getting Sirius to keep trying to get him to make noise, and if he’s honest? Hottest game they could’ve ever come up with, bar none. 

He keeps playing it until he hears his name on Remus’ lips, feels Remus shift his right hand from the back of Sirius’ neck up into his hair, and there’s really nothing else for it, neither of them hold back; Sirius holds Remus’ hips tighter as he rocks into him faster, covers Remus’ mouth with his own, and whines against his lips as Remus urges him on with his free hand pressed tight against Sirius’ left hip while he keeps the hand in Sirius’ hair feather-light in comparison to how fast he’s urging Sirius on, and it’s painful, almost, how close Sirius is to falling over the edge before he’s even brought Remus there, and each thrust inches him that much closer to the cliff’s edge so he should really reign it in before he blows but his hips are moving of their own accord, meeting Remus’ at each interval and spurring them on faster still, and—

The vivacious opening bars of _Man! I Feel Like a Woman_ sound off loudly in the room, over the both of their combined voices for certain, and plays out once again, and that resounding interruption is jarring enough to cut the both of them out of their rhythm, and the tune is just funny enough to leave the two of them in stitches. 

Sirius breathes in long, resting his forehead against Remus’ as he regains his composure, and restarts his hips, only now he reaches down between their bodies to wrap his right hand tightly around Remus’ cock to make up for his very near whoopsie-daisy. 

Remus takes in a hitched breath, tipping his head back against the pillow beneath it. “Oh, what, you’re not going to check it?” he asks, a cheeky grin on his lips all while he quite literally gives himself over to Sirius’ whims. 

Sirius snorts, quickening the pace of his hand as an answer to that, and hitches Remus’ right leg over the bend in his left arm, using it as leverage as he fucks him with all he’s got, and Remus, thoughtful even when seconds out from euphoria, flattens his right hand out as he lets it drop from Sirius’ hair and reaches up and back with the both of his hands, skirting his fingers over the wall behind him as he grasps for purchase as he shudders through his release, and there, Sirius lets himself go, dropping his right hand to mirror his left, digging his fingers into Remus’ hips and driving him back on his thrusts as he topples over the ledge behind him. 

Sirius ends up using Remus’ collar as a pillow, but judging by the subdued pace of Remus’ right hand back up in his hair and his left curled around the small of his back and holding him against him, it would appear Sirius landed right where he should have. Sirius simply rests there for an undisclosed amount of time, getting used to breathing again, breathing Remus in, relishing in being entirely surrounded by him from all sides, and feeling for right now, everything else outside of the room can just stay out there and leave the two of them well enough alone. 

Sirius starts, feeling Remus tap him once with his left hand. “James,” he says aloud, and the one, single words is enough to trigger a memory in Sirius’ brain and pull a loud bark out of him. 

“I forgot.”

“I did, too,” Remus says, laughing underneath him. 

Sirius puffs out a breath against Remus’ neck, lifts his head after a few beats, and reaches over with his left hand to drag his phone back toward him, flips it over, and presses the passcode into it, getting it right on the third try, and getting a few more snickers out of Remus for it. 

Sirius leans his head down on its right side, using Remus’ shoulder as his current pillow as he pulls open his and James’ message thread.

_LILY SAYS ZUMBA IS A GOOOOOOOOOOO_

_be at the flat by 3:30 sharp_

Sirius sends out a long and lengthy _pfft_ and plucks his phone off of the bed, brings the intensity of the backlight down to a much lower degree, and turns it toward Remus, leaving it a fair distance away from his face. 

Remus’ eyes go back and forth over his screen, his smile widening with every second that passes. “He’s so excited,” he says, looking back up at Sirius with bright eyes. 

Sirius gives him a reluctant smile, then puts it away for now. “I don’t have to go today,” he mentions, setting his phone down. “I have be around there tomorrow for Dora anyway, so I could stay here if—”

Remus does another uncanny impression of Sirius; this time, it’s the buzzer noise to indicate a wrong answer. “He’s so excited, Sirius,” he says. “And I know you are, too, so; no to that.”

Sirius looks off to the left, then back at Remus. “Are you sure?” he checks. 

Remus nods, another, different smile budding at his lips now. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m just going to take it easy today.” 

“OK,” Sirius grants him, “but if you need anything, I’m literally a call away, yeah?” 

Remus nods, scritching the hand still in Sirius’ hair, and the breath Remus pulls in lifts Sirius’ chest along with it. “I love you,” he says, looking like it, too. 

“You saying it the way you just did only made it that much more difficult to leave,” Sirius returns. “So you're aware.” 

Remus smirks a laugh. “I did see that you’re expected to be there by three-thirty sharp, specifically, so you really should get a move on soon."

“It’s not even close to two yet,” Sirius returns. 

Remus drops his right hand from Sirius’ hair and pats the both of his hands on Sirius’ arse in two swift claps. “Come on," he coaxes. "I’m destined for another rinse as is."

That does help, Sirius won’t lie about it. Slowly the two of them detangle from each other and haul themselves to the bathroom, and once there, Sirius keeps good time, cleaning himself off a little faster than Remus is going. The only exception is that he does devote time to his hair, and resolves that James can eat it if Sirius winds up walking in a little late because of it. 

Once out, Sirius towels his body off first and takes another one to his hair, deciding he’ll get most of the drips out of the way and leave the rest up to the air to dry; why the hell not. He leaves the bathroom before Remus is even out of the shower yet and heads back to Remus’ room, takes one look at the burgeoning hamper, and walks right back to the bathroom. 

“Want me to take a load with me while I’m going?” he checks. 

Remus lets out a trill from the other side of the shower curtain and promptly sticks his head out from behind it. “Would you?” he asks, unnecessarily when Sirius already went and offered, but the whole thing makes Sirius a little weak in the knees, so he doesn’t bother taking the mickey out of Remus for it. 

Sirius points at him assuredly and heads back to the room, digs out his joggers from the duffel he brought along, and, even though he’s got a few options in his duffel, snags one of Remus’ t-shirts just for the fuck of it. 

He digs out Remus’ duffel to upend the hamper into, zips it up, and hangs it over his right shoulder as he moves for the bed to pick up his phone. He swipes his thumb over it, perks when he finds a new message waiting for him, and perks even more when it isn’t from any of his mates.

He presses to open it, shifting the duffel on his shoulder as Remus walks into the room. 

_My contact fell through, don’t know yet._

Sirius squints at the screen and types out a reply one-handed. _what’s that mean, then?_

He slips his phone into the pocket on the right leg of joggers, then finds that was too quick a move for apparently his guy is suddenly very free to text back and forth. Sirius pulls it out again, looking over it. 

_He quit selling them last month._

The urge to climb right through the phone and fight him is as strong as it is impossible to be done, and Sirius goes ahead and types out a fiery reply. 

_well, are you going to figure it out, or???_

Sirius pauses right before hitting send, deletes that real quick, and stuffs his phone into the pocket on the right leg of his joggers, and he doesn’t really realize he’s putting out breaths through his nose like a fire-breathing dragon might do until Remus speaks up from over by the dresser. 

“What’s up?” he asks, paused with a t-shirt in his hands.

Sirius looks up, finding a pair of rounded-off eyes and the boy they’re attached to, and he just can’t. “Will sent the schedules out and I’m on with David on Saturdays,” he puts out.

Remus bares his teeth in a plain grimace. “Any chance you can request for that not to happen?” he asks, though the look on his face suggests he already knows the chances are slim to none. 

“I fucking wish, but it’s not going to happen,” Sirius offers, re-shouldering the sash of the duffel and moving away from the bed. “He’s done me enough favours as is.” 

“I suppose he has, yeah,” Remus says, offering him a tight smile before pulling the shirt on over his head. 

Sirius rounds the end of the bed, heads for Remus, and leans in for a quick kiss, parting kiss. “I’ll see you later on,” he says, suddenly finding it absolutely necessary to get out of there and regroup. 

“Have fun,” Remus offers, turning from the dresser with a pair of trousers in his hands and a wry smile on his face. “I do hope you show me what you learned.”

“I’ll do a full show for you,” Sirius returns, heading out to the entryway. 

“Has he been out yet?” Remus calls from the room. 

Sirius stops with one shoe on, the other in his hands, and has to think about who ‘he’ is for a moment before it clicks. “You’re good,” he calls back, stuffing the other shoe on his foot, “I took him down already.”

Remus pokes his head out of his room just as Sirius has the door open, calling him back. “Hold on,” he requests, passing by the entryway. 

Sirius hangs back with his hand on the doorknob, his right leg jittering as he waits for Remus to make a reappearance, and pauses his right leg’s motion as Remus returns, holding a twenty pound note outstretched. 

“Sirius,” he says after all Sirius does is eye the note. 

“It wasn’t anywhere near twenty,” Sirius tells him. 

“Consider the rest a tip, then,” Remus says. 

“Nope,” Sirius returns, slipping out the door sans-note in hand and shutting it behind him. 

It sounds quite like Remus thunked a few, pointed knocks into his door as Sirius heads down the hall, but he doesn’t come chasing after him with the note flying around in urging, so Sirius deems this battle won, at least for now. 

One could say that the gas in Priscilla’s tank is the fuel that gets Sirius from Remus’ place back to his own, but Sirius could make the case that the pure, unfiltered spite coursing through his veins as he drives helps get him there, too. On a more positive note, not a single bagpipe note greets him upon stepping into his lobby, and good for Hank, really, when this is _not_ the time to act out near Sirius. 

He heads in through the door and thunks his shoes unevenly on the mat, more preoccupied by the sound of the telly filtering down the hall from the living room. He shifts the strap of Remus’ duffel on his shoulder and makes his way down the hall, fully expecting to find James extended across the couch, but Peter’s the one he finds there. 

“James not here?” he asks. 

“Waiting for Lily at hers,” Peter offers. 

Sirius nods. “He tell you Zumba’s on?” he asks, passing in front of the telly. 

“Sure did,” Peter returns. “And I wasn’t about to miss that kind of buffoonery.” 

“Fair enough,” Sirius says for that, heading down the hall to the kitchen. He gets two steps past the bathroom before a thought strikes him and swivels on his heel. “One of Remus’ books seems to have sprouted legs and ran off; know anything about that?” 

Peter takes his gaze off the telly screen and puts it back on Sirius with a sheepish frown. “I put it back where I found it,” he says. “I just wanted to finish it.” 

“I bet Remus did, too,” Sirius nods. “Where’s it?” 

“Kitchen,” Peter says, nodding past Sirius. 

Sirius swivels around again, making a mental note to grab it before he heads out later on, and at least gets too the kitchen before Peter pipes up again. “Where’s Tango?” 

“At Remus’,” Sirius sends over his shoulder. 

A beat. “Why’s he over there?”

Sirius extends a plain look to the wall behind the stove, unable to comprehend why he keeps hearing that question. “Remus needs a mythical creature flouncing around him more than we do right now?” he offers, making it to the washer and popping the lid open. 

He waits a beat or two, almost begging Peter to keep on about it, but a response doesn’t come, and now that he thinks about it, probably better that way. He shucks Remus’ duffel onto the shelf by the washer and unzips it, then upends the whole thing in three fast motions, and has to dig out a few socks before the duffel is officially empty. He plucks the detergent off of the shelf, pours to the highest line on the cup, and pours it in an absent semi-circle before putting the lid back down and pressing start. 

Sirius sticks the lid to the detergent back on and heads back the way he came, making his way down the hall to the living room. Since Peter already has the couch claimed and Sirius isn’t in the mood to fight for it, he simply plants himself on the floor to the left of the coffee table and pulls the pack on the table closer to him. He shimmies a cigarette out from the bunch, plucks just one of the lighters peppered about the flat off of the table, and lights up, taking the cigarette with him as he reclines to a sprawl on the floor and fixing the ceiling with a blank stare.

The telly gets either gets put on pause or turned off altogether, and when Sirius tips his head back to investigate it, he finds it’s the latter. “Why the face?” Peter asks, setting the remote back down on the coffee table. 

Sirius rolls his head forward again, taking another pull off of his cigarette as he puts his gaze back on the ceiling. “I’m trying not to heed my overwhelming urge to fight Braun and subsequently destroy a decade-long transactional relationship,” he puts out. 

There’s a light rustle of fabric and when Sirius looks down, Peter has sat up and moved to the left corner of the couch, much closer and looking quite piqued. “What happened there?” he asks. 

Sirius puts out a breath and takes another haul, thinking of how to put it. “Have you met Remus?” he asks, shooting a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. 

“Once or twice,” Peter replies. 

Sirius sits up to ash his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table and ends up taking it down to the floor and sitting it beside him. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, but turns out, Remus doesn’t like having only one option,” he forwards, garnering a rather sly nod out of Peter, and one Sirius can appreciate in the fucked off mood he’s in. “And to that, he doesn’t necessarily see oxygen therapy as his golden ticket to freedom, so I’ve had to think outside the box a little, bring him a few more options to try out, which I would’ve had to do anyway because I wasn’t about to wait until the appointment to do anything of value, so honestly, it’s fine that he needs a few more eggs in his basket, I get it and it’s good we did something because we’ve had some luck.” 

“Yeah?” Peter asks, and he really couldn’t be seated any closer to the edge of the couch. 

Sirius takes another haul, nodding through it. “You know those energy boosts that are available at every check-out counter, oh, just about anywhere?” he asks, shifting to sit crossed-legged.

“The 5-hour ones?” Peter returns.

“Exactement,” Sirius forwards, pointing the end of his cigarette toward him. “That was one of the options I wrangled him, and Remus had another attack last night and I fed him one of those, and it cut his cluster in half, time-wise, and he was acting nothing like he did Tuesday, OK? I swear, he was a completely different person.”

“That’s great then, no?” Peter asks. 

“Well, I’m not done yet, am I?” Sirius raises. “That’s just one option, and we’ve had luck with it, yeah, but I didn’t want to stop there; it’s not a perfect solution and we can just pack up and go home about it. Shrooms have a rep for cutting through a cluster cycle and snuffing it out, so I’ve been trying to get Remus some to try out since we have the time to experiment and we might as well tackle this from as many sides as we can, and if there’s a chance shrooms can cut in and kill his clusters before we even make it to the appointment and have to try the oxygen tanks, I’ll take it; I’m not fussy about what does the trick, I just want the trick done.” 

“Why shrooms, though?” Peter checks. 

“Something about the psilocybin in them,” Sirius puts out, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette. “I mean, technically acid would work, too, from what I read, but I figured this way would be a tad more tame of an introduction into psychedelics rather than try to feed Remus some acid tablets; it was a task convincing Remus he wasn’t going to go sprinting off a bridge from a gram and a half of shrooms.”

“Or see a parrot in the room,” Peter raises. 

“I told him there would be no bird,” Sirius offers. “Point is, acid is not on the table.” 

“Baby steps,” Peter calls it. 

“Sure,” Sirius accepts, cracking a smile for that one. “I looked up a thousand different threads about treatment, and every single one had somebody in it citing shrooms as their go-to, and there would be tons of people replying to that and agreeing with it; and I saw one bloke say he took the same dose once a week for a total of four, and his clusters were never to be seen from again — until his next cycle, and then he did the same thing, and same results, so I _have_ to get Remus them, I told him I would get them for him, and I don’t, I don’t have them, and I can’t look into Remus’ perfect fucking face and tell him I fucked up, I can’t do it.” 

“How did you fuck up?” Peter asks, suspicious of that read of it. 

“Figure of speech, Peter,” Sirius sighs, taking a haul and cutting it off mid-way through. “I can’t bring him bad news right now; I just can’t.” 

“OK,” Peter says quickly. “Braun couldn’t get you any?” 

Sirius sends out a profound scoff, feeling heat rise up his spine all over again. “_Braun_ is pussyfooting around, I don’t what’s got into him, I really don’t; he’s never had a problem getting them for me before,” he insists, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his joggers and typing the passcode in one-handed. “I asked him Thursday, he said he’ll need a few days, but he’d likely know Sunday and I was fine with that, and then today came, and I had to message him, first of all, which is just bad business, I’m just going to say it, and _then_ I get these cryptic fucking responses.”

Sirius holds their message thread out for Peter to read it. “What am I supposed to do with that, hm?” he emphasizes. “What?” 

Peter shakes his head after scanning Sirius’ screen. “I have no idea,” he says. “That’s the most unhelpful response I’ve ever seen.” 

“Thank you, Peter,” Sirius rings out, crushing the end of his cigarette out in the ashtray. 

“Well, do you really need him to get them?” Peter asks. “Could grow your own, can’t you?”

Sirius sends out a loaded laugh, leaving his phone in his lap. “Believe me, I’ve been tempted; it takes eight to ten weeks to grow them from scratch, and we may as well just wait for the appointment at that rate,” he says to that, and Peter puts a light grimace on his face, shaking his head. “And I’m not about to go asking just anyone, I’m not giving Remus something I wouldn’t swallow myself, end of discussion.” 

“No arguments there,” Peter says to that. He lifts his right hand and tugs absently at the center of his lower lip, which typically gives away that he’s having a think. “OK,” he says after a few, long moments of Sirius simply waiting, “so maybe his supplier fell through, but maybe he knows somebody else that might have them?” 

“He’d have put that in the response, no?” Sirius raises, and Peter puts his mouth into an even frown. “And if I keep negging him about it, he’s just going to write me off, but fuck him for putting me in this position after years of loyalty and bringing him business — and he’s not cheap either, I could get a better deal somewhere else, but his stuff is always quality and he’s never let me down until now, and _now_ is not the time to fuck around with me.” 

“It really isn’t,” Peter says plainly. “You’re on a warpath.”

“Absolutely, I am,” Sirius sends him. “He doesn’t have to act all ‘too bad, so sad,’ about this; it’s not about getting fucking high, it’s about trying alternative medicine, thank you very much.” 

“Did you tell him that?” Peter asks. Sirius pauses short, goes still, and puffs a breath into his cheeks, widening his eyes a tad. “Well, that’s your first mistake, Sirius.” 

Sirius lets the air in his cheeks out in one blow. “Thanks, Petey,” he sends him. 

“I’m just saying that might’ve been something to lead with,” Peter returns, lifting his shoulders. “He probably does think you’re just looking to get high.” 

“Fine, then,” Sirius drags out, whipping his phone back up. “I’ll just tell him now.” 

Peter gives a faint hum of disagreement. “Might want to wait a bit,” he says. 

“Why?” Sirius asks, already typing. 

“You’re in too fiery a mood to come off as anything other than fired up,” Peter says. “Maybe have a hit or two before you give it a shot.” 

Sirius pauses his thumbs mid-sentence and reels back. “You think I can be faded _and_ learn a load of Zumba routines at the same time?” he raises. “That’ll be fun for you, and only you.” 

Peter puts out a sigh, pushes himself out of his seat, and leans forward, plucking Sirius’ phone out of his hands and retreats to the middle seat on the couch, a fair distance from Sirius’ grabby hands. “You’re going to lose him if you try this now.” 

“Newsflash, Pete,” Sirius sends out. “I’m going to be fired up about this until I get a yes out of him, and—”

“Then you’re not getting your phone back,” Peter returns, going and sitting on the thing for good measure. “I’m doing you and Remus a favour.” 

Sirius stews on the floor as Peter pulls his own phone off of the coffee table and starts typing away on it. He wets his lower lip, tosses a blank look to the wall behind the couch, and waits there for upwards of a minute before he can’t take it anymore. 

“What are you doing there, Pete?” he asks sweetly. 

“I’m going to send mine a shout and see what he says about it,” Peter returns, not looking up from his screen as he types. “And if that comes up short, then we’ll come back around to Braun, but I will be the one messaging him from your phone if it comes to that.” 

Sirius does make an effort to see past the proverbial timeout he’s been put under, reworks his jaw and stretches it out after he realizes how tight he’s been holding it, and pulls a measured breath in. After he lets it out, he rises off of the floor in a singular move, takes the three steps to make it to the couch, and settles down in the left corner spot beside Peter, and huffs loudly when Peter flies to the opposite end of the couch, taking Sirius’ phone right with him. 

“I wasn’t stealing it back, you shit,” Sirius sends him. Peter all but shrugs, resuming without another comment. “I think I’ve the right to see what you’re sending.” 

“In a minute.” 

“It’s about my fucking boyfriend, Peter.”

“He was our mate before you made him your boyfriend, and I’ll tell you what I wrote when I’m finished crafting it.” 

“Oh, _crafting,_ ‘scuse me.” 

Sirius sinks back into the corner of the couch and waits upwards of a minute more before Peter dawns a curious look upon him. “How much would you need?” 

“He’s answered already?” Sirius puts out, sitting half-up in his seat. 

“No, I thought I could put it in the message, though,” Peter reiterates. 

Sirius eases back a bit, pulling his knees in and crossing his arms over them, a little fucked off at himself for jumping to conclusions first, and letting someone else see him do it, second. “1.5 grams is what I’ve read is the standard per dose, which would be once a week,” he says, setting his chin atop the cross-point of his arms on his knees. “And it’s sort of ongoing from there; it’s until it works.” 

Peter mulls over that for a beat or two. “Maybe we’ll just leave that part out for now, and if he’s got a lead, we’ll come back to the amount, I should think,” he says, and Sirius can’t really see a reason to argue it. Peter types a little more, but ends up pausing again, looking to Sirius again. “Are we calling it ‘shroom therapy,’ or should we call it something else?” 

Sirius lifts a shoulder. “I’d just say something like, you read shrooms have had a lot of good press,” he says. 

“OK, well, I’m not going to say that verbatim, but I get your point,” Peter tells him. 

“That’s fine, just don’t give him the time to correct you on a colloquial term,” Sirius returns. “I’ll put a twenty down right now and say he’ll do just that if you leave it open like that.”

“Good point,” Peter allows. “And you don’t need an extra twenty, do you.” 

“Not me, no,” Sirius concedes. 

Peter resumes his typing, and in the meantime Sirius sits tight, waiting for him to finish his _crafting_, which in itself isn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things, but boy does Sirius feel the time crawl all the same. 

“What’s it called?” Peter pipes up, pausing his typing. “Ps-psybin?”

Sirius holds in a snort, but just barely. “Psilocybin,” he provides, and Peter’s thumbs go nuts again. 

“OK,” Peter says eventually, shifting in his corner spot to sit crossed-legged. “I put down that I’ve a friend that who’s battling cluster headaches and having a rough go of it, but I’ve read about the benefits of psilocybin in fighting them — had to Google that for spelling, but I think it makes me sound less like a knob asking about something I know nothing about—” Sirius snorts real loud for that one, biting down lightly on the tip of his tongue as he gives into a grin, “—and I asked if he could help me out with finding some shrooms, either personally or if he’s simply got a name of somebody who can help my boy out.” 

“I like the boy line,” Sirius offers, flashing an OK symbol with his right hand. 

“Straight from the heart,” Peter tacks on. 

“The ‘battling clusters’ one is good, too,” Sirius adds. “Just the right amount of casual urgency.” 

Peter tips his head to him humbly. “I tried,” he says. “Should I hit send?” 

“Jesus, yes,” Sirius grants him, watching amusedly Peter puts on a bit of a show about it before he puts his phone down on the cushion between them to symbolize a job well done, and if Sirius is honest, he needs that bout of theatrics right about now. “Seriously, thanks.” 

Peter nods after a beat, lifting a shoulder now, too. “Feels good to be able to help out, finally.” 

It’s been a lot harder a task for Sirius to swallow properly as of late, but this time around really takes the cake. “You already did,” he says numbly. “I know it hasn’t seemed like it, but I know he wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t—” 

Peter reaches to itch his left wrist with his right hand, speaking where Sirius trailed off. “Pummelled him,” he translated. 

“Yeah,” Sirius puts out, mostly an output of breath rather than a singular word, but Peter seems to take that for what it is. “Look, I’m sorry I gave you so much shit about it.” 

Peter gives him a tight-lipped nod. “You said, yeah.” 

Sirius tilts his head back and forth. “Mmm, but you never really responded to it, so I wouldn’t know if you’d taken it for what it was,” he hints. 

“I saw it the next morning, and honestly I wasn’t all that sure if I was hallucinating,” Peter offers.

Sirius pulls his front teeth over his lower lip slowly as he nods. “Well, the next time I do a weird thing like apologize for something, any response would be ideal,” he forwards, blinking once for a dot of punctuation. “Kind of a recent thing for me.”

Peter nods once, putting his mouth in a line before words seem to just topple out of him. “You did also type out ‘S-O-R-R-Y,’ so it didn’t sound like you were all that sorry about it, from my end.” 

“Well, you know what? James can be thanked for that, the way he hounded me to do it,” Sirius returns. “You know what, you’re right; I didn’t really mean it then and I did it so James would get off my dick about it, but I am actually sorry now, because — look, I could have lost him and you’re part of the reason I didn’t, so if you want something shiny and/or expensive, guess who’s willing to get you it?” 

Peter shifts in his seat. “It’s fine, Sirius,” he says. “I don’t need anything.” 

“Then I’ll just find something in Wales that screams ‘Peter,’” Sirius says of it. “How does that sound?” 

“That sounds fine,” Peter allows. 

Sirius feels, for a moment or three, that he’s satisfied where this ended off, but it isn’t long at all before he pulls a hand through his hair, feeling he isn’t totally off the hook yet. “It was just too much like Monday night, and I hated how they treated him at the ER, and I know you had to act fast and that’s that, but it hadn’t even been a full day yet and I walked in on him getting knocked around _again_, and I couldn’t fucking take it—” 

“I know,” Peter cuts in. “It’s Remus; you’d throw down with all the Queen’s men if she ever tried to take him out.” 

“And I wouldn’t think twice about it; sorry, Lizzy,” Sirius returns. 

Peter breathes a laugh out through his nose. “I know I could’ve done it better,” he says, a little diplomatically, but his next words sort of lend a hand to why that is, “but if I can just make a case for myself, I didn’t know what the hell was happening to him, and I really don’t think we’ve all considered the fact that he’s ten feet tall and way stronger than he looks enough.” 

“I know,” Sirius says, plainly. “Trying to move him when he’s in the middle of it is like trying to move antimatter; it’s just dead weight.”

The other day, when he made that comparison to Remus, he didn’t get much of a response for it for how blinding truthful that take is, but the way Peter shoots forward in his seat and flies his hands around in supreme agreement does make Sirius feel a tad grateful that at least somebody appreciates his analogy. “That’s it, only it’s dead weight that’s also fucking moving around at light-speed,” Peter raises. 

“He’s a modern marvel,” Sirius offers. 

“Has he been weight lifting when we’re not looking or something?” Peter asks, shaking his head. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask if _you_ have,” Sirius returns. “I know adrenaline does some powerful things, but I don’t understand how you got him down in one shot.” 

“I mean, you only came in for the grand finale,” Peter puts it. “He dragged me around the room for a while and right as I hunkered down and charged at him, and a rogue Sirius appeared, death-eyes boring into my soul.”

Sirius snorts powerfully enough that it sort of hurts coming out. “It really was the worst fucking timing, I’ll give you that,” he says, passing the back of his right hand over his mouth idly. “Those energy boosts, though? They make him so much more — err, malleable? Can I say that?” 

Peter considers it before nodding, accepting it. “Do they really?” 

Sirius nods, then switches to an even head tilt. “I mean, he still moved around a ton, but he lay down the entire time, and that just wasn’t possible Monday/Tuesday,” he says outright. 

It’s vindicating there, seeing Peter look right dazzled by the news. “What’s it about the boosts?” Peter asks.

“It’s the taurine in them,” Sirius forwards. 

“English?” Peter asks after a beat. 

“What, you think I know a better way to put it?” Sirius returns, smirking. “It’s the chemical in it I kept seeing people citing, I just listened to the mob on that one.” 

“Good thing you did,” Peter tacks on. 

Sirius almost accepts that as is, but he can’t help giving an even head tilt back and forth. “Well, I saw a billion comments about Redbull and the taurine in that,” he adds, “but I figured the energy boosts have a similar make-up, and way easier to carry around.” 

“Plus, who wants a lukewarm Redbull?” Peter raises.

“Not me,” Sirius replies. “Remus, on the other hand, knocked back that boost without missing a beat, so I know that he doesn’t give a shit what’s going in his mouth when he’s actually about to have an attack, but oh, Lord Lordy, was he making faces at Boots when we got a whole whackload of Redbulls.” 

Peter pushes an amused breath out of his nose. “He would.” 

Sirius returns him a knowing hum. “Which really just provides proof to my claim that he’d shoot heroin into his eyes if someone told him it’d do something to stop one from coming on, so I don’t think he’s going to care much about chugging down a Redbull, but we’re going to test it out next time he has one to see if it does any better than the boost did.” 

Peter nods, a tad absently. “Apart from making him lay down, what did it do?” 

Sirius squints at the wall behind Peter’s head, struggling to find a way to put it. “Mm, I guess I’m what made him lay down just to get him to stay put, the boost necessarily didn’t do that,” he corrects. “I saw a difference in his pain level just from my end, and he’s confirmed it since that this attack wasn’t as severe as the last two, and since we didn’t do all that much differently aside from give him the boost, we have to assume that’s what held it back from being another knockout, and it just made it survivable enough that he didn’t get up and pace around again, and it seemed like it just pushed the pain of it down and the cluster out quicker as a whole.”

“What was he doing, then?” Peter asks. 

“He didn’t fight my hold as much and he wasn’t relentlessly searching for a bludgeon this time around, but he was trying to generate pain elsewhere” Sirius puts it. “It’s why we can’t just phone it in here; he bit the living shit out of his arm, and when I tried to get him to stop doing that, he moved on to beating his heels into the footboard like—” he lifts his legs and mimes it on the middle couch cushion, garnering quite a look from Peter for it, “—so he still wanted to do damage, just in a different way, and that’s comforting _only_ in the sense that the pain couldn’t have been so horrible that caving his head felt like the only option he could think of to stop it, but that’s not nearly enough.”

“Well, no,” Peter says, candidly. “If he gets one when he’s alone, then what? He can’t be beating himself up senselessly if no one’s around to stop him doing it.” 

Sirius puts his lips into a firm line, choosing to exhale through his nose and only speaking when he’s absolutely sure he isn’t going to explode. “I’ve set it up the best way I can,” he says, assured. “I’ve dropped most of my hours at the shop, James is going to cover for me if one strikes and I’m stuck at work, Andromeda and Dora know that I could have to postpone a class if one strikes and I have to get up and go, I’ve rejoined Zumba on the firm condition that I can bounce the second I hear something. If I’m not with him, he just has to text me _‘911’_ and I’m there.” 

“I can help, too,” Peter offers. “I’m prepared now. I know the rules; take whatever’s in his hand out of it, don’t take him down.” 

Sirius shakes his head. “No, were you even listening?” he raises. “If he’s on the boost, he doesn’t grab for things; _he’s_ what needs watching.” 

“OK, but,” Peter tries, “I can pull his arm out of his mouth, easy.”

Sirius puts a quiet breath in, speaking only when he lets it out. “Pete, I appreciate it, and I know he does, too, but—” 

“Sirius, you don’t have to be afraid to bring him around,” Peter insists. 

Sirius blinks openly. “I’m not.” 

Peter looks at Sirius plainly. “Where is he?” he raises, looking around the room for effect. 

“At his?” Sirius answers. 

“_Why’s_ he there, though?” Peter asks. 

“Why are you here?” Sirius raises. “Why are any of us, anywhere?” 

“I’m not looking to philosophize,” Peter returns. “We’re all going to be assembling here in a bit, and he’s just at his? That’s not normal; did you even invite him along?” 

Sirius pauses short. “He wouldn’t have come even if I did,” he says, knowing it like he knows anything. 

“That's a load of crock,” Peter returns.

Sirius lifts his hands, blocking the blame. “This is his thing,” he says. “I didn't bother trying to drag him here when he has stated many times that he considers himself a time bomb, and that makes it rather hard for him to risk coming over just because he might like to; he doesn’t want to scare any of you guys.”

“Did you tell him we’re not scared?” Peter asks. 

Sirius eyes him like he’s sprouted a third arm. “No, because you were,” he says pointedly. “I told him it was reactionary and you’ll all relearn how to act around him once the spook wears off, but he wasn’t having it and I can’t kidnap him and make him come over, can I?” 

Peter breathes out, looks down, and seems to regroup after a beat or five. “How can that be the final answer?” he asks, looking around the room like there’s someone in it to back him up. 

"There's nothing I can do right now," Sirius returns. "I want him back here as much as you do, but he's having a rough time and I can't fix it all overnight; something has to wait."

"Well, do better, then," Peter demands.

Sirius pitches forward in his seat. "What did you just say?" 

Peter instinctively sits back in his seat. "You can't just say you can't do anything about it and have that be it." 

“Why don't _you_ try doing better?" Sirius snaps. 

"I'm trying to help you both, am I not?" Peter returns. 

"Yeah, now you are," Sirius rebuts. "You're the one who stared at him like he was mental on Wednesday; what did you think he was going to do, keep coming 'round after that? He fucking saw you doing it.” 

Peter instinctively sits back in his seat. "I didn’t mean for him to take it like that,” he insists.

“Wrong answer, Pete,” Sirius sends out. “He’s got anxiety, not eighteen screws loose; you were walking around him like he you were in a minefield and I know that because I fucking watched you doing it, too, so don't fucking give me 'I didn't mean for him to take it like that—'”

“Woah, woah, woah,” James calls out, quite suddenly standing under the archway to the living room. “What the fuck is happening?” 

“Remus hates me,” Peter puts out woefully. 

“That’s just ridiculous,” James says, blocking the assertion with a way of his hand, but the same hand drops to his side before he looks at Sirius deftly. “He doesn’t, does he?” 

A flash of red, and Lily is also apparently in the room, too. “Good God, no,” she puts in, leaning her left shoulder up against the side of the archway since James seems quite set where he is in the middle of the doorway. “He loves you, Peter.” 

“Thank you, Lilith,” Sirius sings out, now quite grateful for her presence. “I never said that and I’ll work on him, but it’s not going to be today.” 

“Why not?” Peter asks. 

Sirius lifts a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “What is this circle I’m stuck in?”

Peter plucks his phone up from the cushion between the two of them. “I’m calling him.” 

“Mmm, don’t do that,” Sirius returns, but he hears the dial tone anyway and drops his hand immediately. “Hang up right now.” 

Peter shakes his head with the phone at his ear and climbs out of the corner of the couch and over the arm to get himself out of reach of Sirius. “I’ll just tell him my head’s back on straight, and it’ll be—” 

He cuts off mid-sentence and appears to blank completely now that the stage lights are on him. “Hi,” he puts forcefully into the receiver, and then promptly pauses again for a good five or six seconds at least. “One sec?” 

Sirius puts out a snort just envisioning Remus’ face from all the way over at his. “Eloquent,” he sends Peter as he rushes around the other side of the coffee table and scampers down the hall toward the kitchen.

James quite speedily takes up Peter’s vacated spot while Lily hangs back by the doorway, her arms crossed over her middle with her right hand pressed over her mouth. “Why can’t you two be alone for five minutes without you coming for his neck, hm?” he asks, dad-mode activated. 

Sirius lifts his hands. “He wanted to know why Remus isn’t here so badly.” 

“And putting all the blame on him seemed a good plan in your head?” James returns. 

“Don’t give me that,” Sirius denies. “All I did was I tell him gawking at Remus like he’s a zoo animal was a huge mistake, and was I wrong?” 

“No, that definitely didn’t help any,” Lily speaks up from behind her hand. 

Both James and Sirius look over at her, but Lily takes one look at Sirius’ pondering expression in particular and evidently has a whopper of a problem with it, dropping her hand from her mouth. “Oh, you are going to need to reign it in; he clearly needed to talk to a friend and I’m not going to apologize for being there for him.”

Sirius reels back right quick. “I was simply trying to work out why you said that with such knowledge behind it, but sure, Lily; I’ll go ahead and reign it in for you,” he returns sweetly. 

“You two realize he hates it when you fight over him, yeah?” James puts in, looking between the two of them. “Have we come to that yet?” 

Lily breezes right on past that, which was Sirius’ plan, too, overall. “I said it like that because he came into work acting like everything was fine, and then five minutes later he was tailspinning, and an entire section of his monologue was dedicated to Peter thinking he’s gone mad after the Ugly Pot fiasco," she says, lifting her hands as if settling it.

James tosses a tortured huff to the ceiling. “Would one of you explain to him that I couldn’t give two shits about an ugly flower pot?” he puts out. 

Sirius clicks his tongue. “That was days ago.” He pauses, looking over at Lily in the horrible case that whatever instance she referred to was as recent as yesterday. "Days, yeah?” 

“Thursday,” she answers, after a beat.

Sirius nods once. “Rough morning,” he says, feeling like a tire tread all over again. “The point is, he’s eased up quite a lot about Ugly Pot, to the point where we can almost joke about it and it’s alright, so it’ll happen with this, too. At some point he’s going to ease up on the No Flat rule, but he doesn't want one to strike while he's here and we're still trying to figure out what triggers him; we have to give him the time to get there, he just needs a hot minute.”

James flomps himself back into the corner of the couch huffily while Lily moves from the doorway to take a seat in the inflatable armchair to Sirius’ left. “I told you, I get it but I don’t have to like it,” he says numbly. 

Sirius does something next that he doesn’t do very often; listlessly looks to Lily for some help. “He knows we're here,” she says, a true beat after Sirius meets her eye. “There's a difference between being there for him and coddling him to the point where he gets overwhelmed, and I think we might be straddling that fine line when we put too many expectations on him in an already delicate time." 

Sirius doesn't _love_ that sentiment paired with his ever-rising suspicions over what else, precisely, Lily might've heard about that awful Thursday; makes it feel like the atoms that make up his body are pulling apart, but James lets out an aggravated noise almost for him, but for a different reason entirely.

"How is wanting to be included in this horrible shit show coddling him?" he raises. 

"Hey, interesting fact," Sirius gloms onto that. "It's not a fucking picnic when you're in it, James." 

Lily presses on. “I’ll keep an eye on him at work, Sirius will keep an eye on him outside of it, I’m sure, and gradually he’ll widen his circle again.”

James hears the sentiment meant for him to take home and huffs, and sort of ruins the quiet smile Sirius and Lily share with each other. “I don’t know why he’s lobbing me in with Gawker over there,” he puts out. “I made him _pancakes_ and I wasn’t staring at him like he’s about ready to blow.” 

Sirius gives him a plain look. “You gawked at his scar the second he came into the kitchen, you knob,” he sends him. “_After_ I’d spent a ton of time trying to lure him out of the dark, so you didn’t help him feel less like a zoo animal one bit.” 

James’ mouth forms a distinct O shape before he drops the face and puts out an offended scoff. “You called him a streetfighter,” he points out. “Why are you off the hook?” 

“First of all, are you me?” Sirius rebuts, getting a face for it from James, “second, what else was I going to do after you went and pointed it right out like the crass man you are? I really thought you’d know to just not mention something like a massive scar from an already heightened situation, but clearly that was an oversight on my part as well and I tried to play it off, sue me.”

James rearranges his expression into a solid pout. “Well, now I have to call Remus, too.” 

“Or,” Sirius puts in, “you could leave it alone since Remus is already dealing with a flood of apologies from Peter, right this very second.”

“That’s an idea,” Lily puts in brightly. “I’m going to have to request we start practicing sooner or later, my energy is still up, but it’s not going to run on high forever.” 

“Incredible point,” Sirius offers her, extending his right leg along the length of the couch to prod James’ left knee with his big toe. “Where _did_ I leave my dancing shoes?”

A slow smile creeps across James' mouth before it replaces his pout altogether and he reaches to flick the top of Sirius' foot. “I’ve a guess you’ve been wearing them all along,” he returns. 

“You could say that,” Sirius allows. 

James looks over at Lily. “Are we telling him now, or?” 

Sirius looks sideways at Lily as she puts a sigh through her nose. “I don’t know it’s appropriate now.” 

“He’s going to find out," James puts it. "May as well know ahead of time."

“I agree,” Lily puts diplomatically, but the slight widening of her eyes is not missed by Sirius by any means, “only now’s a little—” 

“Should I leave the room while you two sort this out?” Sirius checks.

James looks at him now. “Andrew went and lit right up when she proposed us rejoining,” he says, a coy smile making it on his face, “and while I do think I’m special enough to warrant starry eyes, I don’t think they were for me somehow.” 

Sirius blinks and promptly throws places the back of his right hand over his forehead daintily. “Oh no," he expels royally, "how will I ever keep my pants on now?” 

“See?” James raises, looking at Lily again. “No harm, no foul.” 

Sirius looks to Lily there, too, timing three bright blinks aimed at her before she sighs out her mouth instead. “I didn’t think you were going to throw your pants off,” she reiterates, lifting a halting hand, “but it was quite the smile; he puffed right up, and it gave me an odd feeling.” 

Sirius hums flatly, prodding James with the foot still laying nearby him. “I bet he’s just pumped to have his two best students back in class, hm?” 

Lily tilts her head back and forth idly in Sirius' peripheral. “Could be it, but I think you'd have had to see the look,” she says. “I don’t think it would hurt to nip that in the bud sooner than later.” 

Sirius pauses his prodding, turning his head to her directly. “Excuse you?” 

James flicks Sirius’ foot. “Simmer down,” he chides. “He may well think he’s going to get something out of it; he sure did last time.” 

“I was a touch more single then, no?” Sirius asks, putting his head on a tilt. 

Lily lifts her hands diligently. “That’s what we’re getting at,” she says. “I don’t know what’s in his head, do I, but if he’s got an inkling something’s going to come out of you joining back up, it's fair he know that’s not on the table.”

“OK, say he does want another go at this,” Sirius says, displaying his hands on either side of his body, “why does letting him down easy fall to me, hm?” He looks to Lily again. “And if the look was so starry-eyed, why didn’t _you_ just slip Remus in there for me, since you’re so concerned about Andrew's feelings in all of this?”

Lily looks around the room whip-fast. “How is that on me?” she rebuts, quite red in the face now. "You've made it quite clear I've no business sniffing around where I shouldn't." 

"And yet, here we are," Sirius puts out, looking to James for some help. 

“Nope,” James says brightly, moving to lift out of his corner spot. "I regret my actions completely and I'll see myself out—" 

“Sit the fuck down,” Sirius sends him. 

“Reel it in, then,” James sends right back, planting himself back in his seat. “She’s not coming for you, dickhead.”

“I’m not,” Lily insists. “I just think it would do well to avoid a miscommunication; I like Andrew a lot, but I like Remus more.” 

“How weird, so do I?” Sirius puts out, faux-incredulously. 

Lily bites back what might’ve been a smile. “OK,” she says, lifting her hands, as if unaffected. “Alright, I’ll back off.”

“Thank you,” Sirius chimes politely. 

Footsteps creak up the hall, making it rather clear Peter’s rejoined the mix. “What’d I just miss?” 

“Nada, Petey,” James sends him lightly. “What’s the word?” 

Peter sits himself on the bit of floor between Sirius on the couch and Lily in the chair and puts out a grand sigh. “He says he doesn’t hate me, but he’s still not coming over."

“I could have told you that,” Sirius says, tugging on his right ear lobe idly. 

“Well, I needed to hear it myself, thanks,” Peter says just before _Kiss Me_ rings out from his left trouser pocket. 

Sirius smirks as James sends a few retching noises across the couch. “Give it,” he requests, pushing out of his spot. 

Peter pulls his phone out and hands it over to him as Sirius reaches to snag his pack on the table, pulling one out and letting the pack drop back onto the table. “Give me this much time and it's Zumbatown up in here,” he says to Lily, holding up his cigarette.

She waves him off as Sirius steps right over Peter to get to the hall, swiping to answer the phone before the opening bars can finish. “Yes?” he answers, heading past the bathroom door. 

“Could you, I don’t know, try to avoid encouraging any of our friends to think I hate them?” Remus returns. “I don’t hate anyone.” 

“Not even Hitler?” Sirius raises dubiously, turning into the kitchen.

A huff. “Sirius.” 

“Alright, but I didn’t actually do that?” Sirius puts in, pushing through the screen door and out onto the terrace. “All I did was explain Peter’s embarrassing behaviour on Wednesday didn’t help make you feel all that comfortable coming ‘round as much, and didn’t it?” 

Remus sighs from the other end of the line as Sirius sparks his lighter. “I still understand why he looked at me the way he did.” 

“Mm, I know that,” Sirius says as he lets his first haul out. “He was acting like I’m keeping you away from them on purpose and he was being very rude about it, if my word counts for anything.” 

“It does,” Remus says. “Of course it does.” 

“Good,” Sirius says. “I’m not about to get branded the bloke who shut his boyfriend away; that’s not me.” 

“You’re right,” Remus allows. “That changes the tone of it a lot; I didn't know that.” 

Sirius feels a bit lighter on his feet as he takes another haul. “And since I’m being honest here, I thought it was rich that it didn’t even occur to him that acting like being around you was walking in a minefield, and that’s not OK either.” 

“Well, you must have really hammered that in because he was near-inconsolable just now,” Remus hints. 

“Good, he should've been better and maybe now everyone will be,” Sirius says of it. 

Remus sighs again, weightier this time. “It’s just too soon,” he says quietly. 

“I know it is,” Sirius says. “They know, too, now; I’ve debriefed all three of them, believe me.” 

“Mm, do the other two think I hate them, too?” Remus asks. 

“Certainly not Lily,” Sirius offers. “I hope you’re sitting down, because she’s on your side always and forever, but I know that’s some staggering information for you to hear.” 

A few amused breaths come through the line. “It helps I see her at work likely,” he says, a smile audible from all the way over here. 

“Might be part of it,” Sirius affirms, lifting his cigarette to his mouth, but pausing there. “I won't lie to you, James is being a prat about it, and you did very nearly get a call from James because I pointed out that he didn’t actually have to immediately point your scar out the second he saw it, but the sentiment here is: he's sorry, I talked him out of it, and I think you’re safe for now.” 

Remus snorts. “You’re really on an incredibly specific mission today.” 

Sirius runs his right big toe over the ground idly. “I just think a lot of the garbage parts of this week could have been avoided if we all just backed off of you a little, me included,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I know it’s hard for you to wrap your head around, but it’s sort of your fault; if you weren’t so lovable we wouldn’t all be so aggressively affectionate toward you.” 

A laugh sounds as if it catches Remus off-guard. “That’s—” he tries amidst it, “wildly appropriate wording, thank you for that.” 

“I can’t offer the Professor any less,” Sirius says of it, smiling at the ground between his feet. “They just really care about you, Remus, and that's not as strange a phenomena as I know you often think it is.”

Remus breathes in thickly. “I’m not keeping away out of spite.”

“I know that,” Sirius says, quietly this time. “They're catching up, too. We all just need to let the dust settle; it’s really only been a few days — can you believe that? 

“It’s madness,” Remus concedes, sniffing a bit. “It feels like an age has passed, and no time at all.“

“We’re going to get better at this, OK?” Sirius offers. 

“Mhm,” Remus hums, controlled. 

“They’ll be right here when you’re ready,” Sirius adds, because he needs him to know that, as much as they need him to, too. 

“OK, no — that’s too much,” Remus says thickly. “No — you don’t get to make me cry again; I’ve run out.” 

Sirius gets a strong sense that was more directed at himself than to him just then. “Alright,” he allows, “but I think you might like that I’m a lot, even if it’s too much sometimes.” 

Remus sniffs hard again. “You caught me red-handed,” he admits. “Have you guys’ started up yet?” 

“No, not even close,” Sirius says plainly. 

“Oh — go, then; I’m sorry,” Remus returns. 

“I’m not,” Sirius says, taking another haul. “I’ve a few more hauls left; might as well keep me company.” 

“Well, in that case,” Remus says, and Sirius smiles around another pull. “I know you’ve stayed over quite a bit this week, but if you wanted to come tonight, I wouldn’t say no to it.” 

Sirius’ right brow goes right up his forehead, but in the three beats it takes for that to happen, Remus already takes that as a bad sign. “Only if you wanted to stay there since you’ll just have to go there again tomorrow, that’s OK, too,” he adds quickly.

Sirius lets out an incredulous snort, sending his haul out through his nose rapidly. “Remus,” he says, taking a quick breath in. “I packed my duffel for a few good nights and brought my dog over there; so, I see you haven’t pieced the hints together yet, but I planned on staying over for a while.”

There’s a few beats of silence where Sirius vividly thinks he might have an idea what Remus deals with on a regular basis. “I promise, I’m not working an angle here,” he adds. “I’m not trying to move in without telling you, I just know I’ll sleep better if I’m there right now and I think you would, too — so, yeah; I was planning on coming back tonight.”

“I would,” Remus says there. “Sleep better, I mean.” 

“Good,” Sirius says, taking a full breath in at the prospect of finally fucking reading the room properly. He heads for the ashtray on the table in the center of the terrace and puts his cigarette out in it, not really feeling it anymore. “I’ll see you later, then?”

“Looks like it,” Remus returns. “Go make me proud.” 

“Absolument,” Sirius returns, slipping his phone off of his ear. 

He heads back inside with a poignant spring to his step, stops in at the washer and transports Remus’ load into the dryer, and heads back to the living room from there, finding his spot on the couch was taken up by Peter in his absence, but he’s much more piqued by Lily at the record player trying to hook her phone up to it. 

“Alright,” he says, clapping once, bringing all three heads in the room to look his way. “I’m ready, who’s ready?”

Lily rearranges her mouth around a smile, plugging the aux cord into her headphone jack. “I’ve made up a plan that I think will be realistic for you two, given that you’re a little behind,” she offers. 

“Tell me,” Sirius goads, ready to hear it. 

“We’ve sixteen songs on the roster that will loop back around as the parade goes along,” she details, “so what I think we should do is focus on four routines per practice session, otherwise I think we’ll just end up giving up halfway if we try to power through all sixteen in one.” 

“You know them well,” Peter puts in. 

Lily taps her right temple primly. “So, if you’re alright with putting the work in this week, then you two will be versed enough for next week’s class, and,” Lily adds, looking to Sirius specifically, “that’ll free your weekdays up after that, so really it will just mean crunch time this week, but from there you’d only have to put in an hour a Sunday.” 

“And, you’re free to run off at any point,” James tacks on, “as per my last email.” 

Sirius snorts. “I accept your terms,” he says, looking to the both of them in turn. “I’ll be back tomorrow for Dora, if we want to try the next four routines before or after that.” 

Lily thinks about it for a beat. “I’ll see how things are going around work tomorrow,” she says. “If it’s going swimmingly then I may be able to cut out a little early, but definitely after her class if I can’t make magic happen.” 

“Deal,” Sirius says of it. “For the back eight, I just can’t do Friday or Saturday night, but I can do anytime before my shifts, barring any emergencies.”

“We’ll squeeze them in somewhere,” Lily says, waving him off easily. “Do you want to see the first one as a final project to get an idea, or do you want me to start right in with the lesson?” 

“Show me the whole thing,” Sirius says, stepping in between the coffee table and couch to take up residence in the middle spot. 

One thing Sirius can say for certain, once they really get into the practice, is he did sort of miss Zumba. And by sort of he means a lot. There’s something oddly non-threatening about the routines that remind him what he felt about them back in the day, and when he finally understood the reason Lily fell so hard for the class; the routines are just complicated enough that he doesn’t feel like he’s learning ones dedicated to a middle-aged fitness group, but just easy enough that in turn, he doesn’t feel like he just joined up with the ballet after zero preparation. And one thing he’ll say for Andrew, and something Sirius is glad to see hasn’t lessened with time, he can still curate one fuck of a playlist. 

After the second routine, James _demands_ a beverage break, which neither Sirius nor Lily argue with by any means. Lily is, however, diligent about keeping the recess short, and that Sirius definitely doesn’t argue for his energy level is sitting proudly at 100% and the longer a pause they take, the longer his energy has the chance to peter off. 

Peter spends his time cycling between playing audience member and fucking around on his phone, so Sirius has long since given up thinking Peter picking up his phone is a sign of plentiful luck coming his way in the form of a baggie of shrooms, and it’s part of the reason why, while ironing out the kinks in the last routine of the night, it takes Peter waving him down for Sirius to clue in that he’s being summoned. 

Sirius breaks routine at once, falls out of line, and dashes for the record player, putting Carly Rae’s _Cut to the Feeling_ on immediate pause, causing James and Lily to freeze still as the music goes off. 

“What, what?” Sirius asks as Peter pulls himself off of the couch. 

“He says he’s got a batch growing now,” he reiterates. 

Sirius moves his neck back and forth, stretching it out as he pushes down the urge to throttle him. “Well, did he start the batch this week, ‘cause if so, that’s not going to help me out and I’m not sure why you flagged me down.”

“Hold on, he’s still typing,” Peter insists. 

“Who?” James asks. 

“Remus?” Lily guesses. 

“No, shh,” Sirius sends him, waving the peanut gallery off. 

“Upwards of two weeks until he can start handing them out,” Peter parrots off his phone. The moment the words are out there, though, he grimaces, looking up at Sirius. “That’s not soon enough, is it?” 

“Are you kidding me?” Sirius sends him. “It’s not like I’m getting anything sooner than that.” 

“OK,” Peter says, looking down quickly and typing away. “I’ll just confirm he keep us very in mind.” 

“Pause,” Sirius requests, and Peter does as bid, looking up at him again. “You sure he’s legit?” 

Peter looks left then right. “I’ve been buying off him for years.”

“Shrooms, though?” Sirius raises. 

“Oooh,” James trills. “Are we acquiring some?” 

“No, they’re for Remus,” Sirius supplies at once. 

“Oh ho ho,” James returns, beaming. “That little devil.”

“They’re for his clusters, James; he’s not taking them for leisure,” Lily puts in, then double checks that with Sirius, who’s got his hands on his hips now, well and truly impressed, but it’s clear she doesn’t read his expression for what it is for she falters a little. “I assume that’s it?”

“Oh, absolutely, I’m just admiring your finesse,” Sirius forwards. 

Lily’s lips quirk. “I’ve been researching a ton,” she confesses. 

“Oh, you too?” Sirius raises airily.

“Alright, I’m going to need everyone in this room to start filling me in more,” James bids, hands on his hips now, too, “_in_ a timely manner, if you please.” 

“He’s legit, Sirius,” Peter presses right on. “I’ll eat a piece before Remus does even, so you see yourself.” 

“Deal,” Sirius returns, loving the dedication he’s seeing. “Tell him you’ll buy the lot.” 

“Well, I’m probably not going to do that, seeing as he has other customers,” Peter says measuredly, “but I’ll see what isn’t already spoken for?” 

Sirius takes on the will and drive of a thousand suns into one, heated expression. “Tell him I’ll buy the lot,” he repeats. 

Peter looks down real quick and types speedily on his phone. “_Do not_ fight him if he says no,” he warns. “He’s got much better pricing than Braun, _and_ he delivers.” 

“Well, if I’m honest, I might be looking for a new dealer, so you tell him you’ve got him two new customers and one with a fat wallet, and I’m sure he’ll be willing to cooperate,” Sirius tacks on. “Take charge, Pete.” 

“Yeah,” James goads. “And then someone tell me why shrooms are gonna help Remus out?” 

“It’s the psilocybin in them, don’t worry about it,” Peter says distractedly, back to typing. 

Sirius sends out a bark that’s much more involuntary than was planned, practically bursting with excitement, pride, joy; the works, meanwhile Peter gets his message crafted. “He says he’ll let me know when they’re ready,” he relays, slipping his phone away and putting his hands on his own hips now. 

Sirius can’t, in good conscience, be expected to keep his joy in any longer, and yet, no one in the room seems to see his next move coming, least of all Peter; Sirius bounds toward him, plucking the 5’6” man right off of the ground with the force of his hug and runs him around in a circle, just ‘cause. 

He puts Peter back down after he’s squeezed him good, ruffles his hair for good measure, and looks to James and Lily in stitches. “Guys,” he starts, tossing a listless thumb toward the front hall. “He could really use a bit of good news right now.” 

“Oh, just go,” Lily directs, waving him off with a wry smile on. “I’m beat as is.” 

Sirius puts his hands together in a form of a prayer. “Thank you,” he says, heading for the hall, but before he exits the room he swivells on his heel, pointing to James as he backs toward the door. “I will be back here one o’clock sharp ready to do Carly proud, you hear me?” 

“Loud and fucking clear,” James sends him. 

Sirius blows him a kiss as he sticks his feet in his shoes, opens the front door, and takes the stairs down two at a time, feeling lighter than air and fucking invincible. On the way back, he stops in at Boots, finds a thermometer, the most attractive and well-stocked first aid kit he can find sold there, and orders Remus a dark oak breakfast tray online to be sent to his own flat that he will then transport over to Remus’ in a few days’ time and sneak into his cupboard. Finally, he steps up to the till counter, sets his purchases down, and plucks the rest of the energy boosts sitting nearby the counter.  
Not quite as head-spinning as his last purchase, but he still gets a bit of a look for it from his cashier, but fuck it; it’s all details, baby. 

He leaves the store with his shopping bag in hand, swings back onto Priscilla’s bulk, and rides the supremely short distance back to Remus’ from there, taking the stairs as fast as he took his own and rounding the bend in the hall, heading in through Remus’ door without a hitch to his step.

Remus isn’t visible from the doorway, nor is he in the bathroom to the left, or in his room from what Sirius can see, prompting him to peer around the partition in the entrance way to find him sat at the island, surrounded by quite a few things; his laptop, their notebook, a cup of tea, and Mestophales' curled up on the island counter top like she owns it (and she does.)

Remus sends him a smile over top of his mug before going for a sip, and Sirius pulls himself back behind the partition, kicks his shoes off on the mat, and comes out from behind it again, holding up his shopping bag. “I got you a thermometer so we can take an actual read of your temperature in an attack from now on, a first aid kit since your supply here is absolute garbage, sorry not sorry, I bought a shitload of boosts while I was there so you now have a whackload of them, I’ve officially got shrooms coming in about two weeks, I know that’s not as soon as we'd like but it was the best I could do, and I'd have brought you the cat this time, too, but I see she's already quite comfortable where she is.” 

He takes a fast breath in as Remus sets his mug down and pushes his stool back, heading around the island and crossing the space between them in a few, controlled strides, and Sirius' heart goes and beats double time as Remus takes his face in his hands before giving him a solid smooch. 

Sirius simply breathes after the kiss ends, rooted to the spot while Remus' mouth twists. "I didn't get to do that last time," he says evenly. 

Rather than dig at Remus about him _absolutely_ being welcome to snog him back then, he takes the high road here and kisses Remus once more when there's nothing holding him back from doing it now. "That's OK with you?" he checks. "The wait?" 

Remus runs the pad of his right thumb along Sirius' left cheekbone. “That's fine," he replies. He takes a moment to eye Sirius' general vicinity, drops his hands to Sirius' shoulders, and peers around the partition by the entryway. "Think there might be something missing?" 

Sirius blinks once, looking down and back up in a moment before it clicks. "They are in the dryer," he tells him matter-of-factly, and Remus sends him the loudest _pfft_ there could be. "I'm going back there tomorrow so you'll have them by tomorrow night, and at the very least they're incredibly dry—"

Remus kisses him again for good measure. "It's fine," he says, smiling brightly, and this, precisely, is what it's all for.


	12. 12.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there, there's a rather innocuous but character-appropriate topic of conversation later on in this chapter about your typical common bug going around that, given the state of things in the year of our lord 2020, i went back and forth for a while on whether i should cut it altogether. i've chosen to keep it in as the conversation was written more than a year ago now and i still like what it does for continued world building and the dynamics between the characters present for it as much as i did back then. it's quite innocent in nature and i may very well be over-hyping this, but you just never know where the fandom torch is at any moment in time 
> 
> stay safe out there! ❤️

Sirius lets his head fall forward onto Remus' left shoulder, his goal here to stretch their embrace out for however long he can make it last, and that sure does work for a good ten to fifteen seconds or so until Sirius hears the shopping bag hanging otherwise motionless from his left wrist start to rustle. 

Sirius pulls back from Remus at once, eyeing his blatant snooping around in there. “I didn’t take it.” 

“No, I can see that,” Remus returns, ending his search with a pronounced blink aimed at Sirius. “Are you really going to make me round up again?” 

“Are you really going to make a huge deal about a couple boosts and a thermometer?” Sirius counters, lifting his brows. 

Remus huffs through a breathy laugh. “A couple?” he repeats, and in all fairness, there’s a good load of them in there. “Just give me an estimate of what you paid.” 

“I didn’t look at the total,” Sirius insists. 

Remus rearranges his pleading expression to a hell of a more pointed one. “You really ought to start looking at your totals more often.” 

Sirius clicks his tongue three times rhythmically, sidestepping Remus to head for the island. “I used my mad money card, therefore, no, I don’t have to look at that one so much,” he says, hoisting the shopping bag onto the counter. 

He hears a plain output of breath from behind him before footsteps approach, but Remus stops nearby Sirius and leans over the set up on the island to reach for his tea while Sirius gives Mestophales a scritch around the ears as a fond hello. 

“Have you been diligent about your studies?” Sirius asks, nodding at Remus’ open laptop. 

Remus nods around a sip. “You could say that, yeah,” he says, moving for his stool. “I sort of branched out from the pages you left for me, and I’ve noticed something a bit odd.” 

Sirius gives the cat’s head a final scritch and heads around to Remus’ side of the island to have a look for himself, bracing his left arm over Remus’ right shoulder. “The amount of tabs you managed to open and still be able to run this thing?” he guesses. 

Remus pushes a small breath out his nose that may have been a laugh if he didn’t look a little trapped in the confines of his head. Sirius budges Remus with the arm braced against him. “Alright, what’d you find?” he asks. 

Remus switches between a few of the open tabs. “Well, so far, all I’ve been seeing in terms of frequency, are chronic and episodic cases,” he says. “And then there’s me.” 

Sirius only has to blink sidelong at Remus to get him to keep going. “Chronic meaning the person gets attacks multiple times a day — like, one, three, five o’clock, right on the money,” he keeps on, “and episodic meaning they’ve got a specific number of weeks, months, what have you, where all bets are off, really; they get them whenever they come.” 

“Right, I’ve seen those words brandished about on there,” Sirius says, nodding faintly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“OK,” Remus nods. “Only there’s no chance I’d fall under the category of chronic since I’m not having them every few hours on the hour daily, but I don’t think I can comfortably fit into the episodic category either.” 

Sirius hums a faint note. “Why can’t you?” he asks, needing a bit more to go on before he can start pinpointing a direction to steer Remus away from.

“Because,” Remus says, gesturing toward the screen, but all Sirius sees on it is a wall of text he does not have the energy to read at the moment. “Those people get them at night, in the morning, evening, and they come on quite frequently, but me? I’ve had two back-to-back, and one later in the week.”

“Right,” Sirius accepts. “Well, you’ve only had three so far, hard to say what your pattern will be from where we’re standing now, isn’t it?”

“Mine don’t manifest like everybody else's,” he reiterates, flipping back through their notebook. “My triggers point straight to migraines, my attacks aren’t on a schedule, I can go days without one, and I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get a proper diagnosis if mine keep coming like they’ve been.” 

“Remus,” Sirius says. “She’s going to take a single look through that notebook and diagnose you there in the room; the evidence in here is staggering.” 

Now, Sirius thinks he made a fair case for himself, Remus, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to soak it up the way Sirius would like him to, shaking his head instead. “Mine don’t manifest the way she’d be used to seeing them,” he says, listlessly. 

Sirius stares at Remus for a good few seconds. “Well, we don’t know what this notebook is going to look like in July, but for the sake of argument and you, I’ll play,” he grants. “Say you’re right and your patterns end up being wacky, we literally can’t know if she hasn’t seen a case like yours since there are sure a lot of people on this planet, aren’t there, and even if she hasn’t, so what?” 

Sirius has to admit Remus’ voice comes out rather voluminous for someone deadpanning him. “So what?” he repeats. “If I can’t help noticing mine are all over the place, how can she be able to ignore that, too?” 

“Remus,” Sirius says. “I found you a top notch professional who deals with these things enough to know how case-to-case they are; she’s going to know not every single case falls into two categories.”

“There’s no consistency to them,” Remus puts out. 

“Not yet,” Sirius corrects. “Little too soon to tell, Remus.” 

Remus takes in a harried breath. “I know you think I’m panicking for nothing, but if I could just point to another person’s experience and say, ‘that’s what I’ve got,’ I could let this go,” he says. “Aside from the boost helping me along, so far I’m seeing nothing like mine.”

Sirius allows that, for a second. “As usual, you don’t fit into a box,” he says, tapping once on Remus’ right cheek. “Not that strange a concept to me, let me tell you.” 

“_You’re_ not the one I’m worried about convincing, oddly,” Remus returns. “Besides, I want a box; I need a box.” 

“Well, I can’t give you one,” Sirius says, lifting his shoulders circumstantially. “You wouldn’t fit, but I can give you a reasonable concept to cling to, how about that?” 

Remus breathes in and out his nose once. “It’d better be phenomenal.” 

“Good, because I think it’s a game changer,” Sirius returns, curling his left arm around Remus’ shoulders casually. “Now, here me out: if such a small percent of the population deals with these things, so much so that we’ve had to knock on door after door to find one who would even say the word ‘clusters,’ and had to traipse around Boots grabbing odds and ends to make things work on our own, then maybe, just maybe, not enough time and research has been devoted to creating a new category all for you, a rando bloke in London.” 

Remus sends a hard breath through his nose. “Sirius.” 

“Sorry,” Sirius extends, lifting his free hand in amends, “a breathtakingly beautiful, rando bloke in London.”

Remus huffs. “Yes, because the distinction was what I wanted made.” 

Sirius presses right on with it, jostling Remus’ shoulders a bit. “Sirius?” he asks, in a voice that an awestruck young student might use, “does that mean it’s alright of Remus doesn’t have the same, cookie-cutter experience as the next rando on that subreddit? Why, _yes_, sonny, indeed it does.” 

Remus nudges Sirius off of him with a huff and promptly crosses his arms over his chest, and that’s just a gift for Sirius to get to see. “Look, it’s very clear that you’re feeling skeptical of all doctors at this point, and while I do love this intense distrust of authority wafting off of you as of late, why don’t we use some of the disappointment you may be feeling in your gut and try to use it to our advantage and let it fuel us,” he offers, and while Remus doesn’t let up on his prim position any, he doesn’t immediately make to speak, so Sirius has to assume he’s been given the floor. “You had a door slammed in your face, I had my crack doctor smirk at me over the phone just trying to get you a lick of help with these, all because you’ve got this little thing called a rare condition, so by all means that must mean you couldn’t have it — makes complete sense, doesn’t it? People don’t have rare conditions, not a one.” 

The corner of Remus’ mouth twitches, but it’s the right side so Sirius catches it in the light. “And instead of listening to that horseshit, this time? You get to walk in there and demand better care,” he says, lifting a finger to point at Remus’ erratic shake of his head. “No no, _that_ is your right, Remus, and you’re going to bask in it and use it wherever you can, yes?”

“Yes,” Remus gives him after a pause. 

“Yes,” Sirius echoes, slapping the screen of Remus’ laptop closed, this bout of research officially over with. “I want you to use some of that high-brow critical thinking skills you’ve attracted in your studies and try to remember them when you’re on that site again, OK?” 

Remus looks over at him, blinking once. “You’re the one who said I’d find some comfort on there,” he mentions. 

“And didn’t you?” Sirius counters. “Even a little bit?” 

Remus gives him an even head tilt back and forth. “The pages you saved for me did, yeah,” he forwards. “Only when I went in deeper, I saw a lot of people coming there to find out if they’re also experiencing them and their symptoms check out, but because they have them now and again and not religiously, they’re getting told they can’t have clusters then.” 

Sirius’ right eye twitches. “Well, like anything else, there are always going to be gatekeepers on there who’d like to keep it a firm, small club, and if you don’t check off all the boxes, then you’re not in it,” he says plainly. “I saw a ton of that, too, but I also know what I’ve seen with my own eyes, so the last thing we need you doing is listening to any of them and winding up second-guessing what we both know you have. Can you take what they say with a grain of salt, please?” 

Remus hands his head to the left, but there’s a smirk somewhere in there, and that, Sirius focuses on. “Or perhaps, I could take your 200% sodium levels and subtract by one-fifty,” he raises. 

“One-seventy-five, even,” Sirius raises it. “Typically speaking, you’re always idling at one-fifty lower than I rest at.”

“Well, that I can’t promise,” Remus says of it. 

“Can you try?” Sirius poses. “You know what you’ve felt, you know it’s not migraines, so just trust yourself and me a little more; we both know more than you let on sometimes.” 

Remus gives him a deep frown. “I don’t mean to suggest you don’t—” 

He cuts off as Sirius reaches up and pushes on the corners of his lips with his forefingers, making a makeshift smile. “I’m not giving you shit,” he says measuredly. “That’s enough ominous reading for tonight, do you want to come smoke with me?” 

Remus perks. “I rolled one for us earlier,” he says, reaching behind his laptop to pluck up a honking joint. 

Sirius snorts, reeling back. “Yes fucking please,” he sends him, heading straight for the perch. 

He looks back with the door open, finding Remus shrug easily as he slips off of his stool, his mouth twitching. “Figured we could make up for last night’s sudden turn left from recreation,” he raises, coming toward the destination at a slightly more leisurely clip than Sirius was going at. 

Once the two of them are settled side by side in the honking orange armchair otherwise known as the Smoking Chair, Sirius congratulates himself on such a stellar idea for exterior home decor. The colour and shape of said chair is a little arresting at first glance and definitely too big for the area it’s in, sure, but comfort and the size of the chair won out over those facts, and now they’ve a seat big enough to share comfortably that’s just far enough under the shelter of the perch above so it doesn’t get soaked during a downpour. 

Remus hangs the joint in his mouth and raises his right hand to light it, while Sirius does little more than lean up against the curve of Remus’ left side and make himself well and truly comfortable, his legs stretched out in front of the chair and crossed at the ankles. Quite soon though, Sirius realizes Remus has got his left arm occupied and hung around Sirius’ shoulders, so lifts his hands to shelter the flame of the lighter from the light breeze passing them. 

Remus hums a thanks as he takes the first pull off of it, snuggles in with Sirius a bit more as he leans his head back on the neck of the armchair, slowly putting his haul out above them, and Sirius would be a liar if he pretended he didn’t watch the entire thing sidelong. 

Remus tips his head back to normal and gives him a bit of a face as he takes another quick pull off of the joint; a half-smile, half-question asked without words, and Sirius smiles, shaking his head, thinking if he says what’s on his mind Remus will succumb to performance anxiety, and that would be a sad, sad thing. 

“How was the day?” he asks instead, timing it for when Remus finishes letting his haul out. 

Remus hums, tilting his head back and forth evenly. “Talked to my mum a bit,” he offers, holding the joint up for Sirius to take hold of. 

Sirius perks as he takes it in between his right forefinger and thumb. “Did you?” he asks, waiting with the joint at his lips for Remus to fork over the lighter so he doesn’t have to fish in his pockets to locate his own. “What made you answer, in the end?”

“Mm,” Remus hums, passing the small yellow lighter over to him. “I just couldn’t pretend I was too busy to answer, but it’s good I did. Turns out, she’s been trying to get a hold of me not just to have a regular chat, but because she had some rather provoking news to share.” 

Sirius gives a small trill around a haul. “Ooh, tell,” he goads, his voice tight as he speaks around full lungs. 

Remus gives him a moderate hum. “Well, they’ve been going back and forth on whether they were going to put some of their land up, given that there’s a lot of it to work with,” he says. “They’ve been discussing it on and off since late winter, and my dad’s been for it selling some of it off for a long time now.” 

Sirius puts his haul out quite speedily. “Oi, that’ll be something, hm,” he says. 

“I think so, yeah,” Remus says. “My mum’s been semi-against it, seeing as it was left to her, and it’s going to be left to me eventually, but I’ve been trying to tell her for a while now that I wouldn’t mind one bit if she sold some of it off; really, what am I going to do with two acres?” 

“Good point,” Sirius offers, taking in another quick haul before it’s effectively Remus’ turn again. 

“We hardly need that much land and it is a bitch to maintain,” Remus adds plainly. “When I was around there it was a little easier to split the work up between us, but it’s a little much for just the two of them.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” Sirius offers, holding the joint up for Remus to take. Remus takes it and takes a haul rather absently. “How much of the land?” 

Remus waits a few beats to exhale. “There’s actually a good two acres to my mum’s name, so,” he says, tilting his head evenly, “a hefty chunk is being parted with — but I’ve heard they’re keeping plenty of the woods and the bit of river front we’ve got down the way, and that’s it, that’s perfect for me.” 

“Smart thinking, though,” Sirius says. “They could make a killing off of it.” 

Remus nods emphatically around another haul. “Well, exactly,” he says, after letting it out. “If it means they’ll be a lot more comfortable then more power to them, really. And I mean, just knowing the house and the bit they’re keeping is going to be in my name eventually is more than enough for me, and I stress that I did try to tell her that, but this is my mum for you; not one of us can play a note on the piano, but since my granny left hers to her, she wouldn’t dare get rid of it, and the land itself seemed just another inheritance she was reluctant to part with.”

“Well, I’d like to have a go at that piano when we’re there, so I highly approve of her holding onto it,” Sirius puts in. 

“I’m sure she’d love the voucher,” Remus says of it. “In any case, the for-sale signs went up earlier this week, so it’s official.”

“Well, look at that,” Sirius says, rather fond of this news.

Remus offers him a sheepish little smile to go along with the joint. “Sort of makes me feel even that much more guilty for dodging her calls all week,” he says rather bluntly. 

Sirius hesitates before taking the joint from him. “You tell her anything yet?” he asks, knowing the answer already. 

The plain frown Remus gives him only just confirms his suspicions, and Sirius licks the pad of his right thumb and wets around the cherry of the joint to keep it running longer while keeping his eyes trained on Remus. “I just,” he starts, lifting his shoulders deftly, “really want to have a handle on this before I give her bad news like that, and I don’t know when that’s going to be.” 

Sirius nods, waiting in case he isn’t quite finished yet, and it doesn’t look like it by the way his eyebrows are knitted together, suggesting more words are coming together in that big, complicated brain of his. “I know it seems like I’m lying to her,” Remus keeps on, his eyes trained out over the railing of the perch, his left hand teasing at Sirius’ hair, “but I just know exactly how she’ll react and if I’m going to tell her then I’d rather have good news to balance it out; either it be that the shrooms do their thing and help me out, or if we manage a breakthrough some other way, then at least I’d have something good to tell her, too; and maybe that has to be when this whole situation looks a lot more livable.” 

The word choice in picking ‘liveable’ of all things cuts a string loose in Sirius’ chest, even when he knows deep down what it means in context, and he has to take one long, long, very long haul off of the joint to power through that awful feeling in his gut. “OK,” he says when he can. 

Remus’ gaze is back on Sirius’ in a quick beat. “Just,” he starts, his left hand teasing at Sirius’ hair, “imagine for even a moment — from what you know about my mum and how she is; her in the room with us last night and how badly that would’ve gone.”

Now, that is some serious, vivid imagery. “It’d have been like a helicopter was in there with us?” Sirius puts up. 

“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind,” Remus says candidly. “And since I could barely talk, you’d have had to be the one to say something like, ‘there’s nothing else we can do until it’s over, Hope,’ and I think she’d actually just disappear through the floor in an instant, hearing that.” 

“If she didn’t, I’d have to tell her that keeping you from ripping your skin apart is just one of the many, colourful parts of the whole deal,” Sirius tacks on. “It’d be a fucking nightmare.” 

“And that’s just if she was there for one,” Remus tacks on. “If I’m here and she’s over there, she’ll chew every single fingernail down to the quick; she would do nothing other than worry about me.” 

Sirius turns his head and presses his lips to the side of Remus’ chest where his head was just leaning. “Alright,” he says, straightening up in their shared seat and patting Remus’ left knee once. 

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to tell her ever,” Remus assures, tucking a lock of hair behind Sirius’ left ear. “I just want to control the way she finds out to the best of my ability, and I know how manipulative that sounds — I don’t need to hear it, I know it, but she cannot handle this right now, not when things have finally looking up for them — and has _stayed_ that way.”

Sirius puts out a tight laugh that sort of hurts coming out, and that laugh looks to send Remus right into a reel. “I wasn’t going to call it that,” he says thickly, lifting his shoulders. “I mean, yeah, it is a little manipulative, but I’ve been that, too. Did it with you today, actually.” 

Remus pauses mid-way through the haul he went for, blinks three times in succession before the space between his eyebrows creases. “My guy didn’t come through for me like I was sure he was going to," Sirius elaborates, "and I found out right before I left actually, and I had the chance to just say that to you but I didn’t."

Remus is certainly looking at him through lidded eyes, but that could have something to do with the pot, in fairness. He slowly puts his haul out to the left of them, shooting it in a stream before the wind takes it away. “OK, know you said a lot at once when you got in, but I'm sure you said you had shrooms coming,” he says, and nevermind, the lidded eyes may have just as much to do with plain bewilderment. “I’m at least ninety-six percent sure I heard that.” 

“No, you heard right,” Sirius affirms. “Peter got them for you, turns out. I helped, but I’ll admit it; it was half, if not more his doing.” 

Remus puts out a quick hybrid of a breath and a laugh, and then he’s really more of a human squint than he is a regular presenting human. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah, well, when my plan fell through, I stormed back to the flat and Pete was just chilling there on the couch, nothing new there, and we got to talking about the steam coming out of my ears, as you do, and one thing led to another, and he checked with his guy for some direction,” Sirius gives him.

Remus gives out another few, breathy gusts of laughter through his nose. “He didn’t mention that once while on the phone with me,” he says, bemused. “That little sneak.”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t have,” Sirius says knowingly. “We were still waiting on confirmation right about then, and I’d stressed through the tales of my grievances that I wasn’t about to let you know about the bumps in the road, if you will, but! All’s well; shrooms are coming and I’ve a new dealer now, turns out.” 

Remus puts out an incredulous breath. “I wouldn’t have minded being in the loop on that one,” he mentions. 

“I just said the work thing,” Sirius says. “Which is true technically, I am on with David every Saturday from here on out and I’m livid about it, but that wasn’t it, really, I just got the rug pulled out from under me and I couldn’t tell you that.” 

Remus looks at him with a half-frown. “Sirius,” he says, quiet. 

Sirius lifts his shoulders. “Well, I didn’t want you to know that the thing I promised to get you was falling through my fingers, oddly, and I didn’t want to even slightly suggest the idea that I was even having trouble with it, so let’s call it a—” he pauses, putting out a thoughtful breath, “—standard manipulation tactic, since you’re so familiar.” 

Remus gives out a sound of mock offense. “You’re both a couple sneaks, then,” he says decidedly, though there isn’t much fervor in his voice. 

“Well, Remus, I wanted to bring you light,” Sirius says, fluttering his lashes a bit. “No worse for wear, are you? Either way, shrooms are coming."

"Oh, my God," Remus puts out in reply to that particular point. 

Sirius lifts his hands to call for some reason. "I didn’t want to have to break bad news to you, so I waited until I had good news to share," he raises. "Do you smell what I’m stepping in here?” 

Remus puts his lips into a firm line, but a smile peeks through despite the effort taken not to let it show. “I do,” he says, tipping his head to the left subtly. “Only, I do think the news of shrooms maybe being a little harder to round up is a little different than, say, the news of life-altering headaches.” 

“Absolutely,” Sirius allows. “Little more severe than that, so the point is, I can’t really lecture you about transparency here, can I?” 

“Well, you could,” Remus offers plainly, passing the joint back to Sirius, “it just might be bad form, if you tried.”

“Can’t have that,” Sirius says to it, keeping the joint in his right hand. “Remus, you’re the boss. You’ve been it from day one and it’s your call when you want to fill her in, yeah?”

Remus searches him a little before Sirius feels the hand in his hair gently nudge Sirius head to face his properly, and then he uses his newly freed up hand to hold Sirius’ chin in place as he kisses him, softly, unhurried, like they’ve all the time in the world for Remus to thank him properly, and Lord, is he doing that exceptionally well. 

So well, that Sirius definitely chases Remus’ lips after he pulls back from him. “Does it get hard?” Remus asks. 

“Every day,” Sirius replies. 

“Not your dick,” Remus denies, eyeing him pointedly. “I meant being fucking perfect all the time.” 

Sirius sends him a _pfft_ that echoes off the building. “Well, that mix-up was all on you,” he returns. “And it comes with a lot of trial and error, actually.” 

“You make it look easy,” Remus returns, and Sirius smiles to himself as pulls on the joint, thinking nobody, _nobody_ makes him feel quite this good without even trying. 

Remus blinks down between them after Sirius’ phone chimes in his left trouser pocket, and Sirius exhales a cloud as he reaches with his free hand fish it out, blinking down at his screen as he pulls up the text waiting for him. “D’aww,” he puts out, smiling down at it. “Lily sent the link to the playlist.” 

Remus perks. “Oh, I can't believe I—" he says, cutting off with a gesture to his head, likely _quite_ hazy now. "How’d it go?” 

“Just lovely,” Sirius forwards. “We only learned the first four routines since there’s sixteen in total to learn for the whole performance, but we got those down pretty well; I’m going to head there a little earlier than planned tomorrow so James and I can iron the kinks out completely before we learn the next four.” 

Remus blinks intently. "What about the other eight?" he asks.

Sirius waves him off with an easy hum, taking another quick pull off the joint and letting it out before elaborating. "We're figuring that out, but we'll squeeze those in somewhere this week, I'm not worried," he says, eyes on his screen as he clicks to open the link. 

"Sacre bleu," Remus puts out, and Sirius aims a wan smile at him as he waits for the playlist to load. 

Sirius keeps control of how much of the list he can see, only scrolling to the fourth tune on the list and deciding he'd like to leave the rest of the picks as a surprise for each practice session. He lifts his gaze to Remus again, taking on a true beam. “Want to know what our opening number is?” he asks to entice.

“Absolutely,” Remus says at once.

Sirius presses on the first track, The Rubix Cube’s ‘Get Ready for This,’ and smirks as Remus reels at the rather intense opening sound. “Wait for it; if you don’t immediately recognize it after it starts, I’ll take your Gay Card back.” 

Remus has just enough time to snort at the claim before the initial hook starts up, and there he puffs out a loud breath in reply, and good, he can keep his Gay Card, then. “This is going to be so much, isn’t it,” he puts up, cracking a grin now, too. 

“Yes, yes it is,” Sirius says, shimmying lightly along with it while his grin remains unchanged. 

Remus watches him amusedly for four or six beats longer before reaching up and plucking the phone out of Sirius’ hands. He scrolls through the list, quite intrigued now, and Sirius knows for a fact Remus must be certifiably blazed if he doesn’t even put the song on pause as he thumbs through it. "Just don't tell me what any of the songs are past song four," he conditions. "I want to be happily surprised." 

Remus nods to grant him that and Sirius takes another pull off the joint before reaching over and hovering it just in front of Remus, who leans in absently to pull off of it as studies the list. Sirius watches him put his haul out to the right of them as scrolls, sneaks another quick haul before he thinks he’s had enough for now, and holds up the roach. “Want the lasts?” he asks. 

Remus flickers his gaze over at him for a moment. “No, save it,” he says, waving him off. 

Sirius does as bid, reaching up behind him to stick it in the ashtray on the window ledge, snags the half-filled pack of cigarettes to the left of it, and pulls it down to him, plucking one out to light. He settles in again once it’s lit, perching his left elbow on the arm of the chair and propping his head up against his hand, taking a drag off of it as he watches Remus smirk at his screen. 

“Thoughts?” he checks. "Vague ones, of course." 

"Did you help make this list?" Remus offers. 

"I did not," Sirius declines. 

“This might be the gayest collection of tunes I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.”

“It's the time of the season,” Sirius chimes, lifting a pair of easy hands. 

“Still, kudos are in order,” Remus says of it. "This list was made for you specifically."

Whether it’s that thing called a conscience or an after effect of the fat blunt the two of them just shared, and despite knowing that's a joke in the purest form, Sirius battles with himself for the next ten or twelve seconds. He goes back and forth on whether now is really the time, but he gets a strong sense that thinks the longer he doesn’t address it, then the more it could turn into a potential issue when Remus does hear about it, which he will, and furthermore, with Remus being as blitzed as he is, Sirius has to wonder if may actually be the perfect scenario to mention it. 

Sirius smiles absently as Remus pauses the tune in its tracks and hands his phone back to him, appearing to be finished with investigating the playlist and promptly separating Sirius from the cigarette in his right hand. “Thief,” Sirius calls him, without any real amount of fervor. 

Remus smiles around a haul, lifting his eyebrows as he lets it out, and that settles it; he’ll be in no better a mood than he is just now, apart from straight after sex, if a list were to be made of the best times to give potentially off-putting news. 

Sirius drops his left hand from the side of his head, uses it to hoist himself up a bit in the seat, and promptly turns his knees toward Remus so they're effectively attached to his now. Remus eyes the position switch and holds the cigarette out to him in reply. “Oh, no,” Sirius says, before a pause. “Well, yeah, actually—” he goes ahead and takes it, having himself a quick pull on it, “—so, I’ve been made rather aware of a possible nefarious situation, and I just want your take on it, if you’re up for that.” 

Remus searches him, nodding once. “Work related?” he guesses.

“No, nothing to do with it,” Sirius replies. “And, I should mention here that I have no proof of this myself; it’s all hearsay at this point, so let’s try remember that throughout this.” 

“OK,” Remus says slowly, intrigued. 

Sirius takes another quick one. “So, earlier," he starts, letting out his quick haul, "when Lily first proposed the idea of us rejoining to him, she noted a particularly interesting expression on his face,” he says. 

“As in, a bad one?” Remus checks. 

Sirius hums to that. “No, not bad necessarily,” he says. “Titillated, perhaps?” 

Alright, choosing to do this now might actually be a fine idea if Remus’ smirk is anything to go by. “He looked titillated about it?” he repeats. 

“Allegedly,” Sirius calls it. “And part of me is willing to believe Lily’s full of shit, but James is on her side for this one and seems to think he wasn’t particularly titillated by the idea of James rejoining so much as he was about me coming back, but he wasn’t there for this, so he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on, does he? Just her word on it.” 

“Mm, I can believe it,” Remus says mildly. Sirius wets his lower lip, thinking of what he could possibly say next, but Remus spares him the effort by smiling at him plainly. “Have you seen yourself before?” 

Sirius huffs, though he can’t help the tug up on his mouth one bit. “Well, thanks,” he forwards, “but I don’t even know if she really did see that or not.” 

Remus tips his head, considering it. “She’s pretty good at that, though,” he says. 

“At what?” Sirius clarifies. 

“Reading an expression and deeming it curious,” Remus offers before a smile tugs at his lips. “She’s done it with me, about you actually.” 

Sirius peers at him intensely. “Tell.” 

Remus smirks, sighing once. “It was on Halloween,” he says, pausing as Sirius makes a charmed noise in his throat. 

“Love it already,” he explains of himself. 

Remus eyebrows raise a smidge, a pointed smile etched on his lips and seemingly quite comfortable there. “Well, I bumped into her on the way to yours, and she invited me to get the samosas, and this bloke called while we were waiting, Sirius, heard of him?” 

“What kind of a name is that?” Sirius puts out, pulling a chesty laugh from Remus. 

“So he calls me up while we're waiting for the food, and by then I’d been harbouring something fierce for the lad for a while there, so his name lit up on my screen was such a promising little feeling then, and I answer and he starts telling me that he found a wig that would go perfectly with my costume, so nothing particularly — titillating, we’ll call it?” 

“Listen, I only did it so I could find out when you’d be coming,” Sirius puts out, finding the distinction necessary to make here. 

“Well, funnily enough, I was quite taken by the fact that you even asked when I’d be arriving, and I had the dopiest smile on this face, let me tell you,” Remus says, switching the tenses back to normal, and Sirius takes in an easy breath, a man lost to his whims. “I can never leave people waiting on me, so I had to cut the conversation short, but Lily caught that smile, I think she thought I’d talked to someone I was seeing, the way she shimmied her shoulders as she asked who it was, and well, you know the rest.” 

“Un-fucking-fortunately,” Sirius sighs out. “I wanted to fuck you so hard that night.” 

“Well, same here, but that’s not really my point now,” Remus reiterates. “Lily’s good at picking out a funny look is more my point.” 

“Grand,” Sirius calls it, beaming wide for effect. 

“Did you really not see this coming?” Remus asks, shaking his head at him. “You two didn’t end off horribly, from what I know.” 

“No, it wasn’t even slightly an issue,” Sirius says. “I just wanted my Sundays back and the class took up part of my me-day, he understood.” 

“Right, well, I’m saying,” Remus presses on, “if it didn’t end terribly, why wouldn’t he glow at the thought of you coming back? I know I would, and I’m not even him.”

“No, I know that,” Sirius says outright. Remus takes his gaze off him and puts it on the far end of the perch. “That’s sort of the point. No one else has been you.” 

“So, why tell me, then?” Remus says after a few beats, his gaze back on him again. “There’s nothing on your end if that dumpster comparison says anything and it certainly put things into perspective for me when I heard that, so, what's the issue, then? Are you worried he’ll try something?” 

Sirius puts out a bland _pfft_, making a face. “No, I just figured he’d have fucked off with someone by now, not get starry-eyes at the mention of my name." 

Remus chews on his lower lip a bit. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” he raises, a smirk coming out through his nose in three fast gusts. “Do you want to walk in there Sunday, fists up, telling him he’ll get none of that glorious arse because you’re taken, or would you rather be more yourself and play it by ear?” 

Sirius can’t help finding Remus funny; he’s a riot when he’s sober and he’s worse when he’s had a toke, he can’t fend his effect off. “I don’t want to even have to address it at all; Lily and James both think I need to walk in there and ‘nip it in the bud sooner than later, Sirius,’” he trills, a pitch perfect imitation of Lily’s typical, mothering cadence, and he knows it was perfect because Remus can’t even pretend he didn’t find it funny; his face says it all, “and you know what? I don’t like that they’re putting the responsibility all on me, and I _really_ don’t appreciate them acting like I’ll let it go on just to enjoy the perks of a chase — listen, I know what I was like, I know, but how hard do I have to work to cover up the holes I made along the way, hm? It isn’t fair that I just get to keep getting called a hoe because I passed it around a bit along the way and I liked the attention then, I’m still a fucking person and I deserve respect where it’s due.” 

“Yeah,” Remus nods, speaking quietly. “Yeah, you do.” 

Sirius looks at him sidelong, takes a long pull off his smoke, and squints at him as he exhales. “How badly are you itching to say you don’t believe they meant it like that?” he asks. 

Remus lifts his shoulders evenly. “Well, I’m sure they didn’t, but you’re allowed to be annoyed by it,” he says simply. Sirius takes another pull off his cigarette, training a blank look out over the street ahead of them. “Well, don’t look so surprised.” 

Sirius smirks, putting his gaze back on Remus as he lets his haul out. “I just," he starts, lifting and dropping his shoulders in a quick beat, "usually expect to get something reasonable told to me and that I walk away from it reluctantly understanding I’ve got to adjust my petty thinking.” 

“Well, you know what, you’ve been incredible lately, so you can just be as petty as you like for now,” Remus grants him. “I will probably steer this somewhere within reason eventually because that’s just how I am, but you’ve the floor right now as far as my permission goes.” 

Sirius’ face feels hotter than it usually does. “It feels like no matter how much time passes and how much I feel I’ve grown over it, I’m never going to shake how they see me,” he says, his gaze on the filter of his cigarette. “Deep down, I know they just really, really, almost distressingly nothing to wedge between the two of us, but could I get a little more credit here?”

Sirius huffs after spewing all that, automatically leans into the hand rubbing circles into his back, and sighs listlessly. “It just made me feel so fucking young,” he says, quietly, looking up as he registers Remus’ hand has stopped and is just sitting still on Sirius’ back. “I know that sounds fucking—”

“No,” Remus says, cutting him off. “I get it, completely.” 

And there, Remus’ eyes are dinner plates, even with all that haze behind them, and Sirius doesn’t dare speak in case it’ll drive Remus off course. “I mean, not from the same situation obviously, but I’ve felt that,” he adds, and Sirius can feel him fiddling with a cuticle behind his back. “It’s almost like you and your sensibilities keep on growing, but they can’t quite shake the image they had of you from a time you’d never go back to for a second if given the chance.” 

Sirius pulls his gaze off Remus, puts it out ahead of them again, and sits with that until he feels a burn on his right forefinger and drops his cigarette altogether. He pushes his knees apart to reach for it, but the tiny, cylindrical stick has other plans and promptly rolls off of the perch and out of sight. 

“Well, bye, then,” Sirius says, putting out a breath and looking sidelong as Remus breaks into a quiet fit of giggles. “You really blew my fucking mind there for a second.” 

Remus sniffs, straightening up and reaching to wipe at his eyes with his right forefinger. “I’m glad to see I’m still doing that months on,” he says, taking his left arm back and sticking the both of his hands between his knees idly. 

“Oh, I don’t imagine that’s going anywhere anytime soon,” Sirius says knowingly. 

Remus breathes in, offers him a half-smile, and gives into a little more lip chewing before he speaks again. “Do you want some advice?” he asks, and Sirius nods emphatically. “I suggest focusing on why you’re there when you’re in class, have a good time, and forget about blokes completely, if you can.” 

“It’s not even that hard to do, honestly,” Sirius returns. “I’ve got the music in me, dicks are the furthest thing from my mind.” 

“Well, then keep doing what you’re doing,” Remus says. “And if something comes that needs addressing, you can handle it.” 

“Lily’s so worried about his feelings in all this, too,” Sirius puts out, pettily for certain. 

“Well, I love her, but boo to that,” Remus returns. “There’s a fine line between you going in there and wiggling your arse in front of him just to tease him, and rejoining a fun little troupe for recreation that also just happens to be a lot of moving around; it’s not a crime if you just want to let it be.”

Sirius breathes in full, stretching his neck out. “You’re being incredibly cool about this," he says, knocking Remus' left shoulder with his right one. 

Remus lifts his hands, giving an even gesture. “Again, I really think that if you truly wanted to run off with him, you’d have compared the idea of it to something a bit more enticing than sifting through the dumpster down the street,” he says plainly. 

Sirius smirks, feeling a lick of pride up his spine at Remus sorting this out well. “I liked that one, too,” he says. “Felt just vivid enough for you to hear that I’ve been there, done that and I’m not really looking to repeat it.” 

Remus puts his hands back between his knees, and there, Sirius wonders if that isn’t a good sign, and then Remus looks at him and it’s evident it isn’t. “We should probably talk about what the rules are if you do meet somebody.”

And the pride's gone. “I did,” Sirius responds after a blink. “I met someone.” 

Remus breathes in through his nose, leaning his head to the side with an imploring look. “I mean someone else,” he says gently. “The previous encounters I’ve met, you’ve been rather blase about them, which is refreshing if a bit difficult to comprehend—” 

“It shouldn't be that difficult,” Sirius puts in, and it isn’t; no one’s pulled him forward and up at once the way Remus has. “They haven’t held a candle to you—”

“Please just let me finish?” Remus implores. “I can't think straight if you're throwing charming anecdotes throughout this." 

"I'm not even trying to _be_ charming," Sirius insists. 

"Then that's even worse," Remus says of it, breathing in, starting again. "Somewhere down the line, you might find yourself tempted by—” 

“Remus,” Sirius says, lifting his hands, frustration lining his vocal chords. “Where is even some of the credit you just heard me call for?” 

“It’s no reflection on you,” Remus insists. “We’re just people, aren’t we? We can’t control how we feel or when we feel it, and I am leaving soon — wouldn’t it be better if we discussed it beforehand?” 

“Well, first of all, we’ve an entire summer before we even need to think about that,” Sirius returns. “And second, I’m not going to go fuck some twink the second your train pulls out of the station.”

Remus puts out a quiet sigh. “I didn’t say you would.”

“OK, but you meant a week later, right?” Sirius returns. “I waited how long for you, again? I could have found a lanky bloke with impeccable curls and buried it in him easily, but did I do that? No, because I knew in my bones it wouldn’t be you and that wouldn't have been enough.” 

Remus lifts his hands and pulls them over his face slowly. “Sirius, this conversation isn’t easy for me either,” he stresses. “I'd like to never have to have it, but you don’t know who you’re going to meet, whether I’m here or there, and as someone who has found out about things like this after the fact, many times—”

“I’m not OK with you comparing me to him, I’m not,” Sirius cuts in.

Remus lifts his hands haltingly, not speaking any more until Sirius breathes out. “I’m not,” he says, plainly. “There are lots of differences between you two, but this is it, this is my experience; we were never actually together, even when I was certain we were, and I don’t even get to call it cheating, or an open relationship, or anything — we were fuck buddies, that’s it, and it took me a long time to accept that that was all it was, but even while I know that now, I still also I know horrible it felt to finding out afterward, over and over again, with or without a label put on us.”

Sirius hasn’t got anything ready to follow that, merely puts out a long breath through his nose. “I’m not saying I think you’re likely to,” Remus reiterates in his chosen silence. “I'm not calling you a hoe, a tease, nothing; I’m just saying that if someday, you get the urge to break free or explore or act on an attraction you can’t help feeling, I want you to tell me that you’re starting to wander."

Sirius nods once. “OK,” he says, watching Remus look left then right before it sinks in that he’s waiting on a quote. “I’ll tell you.” 

“Thank you,” Remus says. "I don’t want to find out about it afterward.”

“Sirius nods once, sturdy as he can make it. "Only, you gotta agree to that for me, too,” he raises. "Fair's fair." 

Remus huffs, a smile peeking through. “I can’t see that happening.” 

“Same here,” Sirius offers, unrelenting, “but you had me agree to something I know I'm not going to do, so. Pony up, bitch.” 

Remus shakes his head, looking away from him with a reluctant smile on. “I’ll tell you if I ever start to wander.” 

“Deal,” Sirius says, budging Remus’ shoulder with his own. 

—

Sirius wakes up suddenly one morning later that week — Saturday, he'll realize when he's finished with his bout of confusion, but in his defense, it's a confusing sight to wake to: a quiet room, light strewing in from the edges of Remus' blinds suggesting morning has come and made itself comfortable, and Remus, sitting up rod-still in bed. 

Sirius' first assumption is as much a knee-jerk as it is vivid — there's a ghost in the room and Remus has spotted it. For a brief moment, Sirius wants to kick out at Remus for giving their vulnerable positions like this, but that urge peters off as quick as it came after it dawns on him that Remus has his phone lit up in his lap, and suddenly the potential for a possible vengeful ghost in the room with them vanishes. 

Sirius does move his left leg under the sheet over them to nudge Remus. "Wassit?" he tries blearily, but Lord it feels early. 

"Lily texted," he provides, his own voice wrought with sleep. "Just says, 'RemusRemusRemus.'"

Sirius rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palms. "But do you think she knows your name?" 

Remus smirks a laugh before his phone rings out loudly, jerking the both of them. Sirius remains on his back since it sure isn't his phone ringing, but Remus scoots sideways off of the bed quickly with the phone in hand and walks around the end of the bed, swiping the phone as he makes for the doorway. 

"Hi, one sec," he says into the phone, booking it out of the room. 

Sirius blinks after Remus, sending a bemused face to his back and thinking it a bit moot to leave the room for the call when he's already quite awake, but Remus is going to do what Remus is going to do, and at the moment that means he's going to pace back and forth in his tiny kitchen; at least he left the door open so Sirius can watch the show from here. 

He gives into a stretch, takes his eyes off Remus' pacing for a moment, and reaches to check his phone for the time, date, year it is, blinking down at his screen with the distant, but incredulous understanding that it's 9:18 in the fucking morning; he cannot, for the life of him, figure out what would possess Lily to ring at such an offensive time, but if he's to make a guess, the volume and vigor of Remus' boisterous '_what_' that echoes back from the kitchen suggests it's got to be something. 

"You're pulling my leg," Remus says decidedly, and alright, fuck this, Sirius needs some context. 

He lifts off his back to sit up, pulling his legs in to sit crossed-legged, and waits with his eyes trained on Remus wandering back and forth in his kitchen alcove; if he listens carefully, he can hear Lily's trilling a mile a minute on the other end of the line from where he is. Remus must sense he's looking for he meets his eye, holds up his free forefinger in gesture to wait, and Sirius doesn't even mind being told to sit tight when the bright grin sent his way makes tugging on a bit of patience easy as pie. 

"Of course," Remus says, nodding intensely, which is just a treat to get to witness really. "Yeah, see you then — thank you so much, hey?" 

Sirius only has to wait seconds more for Remus to officially end the call, wherein he leaves his phone on the island on the way back to the room, taking to a sudden sprint halfway there and launching himself onto the bed in front of Sirius in seconds. "French William wants me," he says, bouncing on his knees. 

Sirius grabs out for him with his right hand, not intending on stopping the bouncing when that's a fine sight indeed, but he's got a few questions. "Who the fuck," he stars, raising his left hand to halt, "is French William, and what does he want you for exactly?" 

Remus shoots him a double-blink and pauses his bouncing unfortunately, but he promptly doubles over in a laugh, and that's a fine direction, too. "Nothing sexual," he maintains. "He's the manager of one of the shops we tracked down and messaged, and he just got back to mine — less than five minutes ago." 

Sirius springs to life with newfound clarity, swivelling his legs around under the sheet to mirror Remus. "What'd he say, what'd he say?" he asks, bouncing on his knees too now. 

"He wrote that he has an opening for the fall — back to school and such, but he wants a phone interview," Remus says. "_With me._"

Sirius tries with all his might not to laugh at the distinction put in there. "Look at you, hustling," he offers instead, popping Remus lightly in the gut. 

Remus blocks it with his left hand and aims a sucker punch at Sirius' gut in retaliation, but his fist never makes it to Sirius' skin. "At least, that's what Lily read after she pasted it into Translate, given that her French is a little rusty," he adds evenly. 

Sirius snorts, pushing a fair chunk of hair out of his face. "Non-existent, you mean." 

"Sure," Remus allows, waving it off. 

"No, really; I think the only French that's sunk in for her is '_kiki, soso, oui oui, non non,_' he sing-songs, while Remus shoulder bobs a bit along with it, but he does not correct Sirius on it, so that's just as important as the bobbing. "When's the interview?" 

"He said to call his store once I'm in again," Remus offers. "She said he left the number in the reply, so I'm going to go in a little earlier and get that taken care of before my shift starts." 

"How cool is that?" Sirius raises, a crooked smile poking at his lips. 

Remus shakes his head at him. "Can you believe it?" 

"That he wants you?" Sirius clarifies. "Not difficult to imagine, personally." 

"Well, it's so much sooner than I thought I'd hear back," Remus presses. 

Sirius breathes in as he considers it. "Been about a week since you sent the messages out, no?" he puts up. "Plenty of time for him to be dazzled by your resume." 

"Mm," Remus hums to deny. "My resume isn't that dazzling." 

Sirius gives him a plain look. "Boy, you've more experience than I fucking do," he returns. "You've literally been working retail for years, and been with the company a summer short of a full year, so; that's some razzle dazzle right there." 

Remus pushes a measured breath through his nose, giving into an even nod. "Alright," he allows. "Maybe that helped, but we're doing this so far in advance, aren't we?" 

Sirius narrows his eyes a smidge, eyes him, and deduces pretty quickly after that that they must be cycling through every counterpoint Remus can come up with live, and maybe just settling in for a game of tennis is the only action he can take that won't get him in trouble. "Maybe you just have a go-getter on your hands," he raises, racketing the ball over the net to Remus. 

Remus nods to that. "I think I might, if he's thinking about fall in June." 

"Well, that, I think you can identify with on a near-spiritual plane," Sirius serves him. 

Remus huffs, but it's good natured. "Still," he says, playing with the cuticle on his left ring finger. "I thought that if I was going to hear back from one of them, it wouldn't be any time soon, and I certainly wouldn't have pegged my first choice as the one to reply." 

Sirius tilts his head a little to the right. "Why was he your first?" he asks, piqued. 

"It's the closest shop to my faculty building," Remus shares, his lips twitching. "It wasn't that deep a reason." 

"Smart lad, you," Sirius offers. 

Remus bobs his head back and forth, sitting with the compliment for slivers of a second before he can't any longer. "Well, it would only count as smart planning if I wrangle a room somewhere nearby," he offers. "Otherwise I'll really only have a workplace close to school and end up travelling a fair distance to get home every night." 

Sirius takes in a quiet breath. "Mmkay, fair?" he raises. "That would be shit, yeah; living halfway across the city from work and school, not saying it wouldn't be, but does today have to be the day for this?" 

Remus shrugs his shoulders once in reply, though his fiddling continues. "I'm going to have to start figuring out a place to stay, too." 

"Mhm, and I want you to have a roof, too, believe me," Sirius tacks on. "I'm just asking, does today have to be the day for this?" 

Remus fixes Sirius with a plain enough stare that Sirius is pretty sure he's in some trouble, but the breath Remus lets out is born out of a white flag. "No, it doesn't," he concedes. "First things first." 

"Exactement," Sirius puts out, grinning big, but Remus is still fiddling with the same cuticle, calling Sirius to reach up in between them and separate the two hands slowly. "You've all summer to find a room, and remember, even if we don't need Andromeda to help find you work, and it's starting to look like we might not, she still knows a shit tonne of people there and could easily put the word out for you, see if someone she knows or someone they know is looking to rent a room."

Remus' eyes light up over that, thankfully. "Oh, that was a good one."

Sirius' lips quirk, feeling warm in his belly. "First things first," he reiterates, squeezing Remus' hands. "I want to see some of that excitement back." 

"I can't get too excited yet," Remus replies, making a face. 

"Why not?" Sirius asks in an exaggerated whisper. 

It might not have been what Remus wanted to hear for he gets a rather pointed look for it. "I can't—" 

Sirius shoots a sigh through his nose. "Remus, you literally sprinted in here and used the bed as your personal bouncy castle in celebration, so it's a little late to back out of that now," he says plainly. "I was there, saw the whole thing, and now, thanks to your oopsy, I'm going to have to tell the universe about it so it can act accordingly and smite you for getting excited about a job prospect."

Remus settles on a face that's entirely too sheepish for the occasion. "I'm fucking with you," Sirius sends him, shaking Remus' hands. "Have you met me? I'm kidding, bounce all you like." 

"You were sort of right, though," Remus says circumstantially. "I got ahead of myself, bouncing." 

"That was the best thing I've seen all week," Sirius admits. "And that includes James popping the package of vanilla bean powder and exploding it all over himself." 

"Oh, well now you're just a liar," Remus returns plainly, but there's a lopsided smile tugging at the right corner of his lips. "His glasses were covered in it." 

"I know, I was there," Sirius insists, having parroted the tale to Remus seconds after it happened via text. "Your bouncing still wins over it, and it's not too early to celebrate and d'you know why?" 

Remus sighs. "I really don't." 

Sirius squeezes his hands again. "Because it'll be over the phone so that'll take some of the pressure off, I'm sure, you're going to go in there and make the call, sell yourself well, and you're going to do the whole thing in French so he'll be incredibly impressed by your skills and he might even be a bit charmed by your accent, which can only help—" 

Remus' expression goes plain. "What's wrong with my accent?" he goads, putting his head on a tilt. 

"Nothing wrong with it, it's just adorably Anglo," Sirius describes. "Endearing even, since you speak the language well, but you can't roll your R's to save your life, and the French do love it when they hear an English speaker try their hand at a fully French conversation, gets them rock hard." 

Remus reels a bit. "That went somewhere I didn't see coming." 

"Point is, you've got this," Sirius reiterates, biting back a smile. "If nothing else, keep the French thing and go in there pretending it's a regular conversation. You've been through this before; he's not going to ask you how astrophysics works, he's just going to ask a bit about you, your availabilities, what your studying since school is the whole reason you'll be in town then, you could do this in your sleep—"

Sirius trails off as Remus pulls his face into a grimace. "He might be looking for someone who can take on more hours than I can," he says. "He mentioned twenty-five hours or more in the reply." 

"Alright, yeah," Sirius allows, nodding once. "He could pick someone else on that note and then it'll be no one's fault, we'll be back at square one and we'll keep looking, but I do think I put up some solid points just now that you're effectively tossing out the window to focus on the one thing that could not work out in all of it." 

Remus presses his mouth into a firm line, pushes a long breath out through his nose, and squeezes Sirius' hands still easily clasped around his. "I did do that, I'm sorry." 

Sirius shakes his head once. "I just want you to hear me, that's it," he says. "And give yourself a little credit; you blew your interview with Lily out of the water and you didn't even know her then, did you? You're a very striking stranger." 

Remus' right brow quirks higher than his left. "Says the bloke who barely looked up when he first saw me." 

"Well, I'm ridiculously self-absorbed," Sirius offers easily. "That's nothing on you." 

Remus smirks a laugh, leaning in to leave a kiss on Sirius' forehead. "Let's hope I can be similarly striking over the phone, then." 

"That, I can attest to," Sirius says outright, but that brings a bolt of a thought on. "That's the ticket; pretend you're talking to me," he says, before pausing short. "Only, October last year me, not me now." 

Remus shakes his head right quick, a half grimace, half-grin coming on. "There's too much innuendo traded now to try that, he'd hang right up on me." 

"Precisely," Sirius returns. 

Remus puts a long breath out. "One more thing?" he asks of him. 

"One more," Sirius grants. 

"Should I tell him about the clusters?" Remus asks. 

Sirius remains quite still. "Not in the interview, no," he replies. 

Remus gives a light grimace. "Isn't that a little dishonest, though?" 

Sirius puts out a scoff. "Not when you're hustling, Remus," he insists. "You've got to get your foot in the door first." 

"OK, but if I do get my foot in the door, when is the next appropriate time to mention it?" Remus raises. 

"Umm, let's go with September fourth," Sirius puts out slowly, thoughtfully. 

Remus gives him a quick, bemused blink. "Why the fourth?" 

"It's after you'd be there already," Sirius offers, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. 

"Sirius, that's not OK," Remus implores. 

"Who says it's not OK?" Sirius counters. "First off, by then we'll know so much more than we know now, and you're already having smaller ones that you can work through, yes?" 

"Well, we never know if I'm in for a whopper or a small one, and if I'm at work—" 

"You deal with that question now, don't you?" Sirius cuts in. "I've watched you power through a small one with my own eyes, so you'll never convince me that you can't handle a smaller one, and I know it's tricky trying to figure out what brings on the whoppers and what brings on the tiny ones, but we're two weeks in, yes?" 

"Yes," Remus echoes, a little pointedly. 

"So by then, we will be twelve weeks in, and we'll know so much more than we do now," Sirius says of it. "And yes, you could go in there today and tack on, 'oh, by the way, I've this rare condition called cluster headaches that leaves me incapacitated — not the regular headaches, they're some other kind of demon, but sometimes I can focus and power through the mild ones, but I don't know the science behind it just yet, da-da-da-da—' are you seeing my point here?" 

Remus flattens his mouth into a line. "I'll spook him even trying talking about it." 

"Ding-ding," Sirius sends out, fluttering his hands around himself like there's streamers falling from the ceiling at the right answer. "Don't bother talking about it yet, just work on making yourself sound like the best candidate — and you already are, but a little effort to show him you are wouldn't go amiss either." 

Remus hangs his head, giving him a sheepish smile. "Alright," he allows. "I'll leave that part out." 

"That's a sport," Sirius says. "Now, it's still arse-early and I know you don't have to be in there for another long while yet, so, let's try and use this time wisely and catch a few more Z's, hm?" 

Sirius shifts off of his knees and goes ahead and eases back onto the bed with Remus' hands still linked with his, hoping he'll follow him down. "I don't know if I could now," Remus admits, though he does shift closer on his knees. 

"Then don't, just lay with me," Sirius bids, letting go of Remus' right and to tap beside him on the bed. "Do you want to be the little spoon or the big one?" 

Remus takes in a breath, considering it. "Big," he replies, moving for Sirius' left side. 

Sirius perks, not having seen that answer coming, but it's a lovely surprise. He flashes Remus a grin before rolling onto his right side, facing the other wall and flattening out his bunched up pillow so Remus can have some of it, too. Remus scoots up behind him, slips his left arm around Sirius' middle, and hoists Sirius back into him a little, and Sirius feels he deserves a pat on the back for proposing such a fine idea. 

He doesn't get a pat precisely, but a quiet kiss pressed to his left shoulder blade is far, far better than that. "Thank you," Remus says, leaving the lower half of his face braced against the back of Sirius' shoulder. 

Sirius turns his head a little to catch a peek of him, but he can really only see Remus' eyes above the line of his shoulder and a mop of lopsided curls above those round peepers. "Mhm," he hums in return, reaching down to the hand resting casually over his navel and swiping his thumb over the back of it. 

Sirius sets his head down, lets his eyes fall shut after the room fills with a shared silence, feeling easy, breezy, beautiful even, and right as he's at that sweet spot between the waking world and dreamland, he notes a rather firm appendage poking pressing against him. 

"You could fuck me while you're back there," he offers. 

Remus drowns out a round of cough-laughing into the back of Sirius' neck. "I can't help it, you," he returns. "This is a precarious position and you feel really good." 

"It's like I said," Sirius says airily, smiling while his eyes remain shut. "Wouldn't mind one bit." 

"No, I can't imagine you would," Remus says, a grin on as they speak, Sirius can hear it. "And there I was, thinking about how wholesome you were being." 

"Mm, don't think that's what you were thinking about, but alright," Sirius says wryly. "Don't know how I'm expected to remain wholesome while there's a veritable tree branch back there saying good morning to me." 

Sirius feels a breathy laugh against the back of his neck before not much else, and as he's thinking something quite similar to 'wow, alright; guess not, then,' Remus goes ahead and latches onto him at the curve of his jaw, dragging suspiciously open-mouthed kisses down to the line of his left collarbone. 

Sirius' eyes snap open as Remus makes it to his shoulder. "Wait — yeah?" 

Remus pauses long enough to speak three words. "Thinking about it." He continues right where he left off, shifting down to lay more kisses in a line between Sirius' shoulder blades, and Sirius is just thanking his sheer lack of interest in finding a sleep shirt to wear overnight. Remus takes his arm back from around Sirius' waist and pauses again, tracing the print of a finger in a circle at the small of Sirius' back, making Sirius' skin sing. "Might take my time getting to that, if that's alright with you."

Sirius notes the lack of a question mark, lifts his hands in allowance with a breathy _pfft_ to go with it; Remus can take however long he likes if he keeps doing what he's doing, no skin off Sirius' back. 

On the topic of his back, it's a little difficult not to notice Remus using it to budge Sirius off of his side, and Sirius simply goes with it, shifting onto his front as Remus moves over him, leaving more kisses in a trail down the line of his spine, and while Remus is certainly taking care not to leave a spot on that ridged line unmarked, there's a destination materializing here, Sirius can feel it in every cell in his body, and the effort it takes to hold back from fist-pumping the air is insurmountable. 

The wait for Remus to get down there only ramps Sirius up more, has him giddily obliging as Remus nudges his legs apart with a knee without pausing his mouth at the end of Sirius' spine for even a beat. He settles down in the space afforded to him, scoots further down the bed, and through his elation, Sirius can't help picture the scene from a bird's eye view and envisions Remus' legs dangling off the end of the bed halfway up his calf at the very least.

Sirius sneaks a peek over his left shoulder, checking on the state of things in case he really ought to move up the bed a bit, but Remus' legs are bent at the knee and crosses in the air behind him, and well, Sirius doesn't really know anymore what he was expecting to find; Remus is a resourceful lad, after all, makes do with what he has. 

Sirius faces forward quickly again as Remus slips the waistband of his briefs down, biting down on his lower lip in anticipation while he helps Remus out by lifting his legs in turn as he inches them down his legs. He gets rid of them from there, Sirius thinks he hears the sound of them landing somewhere off to the right, but where or what they landed on is anyone's guess and he can't really be bothered to check when Remus hitches Sirius' hips back and up, he’s got bigger things coming. 

Sirius has just enough time to brace himself on his forearms before Remus starts in on him, and even as he fucking knew he was in for a treat there's no stopping the elated breath that comes out of him as he arches back into it, and he wouldn’t anyway. He's a breather, always has been, always will. Here's really no exception, his breathing hitches and pauses and starts again from the top as Remus messes around back there and settles on a steady rhythm that Sirius cannot argue with. He shifts his left arm closer to the side of the bed, gripping at the edge of it with his hand while his right dances across the sheet laying almost forgotten under them, curling and uncurling his fingers around a section of it. 

It takes a little while longer for him to note a particularly stirring thought; that perhaps this genuine gift he’s been awarded with may actually be more for Remus' sake than his just then? There’s something to the way he’s holding Sirius’ hips, the motions he’s landed on, the unhurried pace, the tranquility of his breathing — all of it, and once Sirius hones in on the idea of Remus finding a bit of contentment here, it's all he can think about. 

Heat floods Sirius’ cheeks in record time, and he can't for the life of him quit rutting his hips back against the friction, back against him, and Remus lets him keep that up for a little longer, but soon he's hunkering down on his grip on Sirius' hips, holding them steady while the calm, unhurried pace of his mouth keeps on without a hitch. A half-gape, half-grin makes it onto Sirius' face as he unhooks his left hand from the edge of the bed and reaches it behind him, blindly searching for Remus' head and clasping at the back of his head gratefully, half born out of an enormous need to touch him in some form, half out of reassurance that this is all fine by him, but Remus must take it as a frank urging for he switches up the pace the moment Sirius tugs at the back of his hair, working a mind-numbing combo of faster, deeper, more that has Sirius fucking lost to it. 

He presses his face down against the pillow below it, breathing harshly, his hair fanning out around his vision and making him blind to everything else but Remus' fucking mouth. He twists his fingers into Remus' hair, aims to tug a little, assure him if Remus wants to go at him longer then he cannot, by any means, keep going like this, but Remus moves his right hand from Sirius' hip and lets the left do the work in holding Sirius down, reaches under and between Sirius' legs to work his cock in time with the work he's doing behind him, and fuck it, Sirius isn't about to fight it any longer; Remus is making a fucking meal out of him and, hell, Sirius deserves this. 

He's having a rough time getting clean air face-down like he is and while this sure would be a fine way to go out, the idea of suffocating before they even get around to fucking is a horrible thought, no thank you. He flips his head up to get a breath of fresh air going, trilling words out at a mile a second, and it's not the easiest feat to decipher what exactly he's uttering, but considering Remus' reaction, it has to be all in French, no question; Remus keens against him, wringing Sirius' cock out while the vibrations of his voice practically echoing up through Sirius, and, yes, the bed's moving because of his own inability to keep his hips still, but Remus isn't helping any with the way he ruts his own against the mattress, and it's too much, it's officially all too—

Sirius whines hard enough that it clips his throat on the way out, quickly reaching down under him to halt Remus' hand at once, and tugs back on Remus' curls to tap the fuck out, and the fact that it takes Remus time to register it before he inches back is almost enough to make him cum right then and there. 

Sirius breathes in, holds it for five, lets it out, holds that for five. “Oh, that was so close,” he puts out breathlessly. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus says behind him. “It was the French.” 

“Couldn’t tell,” Sirius says, eyes shut as he works to hone in on control. 

The bed shifts and after a few moments it sure does feel like Remus plants himself down on the bed beside him. Sirius opens his eyes, looks right, and finds Remus on his back looking sidelong at him, hands behind his head as he smiles in a rather smug way. “Do you need a minute?” he checks. 

Sirius fucking springs for him, finding the energy to do so in the afterboom known as a cocky Remus Lupin, and Sirius has no doubt in his mind that was Remus’ goal for he immediately makes room for him. Sirius rests on his knees between Remus’ legs, unable to really not notice the outline pipe Remus is packing when it’s really rather pronounced, and hovers over him as he pries at the waistband of his flannels. 

“_Why_ are these even still on?” he raises, tugging them down past Remus’ thighs. 

Remus lets out an incredulous laugh mid-way through working on getting his sleep shirt off, right beaming underneath him. “I think I was a little more focused on something else back there?” he raises, pulling the shirt over his head. 

Sirius works the flannels off of his ankles and chucks them out of sight, paying exactly zero attention to where he flung them, but Remus sends his own shirt soaring the opposite way a beat later with a similar amount of disinterest in where it lands, so the carelessness must be in the air. Sirius pitches toward the nightstand on Remus’ side of the bed to into the drawer, half on Remus’, half off as he braces his left hand on the bed for balance, and Remus goes and makes matters even more difficult as he gives Sirius’ bare arse an opportunistic slap. 

“Oh, I’m going to fuck you so hard for that,” Sirius shoots at him, not even looking at that little shit’s face as he coordinates his right hand to get it properly gripping their recently purchased and already dented-in lube restock. 

“Oh,” Remus sends back gravely, “oh no.” 

Sirius gets live confirmation of Remus’ cheeky fucking smile as he pitches himself back over him with his free hand, popping the cap with a pointed expression that doesn’t reach his lips when he can’t fight a smile from showing, nor does he really put the effort in on that front. 

Remus lifts himself off of his back as Sirius straddles him, pulls his legs in to leave Sirius a comfy spot on his lap for him to perch, and holds his right palm out for a dollop. Sirius finishes squeezing his own, rather large glob into his left palm, and in fairness, he plans on riding him like a fucking horse so it’s really more necessary an amount than over-indulgent, and divvies out another glob to Remus in turn, tossing the thing aside and landing it on the bed somewhere, doesn’t matter much. 

Sirius drops his hands to coat Remus’ cock in it while Remus reaches behind Sirius to work on him, the two of them sharing one glance when they’re both ready to go, and Sirius pushes forward in Remus’ lap, slides his knees in on either side of Remus’ hips as Remus takes his fingers out of him and replaces them with his cock in the exact sort of urgency Sirius can identify all too well with, and clutches at Sirius’ hips like they’ve life’s answers in them. 

Sirius hooks his arms around Remus’ back and digs his fingers in there as he rocks back on him, elated to feel Remus has a similar idea of the pace of that this one should start out at for it is brutal and Sirius is all about it. It’s not all that easy to decipher whether Sirius’ hips are controlling the pace so much as Remus seems to be with how hard he’s pulling Sirius’ down into his thrusts, but what a question to have to contend with; Sirius feels like the luckiest chap on the planet not being able to tell who’s got the reigns. 

The faster they go, the harder Remus breathes by his right ear, and Sirius holds back on his own just to get to hear Remus’ voice unfiltered, dragging his hands up Remus’ back and leaving his left hand curled at the back of Remus’ neck while his right sinks in at the back of Remus’ head, his fingers tightening around a batch of curls as he fights to keep his mouth shut. The work brings a reward, as it tends to, in the best form possible; a smattering of urgencies by his ear, his name filtering in as they meet each other faster still, and truly his name has never sounded better than taken straight from Remus’ lips. 

Sirius’ keens against the friction of his cock caught tightly between their bodies, can’t decide if he’d rather rut forward and get some more of that or keep rocking back and seeing lights behind his eyes, but Remus reads him like braille, pulling his right hand from Sirius’ hip and reaching it in between them to help him along, and Sirius’ hands drop to Remus’ shoulders for balance as he gives himself over to the final stretch, not caring who holds out longer when either way, they’ll both be winners.

Various tunage rings out from over in the main room — Remus’ phone, Sirius realizes and promptly lets his distaste for known rather vocally in response. “Ignore it,” Remus huffs, tightens his grip around Sirius’ cock and pistons his hips with abandon, and Sirius does not have to be told twice.

Remus comes first, just to put that out there, but Sirius isn’t far behind him by any means, and hearing him call his name as he shudders through it is enough to get Sirius there in a sudden second, crying out and rocking up into the circle of Remus’ grip on him like that’s got life’s secrets on the other side of it, and Jesus Christ, maybe it does, with how calm he feels when he’s finished. 

Remus goes ahead and pulls Sirius down with him as he makes himself horizontal, and that’s — that’s exactly where Sirius was hoping they’d end up, all in all. His knees are crying for relief, his thighs burn and curse him for all that work he put just them through, and he gives the lot of them a break, slipping out of his pretzel shape and laying flat over Remus as a result. 

It takes a while for the two of them to move even at all, and Sirius, in a rather precarious position, has to get a little creative with getting out of bed without any leakage happening, but in order to do that, he has to crawl off of Remus and back toward the edge of the bed with his arse in the air, which only sends Remus into a round of breathy, helpless stitches. Sirius flips him the bird as he climbs down off of the bed and takes off out of the room. He makes it to the bathroom before too much can drip down his thighs, and settles in to chill there on the toilet for the rest to follow suit. 

Remus strolls in rather easily a good minute into Sirius’ near-meditative state, smirks at Sirius sitting there twiddling his thumbs, and heads past him to reach behind the shower curtain to run the taps. Sirius ties his hair up into a high bun, waits until he’s pretty sure he can make it the four steps into the tub without an issue, and gets in behind Remus, insisting he stay in front of him so Sirius can have a better shot at keeping his hair dry. 

Given that Remus has a bit more drying off to do than he does after getting out, Sirius figures he can put his free hands to use while Remus is a little busy tackling the mop on top of his head with a towel. He ties his towel around his waist and steps in close to Remus, setting his left hand on Remus’ waist to let him know he’s there and standing on the tips of his toes to leave a quick kiss atop Remus’ towel covered head. 

“I’ll start a pot, yeah?” he offers.

“Careful,” Remus chides, voice muffled. “I could’ve whacked you.” 

“That’s what the hand was for, dear,” Sirius says sweetly, heading for the door. He swivels half around as he gets out into the hall. “That a yes or a no for tea?”

“Resounding yes,” Remus affirms, pulling the edge of his towel up so he can peek out from underneath it, a smile aimed at him. 

Sirius heads back to the room with that, going for his duffel to pull out a new pair of briefs. He leaves his towel in the hamper, shimmies into the briefs, and slides the top drawer shut to get into the second one. 

He pulls a shirt out from the second drawer and moves over to the bureau as he pulls it on, snatching his deodorant off of it. “Is it an oolong day, d’you think?” he asks as he reaches underneath his shirt to apply it. 

Remus hums in question, then seems to register the question after a few beats. “I’m hoping it is,” he sends back. 

“Then it is one,” Sirius returns, putting the stick back in place. 

He leaves the room and crosses over to the kitchen, getting the kettle heating first off. He pulls the tin of tea down from the cupboard before squinting up at his own options, debating whether a dark roast or a medium one is more his style at the moment, and ends up going with the latter in the end; he’d like a good kick-start after wiping himself out. 

Sirius gets Remus’ tea steeping so it’ll do its thing while Sirius works his own cup out. When his is finished, he looks over toward the bathroom and finds Remus hanging his towel from his shoulders as he sizes up the state of his hair in the bathroom mirror, and brings both of their cups to the island, taking a seat on the kitchen side of the island and pushing Remus’ cup toward the other side of it. 

He settles in, hooking his feet around the bar going underneath his stool and smiling to himself as he lifts his mug to his mouth, finding the sight of a supremely nude Remus working at taming a particularly uncooperative batch of curls in his fringe quite an endearing sight. 

Sirius takes an easy first sip, at least until Remus’ phone rings out yet again, and that half-startles him into swallowing his mouthful of coffee. “Popular bloke,” he says of it, reaching over to swivel Remus’ screen to face him and finds a facetime call trying to get through. “Tu maman.” 

Remus looks sidelong at him, his hands frozen at his fringe. “I’ll call her back?” he raises, looking down at himself. 

“Remus,” Sirius sends him from the island. “Answer for your mother.” 

“I’m a bit compromised, Sirius,” Remus returns. 

“I’ll talk to her ‘til you’re clothed, then,” Sirius offers.

Remus turns back to the mirror with an even laugh, which really just has Sirius feeling as if he’s been challenged. He pulls the phone closer to him, tips it to lay titled, and presses to take the call, a window popping up on Remus’ screen showcasing a side-view of Hope kneeling somewhere in the great outdoors and appears to be digging, if Sirius’ observation skills are up to par, but he’s a bit distracted by the summery feel of her black rounded-out sunglasses and hot pink sunhat. 

Hope startles when she looks over. “Ohh—” she says, putting her smiling face on a tilt. “You’re not my son.”

“Not quite,” Sirius says, absolutely seeing Remus flail his arms around like a windmill in the background and choosing to focus on the screen instead. “Are you digging?” 

“I am,” Hope returns. “Hoping to get a flowerbed growing out here.” 

“Out back?” Sirius asks, lifting his mug to his mouth with his left hand. 

Hope nods, lifting her freehand to brush a flyaway hair out of her face, showcasing a lime green rubber glove on that’s covered in dirt from digits up to the fingertips, and it’s an amazing coordination of vibrant colours, overall; Sirius can’t get enough of it. “I’ve already fixed up the front, so the back seemed appropriate to do next,” she offers. 

“Love the look,” Sirius says, circling his right hand around the vicinity of the screen.

Hope lets out a quick, summery laugh to boot. “The sun’ll move behind the house eventually, but for now I’m a bit exposed,” she says, putting her digging tool down. “Did you stay overnight?” 

“I sure did,” Sirius chimes. “I haven’t broken in, either; Remus is here, he’s just in the loo.” 

“The loo or the Louvre?” Hope checks. 

“First one,” Sirius answers. 

“Well, I just never know anymore, do I,” she says. 

“No, fair enough,” Sirius offers, beaming behind his mug.

Hope faces the screen, moving off her knees to sit more comfortably. “Well, how are you, then?” 

“I’m great,” he says. “What’s going in the garden?” 

Hope puts out a bright, closed-mouthed laugh. “I don’t think we can call it a garden yet,” she says, so very Remus-like that Sirius needs a second to appreciate it fully. “Hydrangeas mostly, I’m a beginner yet.” 

There, Sirius does chance a flicker of a glance up at Remus, who’s on his way to his room when he gives a Sirius good-natured eye roll. “Well, if this is anything like your knitting skills, then I have to assume you’re keeping a green thumb from me,” he says, gaze back on Hope.

“Oh, have you seen my work?” Hope says, playing along. 

“I have,” Sirius says. “I've used your quilt as a blanket many a time, in fact. Impressive work, I was sure he bought it somewhere and was hurt when I found out there was only one of its kind.” 

Hope smiles and puts out an impeccable huff, and Sirius is the resident expert on good natured huffs. ”Well, I’m glad if it’s being put to good use,” she says, waving him off. 

“Use?” Sirius returns. “I want it for myself, but I don’t think Remus would let me take off with it, the way he hordes that thing.” 

“Always so chilly, that one,” she says of it. 

“Even in summer,” Sirius raises. “Does he get that from you?” 

“Oh, no no,” Hope says. “That’s from his gran, she couldn’t wear short-sleeves in July.” 

Remus makes a quick reappearance, clothed and all, to afford himself some dignity. “Alright, I’m not that bad off,” he manifests, crossing the flat. 

“Yet,” Sirius says, under his breath. Remus raises his left hand and places the bird directly in front of Sirius’ face as he passes by him on his way to get his tea.

“Hi hon,” Hope chimes. 

“Hi mum,” Remus echoes, pausing to take a quick sip of his tea before nodding his approval and turning from the counter. “Did you ring before?” 

Hope hums a denial. “No, not me,” she says. 

Remus hums a pondered note, shrugs once, and moves up on Sirius’ right to squeeze into the frame, and the difference in their heights with Sirius sitting and Remus standing tall and slouching a bit brings a snort out of Sirius. “Do you want the seat?” he asks, moving halfway out of it. 

Remus shakes his head around a mouthful of tea, looking quite fine where he is, and Sirius remains frozen in time with it really not computing, but it clicks after Sirius sits himself back down as Remus looks at the screen again; if Remus’ forehead is out of the frame, so is his scar. 

Remus smirks Hope as he swallows, lowering his mug. “That _is_ quite the look you’ve got, mum.” 

“It’s hot out here,” Hope defends. 

“I like it,” Sirius chimes in. 

“He does, he’s not even kidding you,” Remus tacks on pragmatically. “He’s going to go out and buy a pink sun hat tomorrow now.”

“Today, even,” Sirius offers, folding his hands over his mug. “Haven’t decided yet; the world’s my oyster.” 

Hope waves the both of them off with a great huff. “What have you got your mobile on?” Remus asks. 

Hope brightens with the topic switch, Sirius has a feeling. “Oh, I bought a rock to go out here.” 

“Did you?” Remus asks, smiling. 

“I did,” Hope affirms, picking up her mobile to showcase a modest boulder. “There’s also a little bird bath over there, see?” 

Hope turns the screen to face a much bigger bird bath in comparison to said boulder a little ways away. "Little?” Remus returns, an amused face on. 

“Oh, you know what, honey?” Hope returns, turning the frame back on her. “That’s it, I don’t have an excuse; I just wanted a big bath for the birds.” 

“That’s a fine excuse right there,” Sirius allows. 

Hope tips her head to him for the approval, sitting her phone back down on the rock. “How are you, hon?” she asks, sitting back on the heels of her palms, and Sirius cannot get over how Remus’ mum is just chilling in a garden. 

Remus quickly swallows the sip he mistakenly went for. “I’m alright,” he nods, smiling big. 

“Better than, I’d wager?” Sirius raises. Remus’ left eye twitches as he side-eyes him, and somebody’s mind is in the gutter, but it’s not Sirius’, he can say that much. “The interview, you dink.” 

Remus lights up bright and looks to Hope head-on, his whole body going lax. “OK, there’s news, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so don’t get too excited _for me_ yet either, alright?” he prefaces, and Hope crosses her right hand over her heart, her lips pressed together firmly. “I got a reply about a potential job while I’m gone—” 

Hope sends out a trill, making Sirius duck his head as Remus cuts off. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, shaking it off and resuming with a much more placid stare, but it does nothing to hide the genuine enthusiasm radiating off of her even as she picks a detached, conversational tone to change to. “What’s the job, then?” 

“Same company, so exactly the same kind of work,” Remus provides. “The only issue is, he wrote in the reply that he’s looking for twenty five_or more_ a week.” 

Hope blinks there. “I thought that was around what you work now?” she raises. 

Remus tilts his head back and forth once, humming around another sip of tea. “I could make twenty-five work if I had to, but I couldn’t do more than that,” he says. “If he’s looking for a full-timer, then—” 

“What did I say?” Sirius cuts in, popping Remus in the side. 

Remus pushes a solid breath out his nose, looking at Sirius to quiet down. “I’m just saying, there’s a possibility he could have to pick someone else who can do more hours,” he reiterates, looking back at Hope again. “I just want everyone to be prepared in case it doesn’t work out, but he does want an interview, which I’ll say I’m a little surprised about.” 

“I’m not too surprised myself,” Hope puts in, “and I may not prepare for that on my end, so you know.” 

“Well, I can’t make you, can I?” Remus raises. “Only, don’t go so far in the other direction that I end up getting jinxed by proxy. 

Hope gives out a gentle laugh. “Not too worried about that either,” she says, her eyes flickering over to Sirius with an amused expression on, and whether it's meant to be shared with him specifically or it's more due to the fact that he happens to be there, Sirius doesn't much care for the distinction right about now. 

Remus shifts his weight on his feet. "Well, thank you," he says, bringing his mug up higher and holding it just in front of his chin — protection, Sirius figures. It's a good thing he made that tea. 

"Where's this shop, then?" Hope asks. 

"Not far from where my faculty building is," Remus says, and he sure is choosing his words carefully; this little glimpse into what Remus speaks about with her and how he does it is more gripping to Sirius than a thriller, "which is just another reason why I think it might be too convenient for it to just all work out perfectly." 

"Now, honey, sometimes," Hope starts, "things turn out to be convenient." 

"Mum," Remus pleads. 

"She's got a point there, Remus," Sirius puts in, lifting his coffee to his mouth loftily. 

"Yes, thank you," Hope extends to him. 

"You guys," Remus implores. "I have to keep my hopes simmering at a notch below medium or the entire pot's going to boil over." 

"I'm only saying, hon," Hope says. "We just did this a few weeks ago with me, could we try that again from this side of the line?" 

"Mum, you were guaranteed the job," Remus returns. "It's different for me." 

Hope lets out a weighty sigh. "There's a whole lot of me in him, you see," she says to Sirius, adorned. "I'd hoped his dad's sensibilities would've carried over more, but it is what it is."

Sirius nods sagely as Remus goes for a rather large gulp of tea in his peripheral. "He's more a perfect balance of the two of you, really," he says. "From what I've noticed, at least." 

Remus smacks his lips after swallowing. "I've yet to swindle myself a job without even having an interview, so I don't know that Dad's sensibilities would help out here," he says. "And speaking of, can we hold off on telling him until I know more?" 

"Oh, Remus, he'd be chuffed to hear it," Hope returns. 

"I don't doubt," Remus says. "He'll also be chuffed about checking in many times to see if I've heard anything or why I haven't heard anything, as if I wouldn't already be worrying about it from all the way over here as is." 

"Oh, alright," Hope relents, waving her hands. "You know he means well with it." 

Remus hums around a chosen sip of tea, and Sirius has a feeling Remus does know it, despite what it does to his already complicated brain. "How are you, then?" he asks after a few beats. "Was there something specific?" 

Hope piques. "Oh, err," she says, looking between the two of them idly. "Well, I more had an interesting call with Doreen, but it's nothing that can't wait." 

"I mean," Sirius puts in, "I don't know her any, so pretend I'm not here if it helps." 

""Oh, I don't know that I want to—" Hope starts, cutting off there to find a word choice, it looks. 

"Gossip," Remus offers, smiling behind his mug. 

"Yes, that," she tacks on, gesturing a hand at him. 

"Believe me, he's fine with gossip," Remus says, tossing his left thumb toward Sirius. 

"He's right, I'm all about it," Sirius assures. 

Hope looks caught with her hand in the cookie jar, a little rouge around the cheeks, too, which is just lovely to get to watch. "Her and Phil are just having a bit of a rough patch, but it's OK, we'll just move on from that," she offers decidedly. 

"Oi, well, you can't stop with just that," Remus says, to Sirius' great appreciation. 

"No, no, no," Hope says decidedly. "We'll talk some other time, OK?"

"Fine," Remus sounds out. "How's dad?" 

"He's out front tinkering as we speak," Hope provides, looking quite happy to have moved on. 

Remus nods circumstantially. "What now?" 

"The lawnmower," Hope replies. 

Remus puts his head on a tilt. "What's happened to her?" 

"'Her?'" Hope quotes, her mouth twitching. 

"That's his doing," Remus says. "He's called his motorcycle a her since the very beginning." 

Sirius nods brightly. "She's a beaut." 

Hope huffs a laugh. "Well then, _she_ has been giving him some trouble lately, but he won't think about replacing her until he's had a good thousand tries at fixing her himself," she tacks on. Remus nods rather easily, so Sirius has to assume that elaboration was for his own clarity. "And apart from that, there's a wicked bug going around the shop that I'm a bit nervous he'll be the one to catch it next, but do you think he's listening to me and being more careful?" 

Sirius can't say either way, so that bit must be for Remus. "Oh, never in his life," he says, rudimentary. "What sort of bug?" 

"Flu, sounds like," Hope says. "It's a powerful one, though; Bubba's been out sick for a couple days now because of it." 

Remus sucks a breath in through gritted teeth, while Sirius inadvertently snorts, taking both Lupin's eyes and putting them on him. "Sorry," he says, smiling sheepishly. "That's just a great name." 

"You're going to love him," Remus assures. 

Sirius brightens up like a supernova. "I get to meet him?" he raises. 

"Absolutely," Remus says. "You wanted the full tour, no?" 

"The fullest," Sirius stresses. 

"It isn't much," Hope puts in. "Just your regular garage, but Bubba is the main attraction." 

"Sounds like it," Sirius returns. 

"I'm sorry he's out sick, though," Remus says, bringing them back. "That can't be easy on him at all."

Hope shakes her head agreeably. "He's sixty-two," she extends, her gaze on Sirius. 

"Oh, yikes," Sirius returns, putting a grimace on. 

"five foot two, and strong as an ox, though," Remus puts in. 

"The last I heard, he was stuffed up but still up and about at home, so I was thinking of bringing some soup over later on, check up on how he's doing," Hope says. 

Remus gives a warning hum. "Careful when you're over there, mind." 

"I'll be very," Hope assures. 

"Mm, might want to take Neocitran along while you're at it," Remus puts up. "If he's still stuffed up, that is." 

Hope gives a pondering hum. "I thought you deemed that useless?" she raises. 

"Oh, no, for me it doesn't do a fucking thing," Remus affirms, and Sirius almost feels he has to dive out of sight after that F-bomb was uttered, but Hope merely lets out a quick, easy laugh, and _that_ is, quite frankly, the furthest reaction Sirius would've ever received uttering a curse in front of his own mother, "but I have on record that it does work for some lucky people." 

Hope piques, giving a plain look of interest. "What are your sources?"

"Secondhand testimony," Remus calls it, tossing his thumb toward Sirius again. "I gave March's cold to this one and after he finished whinging about my transgression—"

Sirius cuts in there, calling for reason. "Alright, listen, Hope," he says, leaning his head over to block her view of Remus'. "I never got sick, truly never, until this swot came around." 

Hope smirks, nodding knowingly. "That's his plight in life," she says. "Mind, you were due for one, strolling around in the late December cold in nothing but a light jacket, and not even a scarf, either; you made me feel cold just looking at you." 

Remus laughs behind Sirius' head. "Get fucked." 

"Remus Jean Lupin," Sirius sounds out, sweeping a hand underneath Remus' phone screen. "Your mother is right there." 

"She's heard it before," Remus instills. 

"Many, many times," Hope puts in. 

"I told him the same thing, by the by," Remus says airily, bringing them back around. "He went the entirety of fall and almost all of winter without so much as a sniffle, and then when he finally did catch cold, he had one single pouch and bounced back by the next morning; Bubba has that kind of luck, I'd wager, so bringing a few pouches over in hopes they'll be of some help couldn't hurt." 

Hope nods. "You've made your case," she deems. "Any other suggestions while we're at it?" 

"Keep a few pouches on hand for when dad does get it," Remus offers plainly. 

Hope lets out a bleak sort of laugh. "We are on borrowed time, aren't we?" 

Remus' phone begins ringing out a low-volume version of his standard ringtone, _Dorcas_ name popping up on screen. "Oh, mum, can we pick up another time?" he asks. 

Hope pulls her face into a deep frown. "So soon?" 

Remus looks sheepish about the conversation coming to a halt. "Dorcas is calling and we keep missing each other." 

Hope brightens up, the actual supernova in the proverbial room, and Sirius puts on as routine a farewell smile as he can muster. "You tell her I know the feeling," she hints. 

Remus gives her an imploring look. "I've been working like mad, mum." 

Hope lifts her hands easily. "I know, I'm just saying, you've got to make time—" 

"OK, I'll talk to you soon, say hi to dad," Remus runs her off, picking the phone straight up.

"Have a good one," Sirius offers, but he doesn't think that went through before Remus dropped the call. 

Sirius chooses a certifiably bad time to drop his smile, he realizes, when he notes the ringing continuing. He looks up at Remus, feeling rather on display being studied the way he is. "You're not going to get that?" he hints, gesturing to the phone held tightly in Remus' free hand. 

Remus shakes his head, his eyes the size of dinner plates. "No, I'll just call her back," he says, his voice coming out much more quietly. "I'm really sorry — I shouldn't have said who; just, I don't know how I keep putting my foot in my mouth whenever we've got something good happening."

"Hey?" Sirius says, putting his mug down on the island and turning in his stool, tugging Remus closer to him by the belt loops of his jeans. "No, you shouldn't have to police everything you say; I don't want you doing that any more than you're already doing." 

Remus slips his hips into the space between Sirius' knees, standing in front of him, and if his hands weren't a little full, Sirius has a feeling he'd be being touched, so he takes both Remus' tea and phone off his hands in case he's right about that; as much as he wants to keep cool, he needs that sort of contact right then. 

He's not wrong, Sirius is happy to report, carefully moving Remus' mug around the back of Remus to lean into the embrace, shutting his eyes as Remus sets his chin overtop of Sirius' head. "I know how awful this is going to sound, but I was sure you didn't quite believe me, but that was not the way I wanted you to see what I was saying," he says, forlorn. 

Sirius takes in a deep breath, speaking once he feels ready to take on optimism as a concept. "OK, so, maybe she light up at the sound of her name," Sirius allows, pulling back to look up at Remus. "So what? OK? She really likes me, I can tell."

Remus lets out a long puffed breath, the closest he's sounded to a horse. "Oh, she loves you," he says. "And that does make this whole thing a little easier to swallow." 

"Hm?" Sirius hums, wanting to hear a bit of optimism from Remus' own lips. 

He nods, a quiet smile on as he lifts his right hand to swipe his thumb under Sirius' chin. "I've always hoped they'd like who I ended up with," Remus says, simplistic in concept, simplistic in nature. 

Sirius tips his head to give Remus hand a quick peck. "And," he starts, tugging again on Remus' belt loops with his forefingers, "one thing I've had the pleasure of noting already but has been greatly remind over this very conversation is Hope does _not_ want to come off rude in any sense of the word, and I think that's only going to help with the adjustment period, don't you?"

Remus lifts his shoulders, but his gaze is so uncompromisingly on Sirius that it doesn't look like a helpless shrug so much. "I hope so," he allows. "I want this not to be a horrible experience, for either of us." 

Sirius blinks, uses Remus' belt loops as leverage to pull on, and stretches up to press a kiss to Remus' lips. "That's the sweetest thing you could have said," he puts down, "but literally any reaction would be yards better than my parent's, and who knows, maybe your mum will go so far the other way that she starts hanging rainbow flags from the porch for all neighbours to see what a supportive and sweet mum she is to that queer son of hers, hm? Wouldn't that be something?"

Remus' puts his lips into a line. "I'd run straight off a cliff." 

"OK, well, let's just hide all the flags from her in that case," Sirius reiterates. 

"Deal," Remus says. "I don't want a fuss in either direction, I just want them to know you the way I do." 

Sirius tugs the right side of his lower lip between his teeth. "Maybe not in all the ways you know me," he raises. 

"No," Remus assures, nodding firmly. "Let's settle for being happy that I'm happy." 

Sirius grins, taking back his his supernova status again. "Deal," he says, reaching to slide Remus' mug onto the island by his own and sticking the phone a little further away from them. With his hands newly freed, Sirius pushes off of the stool underneath him, hooks his legs in around Remus' hip, and when he's sure he won't go flying to the floor out of lost balance, slips his arms over and around Remus' shoulders, hanging off of him like a sloth. 

Remus drops his hands to hold them underneath Sirius' thighs, not looking the least bit bothered by being a human bean stock. "How long 'til you have to go in?" Sirius asks. 

Remus turns the both of them on his heel, checking the time displayed on the stove. "Not for another hour and then some," he relays. 

"Mm," Sirius trills, loving that news. "We could watch something 'til we have to head out?" 

"Are you leaving with me?" Remus asks, walking them out of the kitchen. 

"Might as well, I'm going that way anyway," Sirius returns. 

Remus hums easily in reply, leaning in to leave a quick kiss on Sirius' lips. "I like it," he says of the plan. "What about that one?" 

Remus nods his head down and to the left, where Sirius finds Tango standing, looking rather enthralled with the two of them, Sirius sends out a short _pfft_. "I'll take him down first, then," he amends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just because sirius wants to keep the rest of the zumba tunes a surprise doesn’t mean you have to ;)
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28Co8b6KaRQk9GiVHQfpW1?si=VwlGww_RRq6VeqZe8wGUGw


	13. 13.

Later, after the dog's been walked and some telly's been watched, Sirius and Remus find themselves out front of Remus' building bickering on the sidewalk over whether it's necessary for Remus to be driven a few blocks over. Sirius' main argument: he's going that way anyway. Remus: it's just a few blocks, but in the end, Remus makes the ultimate sacrifice and gives in on letting Sirius drop him off at work. 

Sirius: 1, Remus: zero. 

Sirius pulls right up by Remus' storefront, hanging back while Remus maneuvers his legs around and off of Priscilla's bulk. "Thank you," he gives Sirius, half-begrudgingly no doubt. 

Sirius smiles like a summer's day as Remus unhooks his helmet and pulls it off of his head. "Bon chance," he offers, and Remus tips his head to him, tucking his helmet between his right arm and side. "Let me know how it goes, yeah?" 

"OK," Remus nods, pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose a little more. "I'm not sure I'll have much to update you on, but I can let you know I've nothing to report." 

"I'll take it," Sirius returns easily, readying himself to kick off the sidewalk and making a show of looking behind him so Remus will see he's a responsible driver. 

Remus gives a little wave before Sirius pulls out onto the road, en route to his own shop. Even with the ride there he'll be early for his shift, but one James Potter did selflessly offer up his Saturday afternoons on a more permanent basis, half to help Will out, half to keep Sirius' sanity locked in place, so his already being at the shop is a fine excuse for Sirius to head there a little early as is. 

There's a bit of a rush going through the place when Sirius gets in, but overtop of the commotion Sirius can decipher out Ben and Charlotte's heads up behind the counter and that James is nowhere to be seen on the floor, leading Sirius to assume he's on break. Ben's a little too taken up at till to bother nodding hello to as he goes around the outside of the crowd waiting at the hand-off station to get up behind the counter, but he flashes Charlotte a quick grin in greeting as he passes her on bar to make for the hall to the back room. 

He heads down the it at an easy clip, figuring he'll drop his helmet off in back before bothering with trying to make a drink for himself, and hopefully by the time he makes it back up front the crowd will have thinned out some. Sirius rounds the corner to find James sitting at the staff table with a croissant on a plate in front of him, his phone in one hand and a multicoloured frap in the other, the complete traitor. 

"Disgusting," Sirius calls both him and the drink. 

James pops his head up and lets out a whoop at Sirius' appearance. "Could it be, is it he?" he puts out gravely. 

"It is me," Sirius echoes, playing along as he heads for the hooks to hang his helmet from one of them. 

Sirius certainly hopes that would be the last of their pretending like he's gone and skipped town, but James munches daintily on a bite of croissant and trills right on about it. "I didn't even think you'd still look the same." 

"Don't talk when you chew," Sirius retorts, heading back up front. 

He slips behind Charlotte to get over to the stacker of cups by the till, gives an easy hello to Ben over at the pastry case, and heads back to the bar with a large cold cup in hand, slipping in to push his wide array of various syrup pumps into his cup. 

"And there I thought it might be a calm shift," he muses. 

"I think you brought the crowd in with you," Charlotte mentions, underneath the whirring of the steam wand. 

"Impossible, it was already a madhouse when I walked in," Sirius says of it. 

"I'm just saying, it was quiet as a mouse five minutes before you strolled in here." 

"Of course it was," Sirius accepts, bending to open the fridge below the counter and pull out the pitcher of cold brew he made sure to brew the night before — for customers, sure, but more so he could have a cup for himself upon arrival. 

He pours it to his liking, puts the pitcher back in the fridge, and crosses over to cold bar for the icebox, scooping a light amount of ice atop it before reaching for a lid. He snags a straw on his way back toward the hall and makes himself scarce, heading into the back again. He pulls up a chair across from James, pulls his phone and pack out of his back pockets in turn and leaves them on the table, pops his straw against the surface of the table and pulls the rest of the paper off, and takes his drink with him as he leans back on the heels of his chair while James continues to munch delicately on his croissant, which is a surefire sign Sirius is in for it. 

"So, quick question," he puts up. "Are you planning on ever coming home or have you simply conducted a midnight move without my knowing it?" 

Sirius makes a face around his straw. "I haven't moved out," he says before taking a good, long sip. 

"Sure seems like you have," James says. "You took the dog away and I'm willing to say it, that's the biggest transgression of all." 

"Oh, mhm?" Sirius returns politely. 

"Yes, yes it is," James asserts. "You can't just show me what true joy looks like, and then whisk him away to Remus' tower before I even get the chance to _enjoy_ said joy; you're a regular villain." 

Sirius pulls his mouth off his straw. "If I let you take the dog for a night, will this stop happening?" he asks, circling his free hand between the two of them. 

"It'll be a start," James returns at once. 

"Fine, come take him, then," Sirius offers. "How difficult was that?" 

"'Course, wouldn't mind any if you also came along with him," James tacks on airily. 

"You know what I find the most interesting part about this?" Sirius raises, just as airy. "If I were out and about, having nights on the town or coming back to ours every night, leaving Remus to deal with all of this on his own, I know for a fact you'd have some real hot takes about that behaviour, but here you are, giving me constant shit over sticking by him; I truly cannot win with you." 

"I've never once suggested to leave him to deal with it, but there should be a balance here, Sirius," James sends him, the game of cheery disposition over apparently. 

"I've been balancing," Sirius sounds out. "I came to every practice last week, not my fault or Remus' if I had to push the start time back so I could watch him, but I still made time for it and memorized every routine to a T, did I not?" 

"That's not the point, Sirius," James returns. "I _knew_ you were going to go so far the other way that we'd probably never see you, hence the Zumba idea in itself, and what are you doing now? So you learned the routines, you practice at Remus', and that's it, then; we'll see you once at practice once a week and that's if you can make it." 

Sirius lets his head fall back listlessly. "What do you want from me?" he sounds out. "I'm still teaching Dora, I'm showing up to my shifts, I'm making to every meeting with Andromeda, I've come to practices, and I'm keeping my word to Remus that I'll stick the fuck around through all this; I'm doing literally everything I possibly can to keep things as normal as I can be, and you stand to show me even a morsel of pride in the fact that I'm actually fucking—" 

"No, see, this is the problem," James cuts in. "What's the difference between this week and last; we haven't caught a glimpse of you since Sunday's class—" 

"I need you to quit saying _we_, when this is clearly all you," Sirius denies. "Lily understands, Pete even does finally, it's literally just you still lodging complaints." 

"Fine, you want transparency?" James raises. "You're right, I haven't seen you in days, vague 'he's fine, we're fine, everything's fine' texts — few and far between, I might add — they're not nearly enough and don't actually count as keeping me in the loop; I'm the last to find out about anything to do with this, you know that, right?" 

Sirius hums skeptically, aiming a squint across the table. "I'd say you and Pete are about even," he delivers, sending James into a frenzy of frustrated arm waving. "His attacks have doubled since last week, James! Now's not the time to go bar-hopping with you." 

"Right, because that's what I was suggesting," James retorts. 

"Well, who the fuck knows with you," Sirius returns. "You've been acting a real prat for weeks; maybe there's more than one reason I'm not negging Remus to come round right now, you ever think about that?" 

"Oh, now you're shielding him from me?" 

"Not at first, but the prat suit fits."

"He doesn't need a fucking babysitter—"

"I'm not having you berating him with complaints he can't fucking—" 

"Lily _told me_ he's having milder attacks," James shoots at him. "Hell, she said he powered right through one _while_ making drinks, how is that not progress? Sure, they're coming on more now, but if he's able to work through some of them, I don't see why you can't take a night off once in awhile." 

Sirius lets his chair fall forward, waving his own arms around in the air like he's flagging down a rescue chopper. "Have - you - met - Remus?" he accentuates. "At this point it's up in the air whether he's going to get slapped with a mild one or a rough one, and that inability to fortune tell has thrown an already anxious bloke for a loop; he doesn't know what he's in for at the start of one and I can't be off mucking about with mates when he needs me right now more than ever."

"I don't know if he does," James returns. 

Sirius blinks once, putting his head on a tilt. "Well, go on, then," he goads, eyes wild. "Say how you really feel." 

Sirius has brought whole persons to their knees with this very Look, but not James; he doesn't bat an eye, only shrugs lightly. "He's the reason you even said yes to Zumba, and I'm having a difficult time imagining that his reasons for that was entirely based off of not getting stuck in the middle of us," he surmises. "I think he wants you keeping as busy as you can, and I think you just like playing house more." 

"Oh, astute as ever," Sirius sends him audaciously. 

"I think I'm right," James says, sitting back in his chair with an air of finality. 

"No, you don't get to drop that like a mic and act like you just decimated me, you just don't," Sirius says. "I could have told you that myself; I love playing house with him." 

"Well, I'm glad you're keeping up with the class but I'm allowed to miss my best friend, Sirius," James snaps. "Me missing you doesn't immediately equal out to me not giving a shit about him and I'm sick of you acting like it does; I want him back at ours, too, but it's real fucking clear he's not interested, so, what, then? I just get neither of you?" 

Sirius shoves his drink on the table to free up both his hands to properly drag them over his face, breathing in for five seconds, letting it out. "OK," he says. "Tomorrow, after class, we can drive by Remus' place, pick up Tango, and I will come back to ours for some quality us time, alright?" 

"Hm?" James presses, like Sirius really needs to repeat it. 

Sirius leans in and takes a good quarter out of his drink. "Yes," he says after it, let James have this if he so needs it. "I'm not staying overnight, though—" James cuts in with a grandiose scoff, but Sirius practically invented those, "—sorry, pal, you can't ship the two of us as hard as you did and then turn around and act surprised when you see I'm all in, so you can fuck right off with that." 

James sends him a round of blaring retching noises while Sirius mimes a jerk off motion with his right hand frankly. "And, if I get a single 911 text, I'm leaving the room to assess the situation and if I have to run, we can reschedule our boys time," Sirius tacks on. "Those are my terms, take it or leave it." 

"What happens if it's a mild one versus a rough one?" James asks. 

"He writes 911, and a number that correlates to the Lup scale," Sirius details, pausing when James blinks a good three times in succession, "it's an inside joke, don't worry about it — the point is, I know how to decode that; if the number is lower than a five I can ring him and talk to him and chances are he can power through it and my assistance is less necessary, if it's above a five then we're getting into rough waters and I've got to split." 

Sirius won't pretend any that James being fully enraptured in the grave details isn't a welcomed sign. "If it's a really bad one, then how is able to even type the numbers out?" he asks. "I'm talking Ugly Pot bad." 

"We've been practicing," Sirius says, flashing a smile. "He can do it with his eyes closed if it's under a five, but if it's up higher, he just has to text gibberish and I'll know he's in trouble." 

James puffs out a breath. "You're really locked and loaded." 

"Yeah, we have to be," Sirius says. "_I_ have to be; he's a pretty big deal." 

James flattens his face out. "Like you need to tell me that." 

Sirius pulls his top teeth over his lower lip. "Sometimes I feel I do," he says after it, and then he has to grapple with the morose face James adopts. "Look, it's fine, OK? For what it's worth, I've missed you, too." 

James lifts his left hand and clasps it over where his heart apparently remains. "See, how hard was that to say?" 

Sirius fumes. "If that's all you wanted to hear, you should have just said it and not come for my list of priorities—" he stops short, breathes in deep, out again, and starts over. "Alright, do we have a deal?" 

"For tomorrow?" James checks. 

"That, yeah," Sirius says. "We may as well take advantage now, because once the shrooms are here, Remus' dose day is going to be Sundays, so let's use up a Sunday evening like the old days while we can, hm?" 

James lifts his hands and shakes his fists in what looks to be complete cheer. "You have to convince him to come over for dose days," he instills. 

Sirius puts out a flat laugh. "Not going to happen," he says. "He's already chided me ahead of time because he knows as well as I do that I'm going to laugh the whole time, so I can guarantee that he's not going to want an even larger audience." 

James puts out an imploring noise. "I love high Remus." 

Sirius sits forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on the table and subtly tugging on his right earlobe. "Not that you deserve it after acting such a fool lately," he prefaces, "but I'm willing to share with you my two-week plan going forward if you want to hear it and discover the relevancy of it to this very topic."

"Give it," James bids at once. 

"Alright," Sirius says, dropping his right hand from his earlobe and clasping his hands in front of him on the table diplomatically. "I have no doubt in my mind that Remus will come back to ours in time, but it's going to take some baby steps to get him there. You can't just snap your fingers and expect him to sort everything out at once, I've tried it, it doesn't work; it's a process, not a race — with me so far?"

"Well, when you're speaking so slowly I don't know how I wouldn't be," James replies on beat.

Sirius fights a smile from showing. "My first item on the docket is to just get Remus out more often, not just because he's got work, but because it's a nice day out and he should enjoy it," he delivers. "Now, that's easier said than done when he's just a tad afraid of spooking people — strangers, coworkers, friends alike, so I want to start small. In another weeks' time, we'll have shrooms upon us, we'll have him on a weekly dosing schedule, we'll be attacking these things from two sides, we'll have a better understanding of his triggers by then, and once I've branched him out and worked him out of his apartment's radius and have assured him that we'll have a care-package at ours ready in case he gets one there, and I'm confident that he'll agree to start coming over again, and then, maybe you can be present for a dose day. How's that sound?" 

Sirius didn't know seal-clapping would come at the end of his detailing, but he can say for certain one James starts doing it that it's precisely the sort of reaction he should have been going for. "But it won't be tomorrow," Sirius stresses, tapping down on the urge to smile yet again. 

James sends him another scoff, but it's smaller and that's certainly something. "That's your favourite fucking phrase right now," he observes. 

"Well, get used to it," Sirius offers, unapologetic about it. "Remus has really come around on the shrooms debacle, but it took a lot of initial convincing that he won't end up laying in the gutter half-dead because of them, so it's going to take the first couple of doses for him to agree that it's such a weensy little trip, and once he does, I think he'll ease up on the no-audience rule." 

James lifts his hands quizzically. "What is with this prudish energy I'm sensing from him?" 

"Sensing?" Sirius returns plainly. "I just told you he was initially prudish about it; you're not an oracle."

James lifts a hand for silence. "Listen, I have watched that bloke take a toke so forceful, it'd have flattened me if I'd attempted it," he stresses. "I have watched him spend fifteen solid minutes making a crane to perfection out of a sheet of aluminum foil at our kitchen table — he was dedicated. I have heard him recite a soliloquy about how difficult it is for him to take the order of a person whose head is too big for their body. I have watched him struggle with the screen door, so much that he gave up and pushed the whole screen halfway out to push down on the handle from the outside—" 

Sirius pushes forward and sets his forehead on the table, giving into and writhing through the current of rolling laughter coming out of him. "I'm just saying," James adds in, "it's a bit too late for him to start pretending he's a dignified now; I know what he's really like."

"Well, same here, but he was nervous about it," Sirius raises. "And I need you to know now that it's not going to be a huge trip for him; it's a gram and a half, so you can absolutely expect him to start firing off hot takes about just about anything, but he's not going to be seeing birds in the room." 

James sighs with gusto. "Why can't it be both?" he raises, to Sirius or the room they're in itself, hard to tell. 

"The goal isn't to get him blasted here," Sirius reminds him. "It's just another route in the curbing clusters saga." 

"But maybe eventually?" James raises, speaking quietly like it's delicate theorizing. 

"I wouldn't say no," Sirius offers. "I don't imagine he's going to hate the high once he's been through it, so just wait it out, and maybe one day we can all see some birds in the room with us." 

"I mean, one was enough," James maintains. "I don't know how I'm going to do if there are multitudes of them." 

"It's not going to be a fucking aviary unless you plan on devouring the whole bag all your own," Sirius returns through a laugh. "Let's tackle one thing at a time, hm? Tomorrow's a go?" 

James sends him a plain look. "I'll move some stuff around," he says, giving Sirius a sense of ease with it. "I motion you to come with to start looking at rings." 

"I figured that was coming down the line," Sirius replies. "Motion accepted." 

James puts out a satisfactory sigh as Sirius goes for a celebratory sip of his coffee. "Last thing," he puts in. "Mind passing it along to Remus that I might actually like a true answer back from him?" 

"Elaborate," Sirius requests around his straw. 

James does as bid. "I've reached out to him a-plenty to ask how he's doing, and all I get are vague answers." 

"James, he's a vague answer these days," Sirius implores. "Sometimes he's great, sometimes he's not; it depends on the day, and sometimes even the hour." 

"Well, I want to know that stuff, too," James says deftly, picking up his croissant that lay forgotten on his plate for a good while. "I don't like being waved off over texts just for asking how he's doing." 

"It's not personal, he probably just doesn't want to get into all of it" Sirius insists, looking round as footsteps sound in the hallway. David rounds the corner and Sirius simply turns back around, not caring whether he overhears. "If we go by the hour, he's actually doing really well, considering; he's on a phone interview this very second for work in the fall and I would call that tremendously brave with all he's got to deal with." 

James perks around a bite of croissant. "Mm?" he hums. 

Sirius nods brightly. "He and Lily rounded up a few shops in the area he'll be in for school and messaged the lot of them, and he's talking to his first choice right now, the stallion," he passes along, glowingly he's sure. "So, think good vibes and send them along, he'll be wanting all the luck he can scrounge up right about now, even though he doesn't need any outside help." 

James waggles ten spirit fingers in Sirius' direction amidst his mouthful. "Oh, and, get this," Sirius tacks on, "that manager's name is Will, too; how fucked is that?" 

James swallows hard. "Come off it," he returns, disbelief oozing off of him. 

"It's the truth," Sirius assures. "The French William, they call him." 

James looks positively charmed by the news. "We'll have to ask our Will if he's got a French clone out there—" 

"Are you two really just sitting back here?" David cuts in. 

"Looks that way, doesn't it," Sirius returns, not looking over his shoulder. 

"There's a massive line up there," David bats him. 

"I'm on break," James says, waggling the last bit of croissant he has to work through. "He's not even on yet." 

"He's on in three minutes," David retorts, typing loudly at the computer now, likely his employee code because of course he'd clock in early. 

"Hey, thanks," Sirius puts up. "I didn't even realize the time had come." 

"No, and you wouldn't," David returns. Sirius plucks his pack off of the table and shakes it, pulling one of the runners out and pushing out of his seat. Just as he's moving away from the table, however, his _Kiss Me_ rings out from the table's surface. "God, could you actually get more gay?" 

Sirius leans over to pull his phone off of the table. "Oh, it could get so much more gay around here," he says of it, heading for the back door and pressing to answer the call before the chorus ends. "Hi, just a sec, 'kay?" 

"Oi," David calls out. "You're on right now."

Sirius stops halfway out the door, aiming a stare of genuine wonder over at David, looming in the doorway of the backroom. "You're not actually like this, though, right?" he asks, against his better judgement, surely.

"What does that even mean?" David returns on a deadpan. 

"Like, the things you think and the things you say have to have at least some dissonance, right," Sirius reiterates candidly. "They just can't match up completely, otherwise what the fuck else are you here for than to just—" 

"I literally have no idea what you're spouting about," David cuts in. 

"Nothing," Sirius shouts, whipping the back door shut behind him. He presses his back against the door just in case; reflexes kicking in. He breathes long, steadying his focus against the bleary film in front of his eyes, and realizes his error after a long five seconds, clearing his throat quickly. "Sorry, everything OK?" 

"Sirius," Remus returns at once. 

"I'm OK," Sirius insists. 

There's too long a pause before Remus starts again. "I know you wanted to keep these two shifts to help out and that's really sweet of you," he prefaces, "but I don't like you going in there and hating it for another month." 

"I don't hate coming here," Sirius insists. "I just hate that guy." 

"I'm just trying to say that if you didn't see this through to the end, I think Will would have to understand," Remus tries again, and good fuck, is he always fucking trying for him. "You could totally put the blame on me, if you need to; I'll take the heat for it."

"Remus," Sirius says, eyes shut tight. "If you keep going I'm literally going to cave, and I just need you to tell me I can do it." 

"You can absolutely fucking do it," Remus returns. 

"Thank you," Sirius nods. 

"I just don't want you miserable there, that's all," Remus adds on. 

"I'm not, for the most part," Sirius offers. He opens his eyes, trains his gaze above him, willing himself to find it in him to speed this along even when he'd rather not. "I am on borrowed time out here, though; are you OK?" 

"Oh — no, I'm very good," Remus assures. "Sorry, I knew I was cutting it close but the call went on longer than I thought it would, but I got it." 

"The job?" Sirius blurts. 

"Yes, sorry; specifics are always good," Remus returns. 

"Stop saying sorry," Sirius implores, smiling wide. "How did you swindle that, you little sneak?" 

"I don't know," Remus whispers, like this is a secret between the two of them, and Sirius can keep a secret, that's cool with him. "I don't even remember the first half of the conversation, but he was fantastically Parisian, had such a bright, full laugh — it was like he laughed _in French_ which I never knew was a possible feat, but it is apparently, and must have made him laugh somewhere in there 'cause I apparently have so much intel about his laugh." 

"I'm on the edge of my seat here, so details are very welcome," Sirius assures, his smile breaking into a full grin. 

"I remember the last lap of it, though," Remus comes back in, "and he wants me to ring him again closer to the date I leave just to touch base again, and — that's it, really. I have a job?" 

"You have two jobs," Sirius raises it. 

"Not just you anymore," Remus plays along. 

"Just a pair of hustlers, us," Sirius calls them. 

Remus sighs — happily, Sirius notes. "OK, well, I won't keep you," he says, winding down. "I just wanted to tell you since you asked for an update, and you can absolutely say you were right here; I'll let you have that." 

"You just said it so well for me?" Sirius offers. 

Remus sends a short huff into the phone. "I'll see you later?" 

"Sure," Sirius returns. "Want to take our breaks together?" 

Remus gives a slight hum. "I still haven't rang Dorcas back," he says, another whispered secret. 

"Oh — then yeah, do that," Sirius instructs. 

"OK," Remus replies. "Maybe on a fifteen, though?"

"We'll talk," Sirius says, letting him off the hook for now. 

"Good luck in there, hey?" Remus raises. 

"I'll need it," Sirius returns, matter-of-factly. 

"I love you," Remus puts in right before the call drops, and that is all Sirius needs to gather up the drive to head back inside. 

It's a good thing he came in then, too, for he would have otherwise missed the sight of James filling up a spray bottle at the mop sink. He pauses at the sound of the door shutting, glances over his shoulder, and and in comes the justification for his actions. 

"I've already told him to leave you the fuck alone," he raises, "but if he doesn't, he's getting sprayed." 

"James," Sirius returns, charmed.

"Well, you didn't ask to get stuck working with Reg incarnate, and I don't know what kind of sick joke this is, but if this is the game we're in, I'll play," James assures easily, shutting the taps and twisting the cap of the spray bottle expertly. "Since he's about as clever as Reg was, I'm assuming we'll need to use this in less than five minutes, so once I go this can be all yours, but I wouldn't mind at all if—"

"Enjoy," Sirius allows, sweeping a gracious hand toward him before heading to the computer to clock in there. 

In totality, James has to use said spray bottle eleven wonderful times in retaliation to a lukewarm take from David's mouth before passing the bottle onto Sirius like the proverbial torch that it is and heading off at the start of the evening. Sirius sticks the bottle in the pocket of his apron, at the ready in case he'll need it — and he will, and it's very possible that the two of them may very well be in some hot water come Monday and Will's return to work from the weekend, but Sirius isn't going to be there, so that's not his problem, is it. 

One thing James didn't account for was Reg's resourcefulness, but Sirius saw a lot more of that than he did; can't be helped. Sirius is reminded of it when David appears to work out that if he spews at random, they'll be spraying all night and not a single task will get done, so instead, he saves up his various opinions about Sirius' work style, his lifestyle, and all that's in between and lets them out at various points throughout the night like tiny, sharp bombs, and those are the times Sirius walks all the way over to him and sprays him real good. Sirius doesn't plan on voicing this, but it's — fun isn't the word. Entertaining? That's more it. It's entertaining in the way it used to be. 

As entertaining as it is, Sirius isn't about to complain when the clock strikes closing time, and by that point Sirius has come to the conclusion that David must be fairly tuckered out for he hasn't had a bomb come his way for upwards of an hour at least. A surprise to Sirius; he didn't even lodge a pointed hum in his direction the moment Sirius started counting the till early, which is a feat in itself when that, for some reason, grinds David's gears to no end. 

Sirius closes down the till for good while David putts around putting the remaining dishes away without a single comment, and Sirius, though well aware this form of a truce will only last for tonight, is willing to bask in the relative silence while he still has it. He's given up on the dream of getting out early on Saturdays, it was a nice idea, but it's never going to happen, and truly, it is just so much easier to head out front for a post-work cigarette while riding out the last ten minutes.

Sirius heads back inside thirty seconds out, heads up behind the counter while swinging his helmet around to the left of him idly, and presses his code into till one before heading on to the alarm panel just off of the sales floor. He waits with his right hand up and ready to key in the code for David to hurry his arse up from the backroom, and checks the text that comes in while waiting there. 

_911 - 4_

Sirius swivels on his heel. "I'm out," he calls down the hall. 

"What?" David sends from back. 

"I'm going," Sirius returns. "Lock up yourself." 

He doesn't stick around long enough to hear what David's response is, but he stops to lock the door behind him since he's not a complete villain, thanks much. He crosses the parking lot and hops onto Priscilla, turning his key in the ignition and roaring her to life. 

There's some solace knowing Remus is sitting at a four, but the distinction between four and five isn't much right then. There's just enough of a freakish twinge of fear at the back of Sirius' neck as he rides and just enough calm coursing through him to get him to Remus' without driving too recklessly — Remus would have his head for that. 

On the way, he ramps himself up, breathes, reminds himself of his role here; he needs to be a quiet, but persistent presence while Remus waits it out; the last thing he needs to hear when he's in the middle of it is how it could be worse, and Sirius knows that well after being sent from the room Tuesday morning for not thinking before speaking that to an encumbered and very snarky Remus. It's all trial and error. 

He parks by Remus' building and heads up the path holding his helmet against his chest as he heads into the lobby. He takes the stairs two at a time and pulls his phone out, checking the time Remus' text came in, noting it for later, and clears the hall to Remus' door in an impressive amount of seconds. He stops there, puts his phone away and shakes himself out. He tries the door and finds himself relieved to be able to head right in, stepping inside the darkened flat at a quieter clip and leaving his helmet hanging from one of the hooks by the door; it's rote-memory at this point, he doesn't need much light to pull it off. 

He moves out of the entryway and blinks in the relative darkness in the main room save for the glow of the streetlights and thinks he sees a shadow along draped along the length of the couch. He moves closer, realizes there's a big dog sitting curled up at Remus' feet, pets Tango's head as he passes, and moves in the space between the coffee table and the couch, assessing the situation. 

He scans from left to right, Remus with his hot pink mask on — a good sign, a 5-hour boost sat on the table with the cap stewn aside — also good news. Sirius picks the boost up to make sure it's been emptied, celebrates the light weight of the small bottle in his hand, and leaves it on the table for now. He uses the back of the couch for leverage to get himself over and behind Remus, slipping in between him and the back of the couch and nestling up close. He sneaks his right arm around Remus' middle, both to give him a light squeeze and to lock Remus in place and avoid him going right off the edge of the couch, and tucks his feet alongside Remus underneath Tango, who simply lets him do that, the champ. 

Sirius shuts his eyes as Remus takes in a long, harried breath but opens them once Remus holds it in for slightly too long for comfort, and takes a big chance in shaking him just a bit so he'll quit that. 

"I just wanted one day," Remus puts out, his voice scratchy, bitter, listless. 

Sirius knows that Remus knows he's had days without, but he can't argue with it though he would like to, certainly; it'd have been nice if he didn't get one on a day that was truly one for the books. Sirius breathes out against the back of Remus' neck, places a kiss to the skin just in front of his lips, and hums his agreement. 

"When's your next day off?" Sirius asks, a while later. 

"Thursday," Remus answers monotonously, a few beats behind him. 

Sirius presses his lips to the back of Remus neck again, humming lightly in both reply and acceptance, making Plans already. 

\-- 

Thursday morning, after Sirius opens his eyes and greets the day ahead, commences the start of what Sirius has coined as their Great Gay Date Day, all rights reserved. First item on the docket: the wake, shake, and bake, but he needs Remus to be awake for that can commence. Having teased this day since first thing Monday morning, Remus seems none too surprised about being tapped awake, and wouldn't be when he’s been made well aware of the plans ahead over the course of the first half of the week. 

Remus has a sleepy but rather coy smile on as he rolls toward Sirius, settling on his right side and tucking his hands under the side of his face to prop his head up. Sirius takes a moment to appreciate the face he managed to get lucky enough to wake up next to, reaches up to pass his right thumb over Remus’ left brow, and even with the slight divot left of center where Remus’ scar is, it doesn’t take away from that face, nor does it take any of the historical contentment Sirius feels doing such a familiar act. 

“So, it’s up to you,” Sirius starts, “the wake part being out of the way, you can choose the standard shake and bake option, or we could opt for a little more variety and shuffle of the order around; make it a bake, shake, and bake again? Your decision.” 

Remus breathes in airily, giving a pondering look and then speaking rather decidedly. “Second option speaks most to me.” 

“Adventurous man,” Sirius offers. 

Remus lifts his shoulders easily. “I did warn you.” 

“That, you did,” Sirius chimes. 

“Pipe’s in the other room,” Remus offers, nodding once toward the open doorway. 

“Back soon,” Sirius returns, sliding out from under their shared sheet and tapering off to the living room. He has a quick look around the main room. “Where is it?”

“Table, last I saw,” Remus calls. 

Sirius heads around the side of the couch and spots it right where it was suggested to be, reaching to pluck it off of the table. Their supply sits not far from where the pipe lay and Sirius snatches the baggy up and brings it back to the room. 

An uncountable time later sees the both of them sweaty, sticky, and certifiably wiped out. Sirius lazes with his arms crossed over Remus’ chest and his chin resting on them, still getting the feeling back in his toes while Remus reaches for the pipe that was put on his bedside table for safe-keeping and lifts off his back a little in order to pull an astounding hit off of it. 

Sirius simply watches him sigh out the resulting cloud like the scene is gripping television or the like, but in his defense, Remus looks real good doing it. He seems satisfied with that for he holds the lighter out to Sirius along with the pipe in offering. Sirius uncurls his arms from underneath his chin and reaches up to take both, rather happy where he is for the moment with Remus’ knees bent and keeping Sirius’ lower half rather casually in place between his legs, and Sirius is certainly not about to complain about their positioning. 

Sirius props himself up on his elbows to pull off a decent haul, shooting a stream out to the right while Remus reaches over to push his clock over a little to better see the time from where he is. “Jesus, it’s one,” he puts out. 

Sirius squints up at him, leaving the pipe sitting on Remus’ chest with the lighter just by it. “That a bad thing?” he asks, voice hoarse. “Stage a lay-in was part of phase one plan, I remind you.” 

“Not — well, no, I do remember that,” Remus concedes, rubbing a lethargic hand over his face and smirking a laugh, looking down at Sirius with a quirk of a smile. “I was going to make a John and Yoko reference, saying if we were going to stage a lay-in, we really should have penned a tune from this very bed, called in a camera crew, a few reporters, and claim we’re having a lay in for peace in the world, but would that be low hanging fruit?” 

Sirius gives an amused noise, reaches up to drum out the very simplistic beat to _Give Peace a Chance _ into the wall behind Remus’ pillow, a more direct answer of no, not at all as far as Sirius is concerned. 

Tango borks three times in quick succession out in the main room. “And yet, no matter how long Remus and Sirius remained in bed, world peace would not be achieved,” Remus narrates sagely as Tango’s nails click clack along the floorboards. 

“They made it look so fucking easy; who were we to know?” Sirius returns, turning a head to shush Tango. “Should probably start phase two and take him soon, he’s a tad rambunctious.” 

Remus looks beyond Sirius and widens his eyes a little. “Don’t know what you mean,” he says. “Seems lethargic at best.” 

Sirius turns his head to where Remus’ gaze ends and finds Tango over by the island twirling around in a circle after his tail and barks out a laugh automatically, which really just makes Tango freeze on the spot and stare him down from where he is. Sirius freezes too, the standstill lasts about five seconds in total before Sirius makes a sudden move and sends Tango into an absolute frenzy before he gallops toward them. 

Sirius lets out a base level reaction which is really just more a light shriek than anything else, turns back toward Remus in a flash, and wiggles out of the confines of his legs to climb up his body, taking their sheet with him and pulling it over them. Remus only just manages to get the pipe out from between the two of them before Tango hits the bed on all fours and takes off running on it, nosing at the left side of Sirius’ makeshift shield at various spots in search of a weak link.

Sirius doubles down on his hold on the sheet, grinning down at Remus in stitches underneath him, and waits a few seconds before poking at the side of the sheet, snorting loudly as a gigantic snout shoves underneath the sheet. He pokes at the snooter since it’s there and he might as well, only that takes Tango’s already overwhelming energy well past a hundred and sends him scampering back before the dog simply scrambles on top of them and lays his full weight down. 

“OK, you win,” Sirius says, sandwiched between Remus and the dog. 

Remus puts out a charmed little noise, apparently quite fine with being squashed under two beings, but Sirius budges his shoulders against the weight over them until Tango shifts off of him and anchors down, hogging straight out over Sirius' ankles, but Sirius supposes that's what he gets. Sirius pushes himself up, plants his hands on either side of Remus’ head, and smiles down at him; a substantial layer of hair falls forward and lays around their faces, providing an extra barrier around the two of them, and Remus reaches up with his right hand to catch Sirius at his jaw, pulling him in for a kiss Sirius was quietly begging for.

Sirius responds to it with purposeful leisure, meeting Remus’ lips at a supremely unhurried pace and not letting up on that until Remus quickens the pace, leaving Sirius breathless and working to catch up with him. 

Sirius stills his lips entirely as a long, huffy sigh sounds from down near the foot of the bed. “Hard life, I know,” he says to the dog. 

Remus gives into a little stretch underneath him, smiles as he gives a noise of deep satisfaction, and settles in again, kiss-rouge lips inviting all over again, but if Sirius starts up another round, they really will be here for a lot longer. 

Sirius compromises and ducks his head to leave an open mouthed kiss on Remus’ lips. “Could keep this up in the shower, if you’re up for it?” he raises, pressing another quick peck to the tip of Remus’ nose. 

“Mm, mhm,” Remus replies, moving a lot quicker than recently advertised. 

They do spend a lot of time snogging in the shower, and look, if Remus’ cock wants to say hello again, Sirius can’t just leave it on read; that would be deplorable behaviour. No, he has absolutely no qualms about pressing him up against the tiles and rutting up against him until he’s as hard as Remus is, and once that’s done, there’s really nothing else for it than to see this second round through. 

Remus sets one hand splayed open in Sirius’ locks, curls the other around and splays it at the small of Sirius’ back, and scoots down a little, setting their heights up with the exact right positioning for wet, hot friction to take over and rocking Sirius’ hips up against his thrusts, 

Sirius leaves his left hand curled at the side of Remus’ hip, braces the shower wall behind Remus with his right hand, and searches blindly for Remus’ lips, whining against his lips as he rutts up against Remus with all he’s got. Remus grips at Sirius’ back as he ratchets up tight right as Sirius’ own body coils up tight, and the two of them ride through it at once, clutching at each other for purchase before they’re left gasping together against the shower wall. 

Sirius lifts his head after Remus lifts his hand from his hair a good, blinks three times before his vision comes back into focus, and takes in Remus’ hand held just in front of him. Sirius sends out an exhaustive smirk, unhooks the fingers of his right hand from Remus’ hip and reaches up to return his high-give, effectively glowing with pride. 

“That really is as good as they say it’s going to be,” Remus says between breaths.

“What is?” Sirius asks. 

“The whole coming together,” Remus answers. “I get it, and I get it well.” 

“Same,” Sirius sighs out, taking the opportunity to simply lean against Remus until his legs stop tingling. “Give me a minute and I’ll move.” 

“No rush,” Remus says, tracing his fingertips in a circle where he’s holding Sirius to him, and that certainly illustrates Sirius is meant to stay put for now. 

Once clean, Sirius pushes the curtain aside and reaches for a towel, pausing still with his arm outstretched as it becomes very clear that one long and furry dog in their midst has decided there is, in fact, a rush. Sirius puts out a charmed laugh as he can’t help but notice Tango sitting in the bathroom doorway and coos at him as he pulls the towel toward him and passes it off to Remus like the charming house guest he is. 

“We’ll go soon,” he assures, reaching for a towel of his own. 

“I don’t know that he believes you,” Remus says, his left leg hitched up on the side of the tub as he dries it off. 

“I bet he doesn’t, but I’m telling the truth,” Sirius says, tackling his own damp body.

“A half-truth,” Remus calls it, onto his right leg. “It’s going to take forever just for me to coordinate some clothes onto myself and I think he knows it.” 

Sirius ties his towel around his waist and reaches to pull another one toward him for his hair. “Well, give me a sec and I’ll lay something out for you, take care of half that problem right there,” he returns, bending forward to scoop all of his hair up into the towel and straightening up with it perched atop his head in time to catch Remus making a bit of a face. 

“Normally I’d fight you on that but I’m beat,” he says for it. 

“Oh, look at that; I got lucky twice,” Sirius says, stepping out of the tub onto the mat. 

He isn’t moving fast by any means, so he doesn’t get out of Remus’ radius before Remus whacks his arse with one of the ends of his towel, but Sirius isn’t all that broken up about that, simply scampers off to the bedroom and starts on picking an outfit he knows _he’ll_ like on Remus. 

He lobs a pair of briefs onto the bed from the dresser, decides on Remus’ tan corduroys as they give him legs for days and do wonders for his arse — more selfish reasoning but Sirius won’t pretend he isn’t out for at least some of his own gain generally. He picks a black tee to go with, liking the simplicity along with the contrast of the colours, et voila; c'est fini. 

“Your articles await,” he calls out, heading to the dresser to pick out something for himself. 

He assumes something lightweight would be ideal, given that he’s planning to run Tango around the square until he can’t go any longer, but the dog needs some exercise and if he’s honest, so does Sirius. He stands at the dresser, picks a pair of black joggers, a sleeveless tank to match since he’ll be hotter than hell out there, and pulls out a pair of socks from the top drawer. 

He knows he can’t have his hair falling all around him as he runs Tango around, so once he’s clothed he unravels it from the towel and works on brushing it out to make it easier to pull up into a bun and out of his face. Remus wanders into the room just as Sirius is finishing up with the right side of his head and eyes him openly as he passes him. 

“Like what you see?” Sirius asks, tooching his arse a bit. 

“Yes, and furthermore I don’t know how you managed to look like you jumped off a sportswear catalogue in the three minutes since I last saw you,” Remus returns, heading for his clothes laid out for him while Sirius beams brightly as he moves onto the left side of his head. “Sirius, I’m going to melt in these.” 

Sirius looks in the mirror to find Remus’ reflection holding up his corduroys. “They look so good on you, though,” he insists.

“They’re really more of a fall getup,” Remus insists.

“Cuff them and you’ll hardly notice,” Sirius raises. 

Remus huffs long and hard for it, but Sirius catches the smile Remus undoubtedly thought would go unnoticed while Sirius is handling a process as delicate as brushing his locks out, but even Remus forgets how good Sirius is at multitasking. Sirius finishes up with the brush, sits it down on the bureau, and backs up a little to avoid the bureau’s edge while he bends to pull his hair up into a bun, and then definitely backs up a little more just to budge Remus while he’s trying to shimmy into the corduroys. 

“Sneak,” Remus sends him through a laugh, hopping out of reach and pulling them up over his hips. 

Sirius smirks and straightens up to finish out his bun, drops his hands to his side, and has another look in the mirror before deeming himself ready. He leaves Remus to finish dressing, hyping up the dog by clapping the whole way to the kitchen to pull a bottle of water out of the fridge, Tango fast at his heels. He digs out a few treats and puts them in a baggy, and heads to Remus’ teeny-tiny linen/various item closet and pulls out a few recyclable bags for phase three of the Great Gay Date Day. 

Sirius tosses the water bottle and treats into one of them, stuffs the two other bags in there, and perks at a thought. “Want me to pack a book for you?” 

“Mm, am I being let off of jogging duty?” Remus asks. 

“Can’t run in corduroys,” Sirius returns. 

“Good point,” Remus accepts. “The one on the island, please.” 

Sirius heads there for it, grabs his pack and lighter off of the island while he’s there, and drops the lot in the bag along with the rest. He has a quick look around, feeling a pair of eyes on him, and finds Mestophales staring him down where she’s sat perched on the back of the couch, a come hither look about her. He smiles bright as he heads for her, thinking she deserves a bit of love that’s all her own now that there’s two furballs to think about. He scoops her up off of the back of the couch, cradles her like a little baby, and bobs her around a bit before the fantastically colourful quilt draped over the back of the couch catches his eye and brings on a thought. 

“Can we stop off at Boots on the way?” he requests. 

“Sure,” Remus returns from the room. “What sparked this?” 

“I’m thinking bringing a blanket would be a good plan, but I don’t want to get leaves and grime all over your mum’s handiwork,” Sirius provides. 

“Oh, no,” Remus says. “We can’t have that.” 

With that decided, Sirius has nothing left to do but wait for Remus, so he gives Mestophales another nuzzle before letting her get back to her throne, sticks his hands on his hips, and stares down at Tango standing in front of him, puffing a breath of air in and out of his cheeks quickly until Tango gets so riled up that he hopes up and budges Sirius’ face with his snout.

“Oi,” Sirius laughs out, blocking his nose before it comes in for a second one. “You need to chill.” 

The dog doesn’t chill so much as he simply hops about until Remus steps out of the room looking like a rightful twelve, and Tango must agree for he goes traipsing toward Remus at the very sight of him and almost knocks him off balance. Remus manages to stay afoot, petting Tango’s nose before moving past the two of them to grab his aviators off of the island. 

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Sirius chants in reply. 

Remus sends him a huff and sticks them on. “I wish I didn’t have to wear them so much,” he says. “Outside is one thing, but inside is another.” 

“You could tell anyone who asks that you just really identify with Bono,” Sirius suggests. 

Remus makes a frank face. “I don’t want anyone thinking that,” he returns, garnering Sirius to choke on air. “Do we have everything?” 

Sirius gets himself together, nodding lightly. “Think so,” he says. “Water and treats for the pooch, the blanket we can get at Boots, and I want a coffee so I say we stop by your shop on the way.” 

“Sounds good,” Remus allows. “Did you put sunscreen on?” 

Sirius smacks his lips once. “I did not.” 

“Sirius, it’s scorching out there,” Remus chides, budging past Sirius to get into the bathroom. “You’re going to burn right up.” 

“I forgot,” Sirius sends him, coming to stand in the doorway of the bathroom. “You almost forgot, too.” 

Remus does not reply as he’s digging out a bottle of sunscreen from underneath the sink, then moves to stand again and beckons Sirius closer with his left hand as he uncaps it with his right thumb. Sirius steps up in front of him, turning around to give Remus access to the back of his neck and his shoulders. 

“Your inner dad is really popping off right now,” Sirius mentions, side-eyeing Remus in the mirror. 

Remus smooths a cold smear of sunscreen over the back of his neck, causing a jolt to go up Sirius’ spine. “I think this is more of a mum thing,” he raises. 

Sirius nods deftly. “Suppose I wouldn’t know.” 

Remus meets his gaze in the mirror, panic-mode activated. “I was just responding,” he says. “My mum was always way more intense about it than my dad was — and fair enough, look at me, I’m whiter than a golf course; I needed the sunscreen.” 

Sirius puts out an automatic laugh at the personality shining through the panic. “It’s fine, you’re not in trouble,” he says, feeling like a rightful dolt for derailing their good morning. 

Remus averts his gaze and moves onto Sirius’ shoulders, leaving the sunscreen on the counter to be able to use both of his hands to rub it in. When he’s done there he reaches for the bottle and squeezes another glob into his right palm, and meets Sirius’ gaze in the mirror again, gesturing with his left forefinger for Sirius to turn around. 

Sirius does as bid and Remus reaches up to smear two stark, white lines over Sirius’ cheeks, and it’s sort of fitting that it looks a bit like warpaint. Sirius swallows hard, reaches for the sunscreen bottle and squeezes a globe into his left hand, gets it all mixed up on his hands, and smears two lines at the top of Remus’ cheeks, thinking if he’s a soldier, then Remus these days is the general. 

“I need to think before I talk,” Remus says, looking sheepish as all hell as he rubs out the two lines to spread the sunscreen out further. 

Sirius shakes his head. “Me more than you,” he says, working the sunscreen into Remus skin. “That one was on me.” 

Remus leaves his hands held at the sides of Sirius face, leaning in over Sirius’ hands on him to leave a kiss on Sirius’ lips. “Arms,” he requests, and Sirius pauses his hands and leaves his forearms open for Remus to cover. “Have to protect one of your best assets.” 

“You and forearms,” Sirius says, unable to help a grin from forming on his lips. 

“You have the best set I’ve ever seen,” Remus returns matter-of-factly, using Sirius’ wrists as a spot to wipe any excess sunscreen from his hands. “And I’m an expert, so you know. My credentials are solid.” 

“I know you are,” Sirius assures, plucking the sunscreen bottle off of the counter again. “Gimme them arms.” 

Remus smiles bright as he poses with them out in front of him and Sirius goes to town on them, but thankfully Remus’ shoulders are covered. “Alright, you’re good,” Sirius says, patting Remus’ arms with finality. 

Remus smiles and nudges Sirius as he passes him to get through the doorway, moving for the shoe rack to pull out a pair of slip ons. Remus drops them to the floor to stick his feet into them, hands Sirius his very recently acquired runners since he’s right by the shoe rack, and takes care of snapping the lead on Tango’s collar, and hands it over when Sirius has finished putting his shoes on. 

“You don’t want him for a bit?” Sirius asks, straightening up. 

“Oh, no no no,” Remus assures decidedly. “No, I am good; my newest fear is losing grip of that lead.” 

Sirius waves him off, taking hold of it when Remus jostles it against his torso. “You wouldn’t do that.” 

“No, you love that dog too much to chance it,” Remus insists, shaking his head once and pulling the door open. “I’m too high for it.” 

Sirius follows Remus out, backs right back into the flat, and grabs the bag he almost left behind, shutting the door behind him and locking up with the mat key without Remus even noticing his tiny flub, but to be fair, he’s a little busy studying a painting hanging down the way in the hallway. 

Sirius puts the mat key back in place, straightens up, and wanders over to have a look for himself, but it’s just a painting of a field with a tractor in it and a blue sky above it. “Riveting,” he puts out, rolling the R. 

Remus ducks his head, succumbing to a tight laugh. “The clouds were moving a bit,” he says, casually walking off down the hall toward the stairwell and just leaving Sirius with that. 

“What?” he sends after him, catching up to him with a few quick strides. “Are you sure you can go out right now?” 

“We’ll find out, I suppose,” Remus says, practically gliding down the first set of stairs. 

“Love this come what may attitude,” Sirius offers, clomping down the stairs behind him. 

They head to Boots first, tie Tango up outside at his regular post, and head inside from there. They find the aisle in question after some rigorous searching, scanning the modest selection of blankets at their disposal, and Sirius supposes expecting to find anything comparable to Hope’s work at a typical pharmacy is a long shot in and of itself. 

Sirius pushes out a puff of breath. “Cow print?” he raises, pointing to an option, “or zebra?” 

Remus hums on Sirius’ right. “Cow,” he says after a few beats. 

“Done,” Sirius says, pulling it off of the shelf. “That was easy enough.” 

“If you’re getting that, then I’m getting the drinks,” Remus conditions, following Sirius back up the aisle toward the front of the store. “I think that’s a fair trade.” 

“Fine,” Sirius singsongs, in too light a mood to bother debating it. They make a left toward the registers, and Sirius, a little too blitzed to pull off small talk right about then, spots an easy out, and budges Remus’ right arm with his left one, whispering exaggeratedly. “Self checkout, self checkout.” 

Remus sweeps a hand ahead of him for Sirius to lead the way, evidently in agreement. Sirius searches for altogether too long a time for the bar code on the blanket cover, finally spots it after Remus points right to it, and lifts it to the scanner, moving it this way and that before the beep finally sounds and startles Sirius. 

“Oh, this is going to be a task,” Remus says, smiling widely. 

“Shh,” Sirius sends him, smiling wryly all the same. He presses the button to take them to the pay screen, but a window pops up asking how bags he’d like and he lets out a noise of grivance. “I don’t want any.” 

“You have to press zero, then,” Remus says, reaching up to take care of that. 

Sirius pays as quickly as the machine will let happen, takes the receipt only because he’s uninterested in being followed out the door for proof of payment in his state, and carries the blanket underneath his left arm like it’s a football. 

“I’ll take the bag,” Remus offers, going right on ahead and tugging the strap of the bag on Sirius’ right shoulder down. 

Sirius wiggles his arm out from the loop of the strap and follows Remus out of there, letting out a loud breath of relief and heading for the dog. He hands Remus the blanket while he handles getting Tango’s lead untied from the post, and on they travel to Remus’ shop. 

Remus reaches out and stops Sirius from walking three doors down from the storefront. “I need to think about what I want before I get in there,” he says, speaking like this is the mission of his entire life. 

“OK,” Sirius returns, gravely to match. 

“Yours is easy enough, I’ll have that drink memorized at eighty," Remus presses on. “I have to prepare mine now so I don't stand there staring at the menu boards while my coworkers think I’ve gone round the twist.” 

“Well, my guess is a tea,” Sirius offers sagely, “but I wouldn’t do a hot one in this sun.” 

“No, no, that would be too much,” Remus says, nodding. 

Sirius breaks his intense resolve, succumbing to a fit. “You know what we offer, just make a choice, you knob.” 

“Choices,” Remus puts out, like he’s cursing the word itself. 

“Alright, you can stay outside with the dog and I can go in and get them,” Sirius offers, “but then you’d have to hold his lead and you’d be at the mercy of whatever I decide to get you in the moment.”

“No, not happening,” Remus says decidedly, starting to walk again. “I’ll figure it out.”

Sirius strides along beside Remus until Tango grabs the attention of a few patrons out on the front terrace, and Remus quickly slips past the commotion and inside before Sirius really realizes he’s been ditched. Good news is, his dog is one of his favourite topics of conversation, so as blitzed as he is, he has no qualms about the gaggle of girls that come for Tango, vying to pet him, and Tango certainly doesn’t mind the attention. 

Remus reappears a little while later, going around the outside of the little semicircle of Tango’s admirers to hand Sirius his drink with a straw already in it, and holding onto what looks like their chain’s signature iced green tea. 

“Ooh, went with green, did you?” Sirius raises.

“Somebody else ordered it ahead of me in line, so I just went with it,” Remus says under his breath before aiming his work smile at the small crowd congregated around Tango. 

“Alright, time to go, yeah?” Sirius says to the dog, and by extension, the crowd. 

They head back the way they came, pushing for the square with Tango trotting along on Sirius’ right and Remus walking along and sipping his tea on his left. The square has more people sprinkled about in it than Sirius was banking on, but he supposes it’s a fine day out and with school out, too, it’s something he should have seen coming. 

They pick a spot on the grass in a less crowded spot under the shade of a large tree, open up their new blanket, and Remus fluffs it out far and wide before laying it on the ground. He takes a seat smack in the middle of it, pulls out his book from inside the bag, and smiles up at Sirius signalling he’s a-ok where he is, and with that, Sirius leaves his coffee with him with a grin and takes off with Tango to run some laps around the perimeter of the square. 

He keeps to a light jog, not looking to end up heaving through overexertion before they get much exercise in, and weaves Tango in and out of various spackles of people walking along the pathways. He stops a few laps in, let’s Tango have a drink from the water fountain, and flies the bird at a man passing by when he lets Sirius know exactly what he thinks about that decision. 

Back at it again, Sirius gets another three laps in before he’s stopped by a group around their age entirely obsessed with Tango just from the sight of him, which is really fair enough, and with Sirius’ lungs yelling at him to take it easy, Sirius doesn’t really mind a short break.

He gets stopped a few more times and decides that next time he aims to take Tango for a run he’s got to pick an off-time to do it because a star like Tango cannot go unnoticed in a crowded park. The last time he’s stopped, and it’s mostly the last time because Sirius is beat and can’t go for much longer, it’s for a pair of older gents who take a strong interest in Tango and are so overjoyed by his existence that Sirius can’t help but find it endearing despite trying very very hard to keep his heavy breathing at bay. 

One of the men crouches in front of Tango, giving his ruff a solid rub down, and Sirius watches with his eyebrows up high on his forehead the moment the man calls the other _Hubie_. Sirius stands quite still, looking back and forth between two gents as a strikes up a debate over whether they could properly care for a dog the size and stature of one of Tango’s size, and Sirius, absolutely convinced he’s watching a couple go back and forth on getting one of their own, feels he has to interject right about there. 

“He’s not full-grown yet, so he will get a little bigger, yes, but he’s gentle, very good with other pets, and just a dreamboat, I mean,” he says, splays a hand toward Tango in gesture, “look at him.” 

The man name-dropped as Hubie offers his agreement, if a bit on the reserved side. “His colouring is lovely,” he offers, “but he’s still so much larger than—" 

“Oh honey, look,” the other man says eagerly, and Sirius goes ahead and looks, too; finding Tango has perched his paws on the man’s shoulders.

Unfortunately for Hubie, Sirius has a feeling that man is already sold on this breed and judging by the wry smile on Hubie’s face, it looks as if he’s coming to terms with that, too. “We’ll talk about it,” he offers. 

Sirius smiles bright, his work done here, and paves the way out of this conversation that’s more or less his fault, citing he’s got to get back to the Mr, when that really is the truth; he’s already thrilled about getting to tell Remus all about it. He leads Tango back to where he left Remus, heading up on the grass and taking a backwards sprawl on the blanket to the right of Remus. 

“Taking a break?” Remus asks, looking up from his book. 

“I did ten laps,” Sirius supplies. 

“Well, shit,” Remus says, scratching idly at his left ankle just below the cuff of his trouser leg. “At a pack a day no less.” 

Sirius sends out a righteous _pfft_ for that dig. “I’ve cut way down,” he defends. 

Remus reaches over and swipes his right thumb over Sirius’ dampened forehead, so quickly that if you blinked, you’d miss it. “I’m teasing,” he says. “You’ve really cut down.” 

“Thank you,” Sirius chimes, holding his right palm up and out. “Now give me my pack.”

Remus huffs a laugh, digs in the bag for his pack, and hands it over to him. “Have you got a light?” he asks. 

“There’s one in the bag,” Sirius offers, sticking a cigarette in his mouth while he waits for Remus to find it. 

Remus gives a championed breath, lifting the tiny red lighter out of it. “God, there,” he says, handing it over. “Couldn’t have picked a smaller one.”

Sirius smirks as he flicks the lighter, taking a haul off of it, and humming brightly as Remus holds the bottle of water outstretched. “Mm, can you give him some?” he asks. 

Remus pats his lap to get Tango’s attention, snaps his fingers to lead him around to the outside of the blanket, and Sirius lets go of the lead so Tango can move freely and not take his right arm off in the process. 

“Was talking to these two older gents,” Sirius raises. 

“Yes, I saw,” Remus offers, pouring a little stream out of the bottle for Tango to lap at. 

Sirius perks. “Did you?” 

“Mhm, you’re nice to look at,” Remus says, capping the bottle for now. Sirius hums brightly around his cigarette, feeling warm from his head to the tip of his toes, and it has nothing to do with the run he just finished. “I looked up in time to catch the altercation at the water fountain, too.” 

“He was thirsty?” Sirius defends. 

“I’m not going to bother explaining why people aren’t overjoyed at that sight since I think you know why that is already?” Remus returns. “I’m just glad it didn’t end in fisticuffs.”

“That guy was all talk,” Sirius says, unfazed. “Anyway, those gents hadn’t seen one like him before.” 

“He is a particular breed,” Remus says mildly. “They seemed nice, in the five seconds I spent checking up on you, I mean.” 

“They were, yeah,” Sirius accepts. “I’m about ninety-eight percent sure they were a couple.” 

“Oh?” Remus asks, looking quite piqued. “How’d you figure that?” 

“They had an old married couple vibe coming off them,” Sirius forwards. “One called the other _Hubie_ before asking if they could get one for themselves, and then later called him _honey_ — I mean, I’m no detective, but I connected the dots with the evidence I scrounged up.” 

Remus tilts his head evenly for that, a quirk at his lips. “I think you might be onto something there.” 

Sirius smiles around a haul, waiting a few beats before letting it out. “The other one was you in fifty years, I swear,” he says, and even with his shades on, Remus’ face is openly bemused. “Practical, careful, all ‘do we really want one so big,’ but his fella wasn’t having it.”

“Alright, you know what,” Remus puts in, lifting a hand to pet at Tango’s snout, “it’s a fair question and I think I’ve come around on this one since then.” 

“You have, I’ll give you that,” Sirius allows. “That man still had Remus energy though, and Hubie's fella was me, and it was a little like I was looking through a projection of us in forty years.” 

Remus moves to lay beside Sirius, leaving enough room between them to rest his hands behind his head without knocking his left elbow against Sirius. “We would chide each other in the park in front of some kid,” he says, turning his head a little more toward Sirius, a lopsided smile on. “What do you think, then? They’ll get one of their own?” 

Sirius gives a smile paired with a sagely nod. “Last thing I heard before I went on my way was a firm but kind ‘we’ll see,’ but between you and me, I think Hubie was far too excited by the idea for them not to.” 

Remus gives an easy exhale through his nose. “Good for them,” he says, looking down and plucking up a long hair absolutely belonging to Tango off of his black tee. “I should’ve thought about bringing a roller along, this isn’t going to end well.” 

“You’re very high,” Sirius offers. “Can’t think of everything.” 

“That was kind of you, thank you,” Remus returns, stretching his arms out above his head before crossing them underneath his head to make a makeshift pillow for his head.

Sirius takes another haul, looking up at the sky above the smattering of tree branches over their heads, and looks down at Remus again a minute or so later, quite provoked by a thought. “Where are your grandparents?” 

Remus hangs his head to the left, looking more toward Sirius. “Physically?” 

“Well, sure,” Sirius offers. 

Remus puts out a thoughtful breath. “I’ve only only got one left, actually,” he says. “My dad’s mum, she’s out in Belfast.” 

“Right, right,” Sirius says, snapping his free hand toward him. “You’ve cousins there, too.” 

Remus nods. “Yeah, my dad’s brother and his kids are there, too,” he reiterates. “Why do you ask?” 

Sirius shrugs easily. “Only I just spoke with a pair of elderly folk and wondered where yours ended up?” he offers. “Wasn’t a very big leap to me.” 

Remus gives a conceding nod. “Well, there you have it; one’s in Belfast and the other three are… wherever,” he says, pulling his right arm from underneath his head and pairing that with a half-gesture, half-flutter of his hand above their heads, and after a few beats the action sinks in for Sirius and brings a light laugh from his throat. “Sorry, it’s warn off a bit, but clearly not much yet.” 

Sirius flashes him a grin. “No no, you’re doing great,” he extends. “Gather around, children, Professor Lupin’s about to teach us about the Great Wherever.” 

Remus smirks, sticks his arm back behind his head, and hums a frank no. “No, he is not,” he drags out. He leans his head the other direction and Tango, still on that side of him, moves to lay down on the spot and noses at Remus’ face immediately. “You are utterly shameless.” 

“He doesn’t know the word,” Sirius passes along, taking the last haul off the end of his cigarette before crushing the cherry out in the dirt. 

“He’s definitely your dog,” Remus says of it. 

Sirius smiles as he lets the stream of smoke out. “Why’d they go to Belfast?” 

“Hm?” Remus hums. 

“Of all the places to end up, I mean,” Sirius elaborates. “Just a strange pick to me.” 

“Is it?” Remus asks. 

“A little,” Sirius offers, shrugging with a smile on. “Do you have a touch o’ the Irish in you without my knowing it?” 

Remus pushes out a breath of comprehension. “Oh, no, just one incredibly Welsh bloke over here,” he says, huffing a laugh. “My dad and his brother were little kids when they moved them there, and my dad was the only one of them who made it back to Wales eventually.” 

Sirius nods, spends some time connecting a few dots, and comes to a fork in the road. “So, on Christmas, when we were whittling down where your parents could be aside from the hospital, I remember you said they wouldn’t have been out there in Belfast.” 

Remus reels for a moment. “You have an unsettling but choosie memory." 

Sirius reaches over and presses his left forefinger against the tip of Remus’ nose like it’s a button. “Why wouldn’t they have been there?” he reiterates.

“Well, they didn’t have the means to just travel around, if you remember,” Remus passes along.

“Right, no,” Sirius says, turning onto his right side to face him better and propping his head up on his right hand, “but no one offered to come see them?” 

Remus gives an even head tilt. “I don’t know that it would’ve been warranted?” he offers. “My uncle came down last summer for my dad’s operation, so he’d already had a visit with them, and my dad’s mum is seventy-three, so I don’t think we can hold it against her for not making the trip down.” 

“No, I s’pose we shouldn’t,” Sirius agrees. He looks down the blanket between the two of them, reaches for his pack, and lifts it up between them, shaking it in question. “Want to share one with me?” 

“Sure,” Remus replies. 

Sirius thumbs the pack open, shakes it a bit until a few options come loose, and leans in to pull the best one out from the pack with his teeth. He lights up, takes hold of it in his left hand, and hands it over to Remus, who pulls his right arm out from under his head again and takes hold of it. 

“Shame you missed that little reunion,” Sirius offers after an exhale. “When your uncle was down, I’m saying.” 

Remus hums around a haul. “Wasn’t fun,” he says before letting the haul out. “I know this is going to sound a bit shit, but wait for the punchline, OK?”

Sirius lifts his free hand easily. “Waiting.” 

Remus tips his head to him while taking another haul, waiting until it’s out before continuing. “I was less concerned about the little reunion I was missing and a little more bothered by the fact that I couldn’t make it for the operation itself,” he says. “I just wanted to be there with my parents, the visit from my uncle was nice to hear about since I couldn’t make it, but missing out on that wasn’t the difficult part.” 

“You fucking monster,” Sirius deadpans.

Remus huffs a laugh. “I’d spoken to my uncle over the phone while he was there, had a nice chat and that was sort of enough for me,” he tacks on. “That was kind of fun, though; he’s very like my dad in some ways, but he’s also nothing like him in others.” 

“Tell,” Sirius goads. 

“He swears far less, though I don’t know if he just hadn’t let one out while I was talking to him,” Remus offers, holding the cigarette out to Sirius. “He’s a Stones' man, too.”

“Not worth it, then,” Sirius quips, smirking around a haul. “Had they been down to visit before that? Like the whole family?” 

“A few times,” Remus offers. “The whole family only came once, when I was—” he pauses, giving a vague little tune in thought, “—nine? Yeah, that’s it. And then my uncle’s been down over the years just visiting my dad when he’d go into the hospital again, and my last year of school had the big scare for my dad, so my grandmother did come down for that with my uncle — understandably, since it was a rough go for a while there.”

Sirius offers a bit of a grimace around a haul. “Not an ideal scenario for a mini-reunion.” 

“No, not the best,” Remus affirms. 

“Your grandfather wasn’t there?” Sirius asks. 

Remus shakes his head. “No, he’d passed a few years back by then,” he says. “It was just those two who came down for that time, and I didn’t even really see them that time, either.”

“No?” Sirius asks. 

Remus shakes his head, taking in a haul. “Between school and working in the evenings, I’d mostly get updates over the phone,” he says. “My dad wasn’t working at the time, obviously, and my mum was but part-time, so it just made sense for me to keep working, so I got myself my very own flip phone that year to keep in the loop — and I mean, it was a brick.”

Remus lifts the hand holding the cigarette and illustrates the width he’s speaking of. “I had one of those, too,” Sirius offers, smiling. “It was pay as you go, and I hid that thing so well my parents had no idea it was even there.” 

“Surprised you could hide it if it was a brick,” Remus offers. 

“I’m resourceful,” Sirius returns. 

“That, I know,” Remus says, taking a quick pull off of the cigarette and holding it out to Sirius. 

Sirius takes it, has a pull off of it, and leaves the haul in his chest for a little longer before letting it out. “Bit of a pattern there,” he says. “Them only turning up when the chips are down, I mean.” 

Remus gives a circumstantial nod to that. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yeah, you’re right,” he gives him. 

“I mean, you graduated that year,” Sirius says. “They didn’t come for that?” 

Remus searches him. “Everything OK?” he checks. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sirius insists. “I just find that — I don’t have a word for it, but it twists my gut up, whatever it is.” 

“Well, I think since they’d already been down earlier that year, it didn’t make sense to ask them to come to graduation,” Remus says, reasonable as ever. “This me talking about it now, but back then? I just wanted my dad to make it to my graduation, so I didn’t even think once about inviting anyone else.”

Sirius feels a different sort of twisty hand at his gut. “Yeah, who needs the relatives when you’ve got Hope and Lyall coming to your grad, right?” he raises. 

“Well, exactly,” Remus says, laughing a bit there. “My dad needed to walk with a cane at the time, and he hated all the waiting around through all the awards and the whole first bit of the alphabet to get to the L’s, even though that’s what you sign up for when you come to a graduation ceremony, and at one point I thought he was going to start wielding that thing around like a weapon, he was so over it.” 

Sirius sends out a long _pfft_. “_Lyall._” 

“Yeah, he’s a bit of legend,” Remus says of it, smiling. 

Sirius hands the cigarette off to Remus, finding the twist in his gut hasn’t let up much. “I get you not expecting them to come down for it,” he offers. “This is you, and them coming to see you walk across the stage would be a fuss in the simplest terms in a regular situation, let alone a real shit year, but I also just find it shit that they didn’t come down themselves.” 

“Honestly, it’s better his side of the family didn’t come,” Remus says evenly. “My dad called them curmudgeons more than I could even count as a kid, and my grandmother in particular rang a lot and you could just hear my dad off grumbling in the house somewhere.”

Sirius visibly tries to bite back a smile. “I love him,” he says of it. 

“The thing is, he doesn’t like overbearing, and I think that was their style,” Remus tacks on. “You’ll see it, too; my dad will grumble at you for hours even if you start telling him what you think he should be doing about anything; he’s a wildcard, that one.”

Sirius smirks around another haul. “I can’t wait for him to grumble at me.” 

“Don’t go riling him up on purpose, you,” Remus warns, a smile staring up on his own lips. 

Sirius grins big and hands Remus the last of the cigarette, watching him for a bit as Remus inhales off of it, holds it in, and lets a stream out above them. “What about your mum’s, then?” he asks. 

Remus perks up, putting the cigarette out in the grass by him. “Well, I didn’t really get to meet my granny, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about her from my mum, of course, but my dad loved her and his opinion is important in this case, as we’ve just highlighted,” he says, smiling for it. “I’ve heard it elsewhere, too; if you grow up in a place that tight-knit, then everyone over a certain age knows you by your parents or your grandparents and will tell you about them, in detail, all your life.” 

Sirius lets out a laugh. “I have no idea what living there would be like."

“Well, that’s a little tease of it, and as a lifelong Londoner, I don’t imagine you would be able to picture it,” Remus says, smiling wryly. "You’ll see what I mean, though; we'll get stopped a lot.” 

Sirius smiles for that, in a way just happy for the reminder that he’ll be there in a few weeks time, but there’s a morose feeling circulating through him that takes precedence. “You didn’t get to meet her?” he raises. 

Remus gives a considered head tilt. “I did technically meet her, but she passed when I was two,” he amends. “So technically I met her, but I’m not all that sure if what I remember of her are actual memories or if I’ve made the stories I’ve heard into memories, do you know what I mean?” 

“I do, yes,” Sirius says, smiling a bit. 

“There’s a picture of her holding me when I was a baby, and she looks very kind in it, excited to be holding a baby,” Remus passes along. “I still have the quilt she made for when I was born; it’s back home and so tiny it would probably only cover my arms at this point, but it’s still kicking around somewhere.”

“Should bring it back with you,” Sirius suggests. “Your arms get cold.” 

Remus lips quirk. “They sure do,” he says. He flattens out, staring up at the sky from behind his shades, and Sirius doesn’t know why or how or anything about it, he just knows he likes Remus so much more than he already did half an hour ago. “My mum’s told me she liked my eyes.” 

Sirius grins immediately. “I’ll bet.” 

“Allegedly,” Remus puts forth mildly, though he looks pleased with the snort he gets out of Sirius for it. 

“Nah, I believe it,” Sirius says. “They’re blinkers now, so they must have been high beams back then.” 

“Too big for my face, from what I’ve seen in pictures,” Remus tacks on. 

“Even better,” Sirius says. 

“She looked a lot like my mum,” Remus says. “Or, my mum looks like she did, I should say.” 

“Quite the opposite with you,” Sirius puts in. “You’ve got Hope's eyes, therefore your granny's too, but you’re literally an exact replica of Lyall aged down twenty-odd years.” 

Remus smirks a laugh, reaching over to pat Sirius’ left arm with a hand. “There’s this bitty little lady who owns a bakery in town, Magda," he adds, smiling. "The very sweetest, but she used to get me confused for my dad constantly when I was still living there and after a while of that we would just let her think we were the other just so we didn't rain on her parade."

Sirius feels winded just for that gem of an anecdote. “Oh, you have _got_ to turn up there as you are now and give her a heart attack,” he insists. 

“Well, she is eighty-four, so maybe I won’t do that,” Remus says of it.

Sirius snorts. “OK, don’t do it, then,” he says. “Alright, your mum's dad: go.” 

“He was the _greatest,_” Remus sends him emphatically, happy to be on that topic, it looks. “He would have me over for lunch every Sunday when I was a kid.” 

“D’aww,” Sirius sends him. 

“He was retired by then, but he taught maths all his career so he would help me along with it,” Remus keeps on. “I’m no mathematician, but he did his best with me, got me up to par.” 

“And thus, Professor Lupin was created,” Sirius concludes. 

“Hardly,” Remus denies, his mouth twisted up into a smile. “Took that kiddo years on top of years to dawn on the fact that teaching might’ve been the right road to go down, and it’ll never be maths, let’s cross that off right now.” 

“But it’s the same in every language,” Sirius puts in daintily. Remus gives a wan laugh and Sirius shimmies his shoulders a bit for it. “Nevertheless, he’s who planted the seed initially, and for that I’d love to be able to thank him myself.” 

“I’m sure he’d love the sentiment,” Remus extends. “I think he’d be a little proud, if he knew what I’d chosen to major in.” 

Sirius scoots down so he can scoot over a little bit and avoid Remus’ elbow in the process, propping his head on his right hand again. “When did he pass?” 

Remus pauses, counting back in his head by the looks of it. “Not long after we moved into the house, so it was ‘02, and I was eight,” he extends. “He was pushing seventy and my mum saw him showing signs of trouble to come.” 

“What sort of signs?” Sirius asks, morbidly curious perhaps. 

Remus puts out a thoughtful breath. “It was strange, because his body was starting to fail him but his mind was still clear as a whistle,” he says for it. “He had a few falls in the months before we moved in, and the house is bigger than one, seventy year old can really keep up, but he wouldn’t stand for being put in a home; too stubborn for it, surprise surprise—” he pauses to smile as Sirius puts out a wan laugh, “—and you’ll see when we get there, there’s three levels, and the washer and dryer are in the basement and there’s a landing between the ground floor and the second floor, and it was too much for someone prone to falls, so it just made sense to move in and help out where we could.” 

“Nice of her, thinking of that,” Sirius puts up. 

“He didn’t love all that came with it, but I know he appreciated it deep down,” Remus says, aiming a quick smile at him. “My mum thought it would be best to put him up in the den because it would be a lot easier for him to get around on the main floor, but he didn’t like that so much, getting told where to sleep in his own house and all that, but honestly he really couldn’t make it up the stairs half the time, and they didn’t want him taking a fall in the middle of the night trying to get to the loo.” 

Sirius’ raises his eyebrows a smidge. “You remember all that?”

Remus shakes his head. “Some, not all. That stuff I’ve put together over the years, but I do remember the grumbling, I’ll tell you that,” he assures. “The strongest memory I have of that time is he liked it when I practiced my reading with him, so I’d climb up next to him on the bed he had in the den and read what I had assigned and sometimes he’d have me read him the paper and help me out with the really long words, and he was so nice about it. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was definitely closer to the end and he must have been so wiped out most of the time, but he never treated time with me like it was a chore; he made it fun.” 

Sirius takes in the quietest breath he can, speaks as little and as unimposing as he can make it. “Did they tell you what was going on?” 

Remus shakes his head. “Not really, no. I suppose I can’t really blame them, what are you supposed to tell a little kid?” he raises. “They told me he wasn’t well before we moved in, but I didn’t grasp the scope of it at eight, and I didn’t see his passing coming at all, and I didn’t really have a frame of reference for it when he most I’d heard about death was from books and media geared toward children. I knew my gran had passed years ago then, but it was still such a far-off concept to me that I really hadn’t planned on having in my own life — I had reading assignments to finish, homework to do, maths to slug through; death wasn’t on my radar.”

“How did you feel about it?” Sirius asks, unable to hold off. “Once it did happen, I mean.” 

“Confused,” Remus answers soon enough, and then there’s another small pause to gather the words together, but Sirius isn’t in any rush. “I didn’t understand how someone could be there on minute and gone the next. It just wouldn’t compute, so I’d wake up some Sundays and come down to the kitchen and expect him to already be up and shuffling about and then he wouldn’t be, or something good would happen and him being gone would just go right out of my head.” 

Sirius says nothing, does nothing, lives and breathes nothing in case any movement or sound might close this window shut. “When I was nine, I won this read-a-thon we had in class and I got this little blue ribbon for it that I can tell you right now I was glowing over,” Remus tacks on, smiling with his head tilted up, like the sky is all he’s seeing right about now. “My dad picked me up from school that day and I ran to that truck, telling him how excited I was to get home and tell grandad all about it — because he’d have been so chuffed about it, he’d helped me get that ribbon even, and my dad just sort of sat there in the driver’s seat, I guess waiting for my brain to catch up with my words.” 

Remus pauses again, and Sirius doesn’t want to never find out where this is going. “Keep going,” he says, quiet, gentle. 

Remus shakes his head clear. “No, I just — now I know why he did it; I wouldn’t know how to shoot a kid down either, especially my own, right? But I did not like it at all then. I was so angry, with him and with me, and me more than anyone; I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten long enough to make it all the way to the truck, and all for a little ribbon,” he says, shaking his head again, but differently. 

"You were a little kid, though," Sirius raises.

“I know," Remus says, nodding. "Sometimes I wish I’d known him as I am now, that if I had I might not have seen him through this childhood lens that I saw him through then and maybe his passing wouldn’t have been so confusing because I’d have been better prepared to deal with it — and then I think that, and I realize I wouldn’t be any more prepared now than I was then, just more used to it; death wasn’t such a far-off concept to me throughout my teens with how bad-off my dad was, and it still isn't really now — I don’t know why I'm even really saying it, I wish things had gone differently, all around.” 

Sirius lays with the weight of all that and somehow none of it either; it's the most peculiar, alienesque feeling. 

The longer he lays with it, however, the more Remus seems to think he fucked up again somehow. “Sorry — that was not what you asked for,” Remus says heavily. Sirius gives a quick shake of his head, too spooked to speak just yet, and Remus turns in to face him, reaching over to tap him. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?"

“Not at all,” Sirius returns emphatically. “You’re so good a person that you just are that way without even trying to be and it knocks me on my arse sometimes.” 

“I try really hard,” Remus says, barely above a whisper. 

“Nah,” Sirius says, shaking his head once. “That stuff’s hardwired.”

“What about you?" Remus asks, pushing past that and tapping Sirius' left arm. "What were your grandparents like?” 

Sirius gives a glance left, right, and back at Remus, lifting his shoulders once. “Racists,” he offers, and Remus looks like he’d rather be in the ground. “I mean, they were. Aside from that, most of them held on into their nineties, my great-grandmother on my father’s side hung on until one hundred and two, and my mother’s mother is a shrew who happens to have this ageless, hairless cat that would hiss at you from the shadows like a goblin.” 

Remus presses his mouth into a line, expressly aiming to not smile, but a few puffs of air leave his nose and give him away anyway. “Complete evildoer, that thing,” Sirius goes on, his voice wavering in amusement despite trying to sound very circumstantial about this. “I counted forty-nine rolls of skin. Forty-nine. How’s that for an anecdote?” 

Remus leans in the space between them and presses his face against Sirius’ chest, succumbing to a tiny fit. Sirius smiles away while he waits for Remus to pull himself together and lift his head. “This really puts your love for Mestophales into perfect perspective,” he offers. 

“Listen, I saw a rotund, fluffy diva coming toward me the day I met her and fell madly in love, and I won’t ever pretend that isn’t my second biggest weakness,” Sirius returns. 

Remus hums. “What’s your first again?” he checks. 

“I think you know who that is,” Sirius says, squinting at him for effect. 

Sirius watches Remus breathe in slowly, love on his face, love in his eyes if Sirius could see them, and right about that moment is when a jogger passes along and takes a quick detour by their little setup, garnering Remus to move back from Sirius like he’s been stung. 

“Queertown’s that way,” the jogger advises flatly, running in place and tossing a nod east. 

“What, do you know a place?” Sirius asks sweetly, and the bloke just short circuits and heads off on his way. Sirius puffs out a plain breath, looks to Remus, and gives him a bright look. “I think that’d have landed better for him if he weren’t wearing spandex while heckling; not the best execution, a three out of ten is the highest I’ll go.”

Remus has his lower lip caught in his mouth, too in his head to hear Sirius funnies apparently, and Sirius sighs out big and long. “Sorry,” Remus says, coming back in and lifting a shoulder. “I’m just—”

“In your head,” Sirius finishes, nodding. “Getting into it over a comment from someone like that seems a real shame, though.” 

Remus swallows. “You’re so much better at this than—” 

“I'm not, but let's unpack this, see where we end up,” Sirius raises. “That sad little man woke up this morning, went about his day, and then took some time to have a nice jog through the square nearby, and purposefully sought out two upstanding queers to make certain they feel just as dreadful he feels everyday, and _you_ haven’t got time for that. Say it with me.” 

Remus lets out a quiet sigh. “Sirius, I’m fine.” 

“You’re clearly not, and that wasn’t it,” he says. “Try it again: what don’t you have time for?” 

“That,” Remus echoes.

“I’ll allow it,” Sirius accepts. “Now, I’m willing to head right over to phase three, what do you think?” 

Remus gives him the best smile he probably has in him, nods, and lifts off of the blanket to start packing things up, and Sirius vows to get this boy smiling for real again.


	14. 14.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out self isolating gives you ample free time to get editing done, who knew

Sirius doesn’t love the way Remus gathers their stuff up into the recyclable bag, nor does he love that Remus starts trying to get their blanket sorted out with Sirius very clearly still sitting on it.

Sirius reaches for Remus’ wrists, holding them still. “What’s the rush?” 

Remus automatically brings his hands in toward himself. “You said you wanted to start phase three.” 

“Yeah, I meant like, in the near future,” Sirius clarifies. “What are we supposed to be rushing from right now?” 

“What do you think I’m rushing away from?” Remus asks, putting his head on a tilt. 

“Well, that’s not what we’re doing here,” Sirius denies. “The key action here is to show these kinds of people that we don’t have to be run off out of sight and mind; this isn’t that man’s square, it’s ours by default and I’m not leaving before he does.” 

“Well, then we’ll be here a while because he’s just circling back this way,” Remus says, flying his hand over toward the path, where Sirius looks to find Remus isn’t all that wrong about his claim. 

“Well, so what?” Sirius says. “He’s not coming back here, and if he somehow decides that’s a really good plan on his part, you can watch me knock him out, how’s that?” 

Remus puts out a stewing sigh through his nose. “Why would we tempt that, when we could just head out?” 

“I haven’t had my coffee yet,” Sirius says, sweeping his hand toward his drink sitting off to the side of the blanket. “You’re not even halfway through your tea yet, so when we’re both finished, we can start heading out; that’s my final offer.”

Remus reaches for his tea and clears a good quarter more out of it by the simple nature of performance, but Sirius takes his and sips it slowly; he can do this all day. “I’ll ask you to quit holding yourself like you’re trying to make yourself as little as possible,” Sirius tacks on. 

“Well, this is just getting ridiculous,” Remus says of it, shaking his head and not making the effort to unfold his arms from his middle. 

“I agree,” Sirius returns, eyeing Remus’ body language. 

“It’s chillier in the shade than I thought it’d be,” Remus defends, bringing a snort out of Sirius. “The wind’s picked up.”

“Has it, though?” Sirius sends him through a skeptical grin, flattening his straw out with his teeth before rounding it off again. 

“Well, you’re a furnace at all times, so you really wouldn’t notice the difference, would you?” Remus returns, and Sirius simply watches him for a full thirty seconds or so, a fond little smile on his face. “Quit looking at me like that.” 

Sirius smirks around his straw, taking Remus' reluctant smile as a win in his books. “I will point out that perhaps my choice in pantaloons for you might’ve worked out better for you in the long run than you made it seem before we left,” he points out, practically glowing.

“Yeah, well, my arms are cold,” Remus returns. “No surprise there, I’m sure.” 

Sirius shakes his head no through an amused expression, but with that said, a breeze does pass through that, for Sirius, feels more like a rotating fan on the lowest setting, but for Remus, it’s got to feel more like twenty below. 

“Do you want to stop by yours on the way?” Sirius offers. 

“No, I’ll be fine,” Remus insists. 

“The grocery isn’t going to close any time soon, so we really could spare a five minute detour to go grab something to cover those arms,” Sirius raises.

“I’ll be OK,” Remus instills. 

Sirius settles in and takes to watching Remus shuffle about, pulling his legs in to cross them at first, then lifting his knees to form a makeshift barrier around his torso, and then sticking his arms in between them before he lets out a flat sigh. 

“I actually wouldn’t mind if we went back and got something,” he says finally. 

“Yeah, I figured I’d just wait until you came to terms with it,” Sirius nods, his brows high up his forehead in plain amusement. 

“Well, can we head out, please?” Remus raises, frowning over at him. 

Sirius nods once, takes another long sip of his coffee, and lifts up off the blanket onto his knees before pushing onto his feet with his free hand, moving to stand off to the side of the blanket and indulging in a large stretch. Remus folds out of his pretzel position and rises to his knees to start folding the blanket into even squares before he rolls it up into a freakishly tiny, cow-printed cylinder. 

“How do you do that?” Sirius asks candidly. 

“I had to learn how to pack many things into a travel trunk,” Remus offers, sticking the blanket cylinder into their bag with an air of accomplishment. “I just roll everything up as small as it’ll go and it gives me a lot more room to work with.”

“I might try that for the trip,” Sirius says, piqued. “I always end up having to take everything out again halfway through and start from scratch, and then that doesn’t work and I have to leave stuff behind because I can’t fit them in.” 

Remus reaches into the bag to pull out the blanket cylinder again. “If you line shirts up like this,” he says, holding it straight up, “then you can fit twice as much other stuff in the space you’re dealing with.” 

“Imma do it,” Sirius manifests, smiling down at his very own Professor. 

Remus sticks the blanket back into the bag, lifts up from his crouched position, and plucks the remainder of his tea off of the ground as he moves to stand. “I’ll take the bag if you take him?” he offers, nodding to Tango who is simply standing by them. 

“See how good he is?” Sirius offers. “I don’t even have to hold the lead and he’d stick by my side.” 

“Yeah, until he sees someone or something he’d like to bolt after and then does,” Remus returns, lifting the bag to hang it from his right shoulder. 

“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit,” Sirius mentions, bowing to pick Tango’s lead up for the show of it. 

“I don’t think you’re truly aware that you’ve got a hound on your hands,” Remus returns on beat. “As striking an appearance as he’s got, people don’t love having a hound his size galloping toward them at horse speeds.”

Sirius just mimics Remus’ tone with a bunch of gibberish, heading in between the trunks of the two trees that provided them shelter from the beating sun to get to the path. Issue is, with all that jibber-jabber coming out of his mouth, Sirius doesn’t actually hear the jingling of collars heading their direction, but Tango certainly does, springing and yanking on the lead and therefore Sirius’ right arm and launching him up the path toward two, identical miniature collies being led their way by their owner. 

Sirius skids to a stop a little before them, tugging back on Tango so he won’t barrel into the small pups. “Alright, we’re going,” he says to the dog scuttling along the pavement, "relax."

The dogs collide inevitably, but Sirius can’t _not_ find the sight of Tango standing tall above the two pups as they prance around each other in a whirlwind, smiling wide at lady attached to the collies’ leads who evidently looks just as charmed by the sight. 

Remus saunters — and Sirius means _saunters_ up on his left, a completely royal air about him as he stands with his hands in his trouser pockets and the ever-enviable stupor of having been right. “Alright,” Sirius sing-songs to Tango, not looking to get heckled in public and the face Remus has on suggests Sirius’ time is running out fast, “time to go.” 

Sirius leads him away from the two pups barking erratically as they go, turns with his neck held high and straight, readying himself for the heckling of the century, but Remus simply strolls beside him with a airy smile on, which is somehow even worse than if he just put this to bed by vocalizing that he’d been very right about the Tango versus any living creature debate. 

“You know what?” Sirius starts, leaning in close to Remus pointedly, “I’m going to let this slide because at least you’re smiling again.” 

“Oh, you selfless soul,” Remus returns, gliding along the path. 

“It’s true, I am,” Sirius accepts, giving a celebratory bob of his shoulders. “I knew I’d get you back soon enough, and if the way it was done ended up being chaotic as it was, well, that’s the nature of the game.” 

“My life _did_ get a lot more chaotic since you strutted into it,” Remus offers circumstantially. 

“Funny way to say _exciting_,” Sirius raises it, heading for the post by the end of the curb. 

“I was getting to that,” Remus offers. 

“Oh, mhm,” Sirius nods, hitting the button for the crosswalk. 

When they get back to Remus’ building, it makes sense to bring Tango upstairs with them, and once inside, Sirius thinks it makes even better sense to retire Tango for the day. “Oh shit,” he says, stopping Remus from leaving the entryway so he can fish in the bag on his right shoulder. 

Remus wiggles back, bemusedly looking in the bag for context clues. “What are you—” 

“I forgot about the treats,” Sirius explains, tugging the baggie out. 

Remus settles in with provided context. “Oh, well, give him two for his plight, then,” he says, unloading the straps of the recyclable bag into Sirius’ hands and slipping off to his room.

Sirius accepts the fact that he’s now the bag holder for the time being and sticks it between his left arm and side to free up his hands to get a treat out of the baggie, making Tango sit and shake for it before he gives it to him. 

“Did he shake?” Remus asks from the room. 

“Both paws,” Sirius chimes, quite proud of his little man. 

“Good boy,” Remus sends back for it. 

Sirius bows forward to unclip Tango’s lead, rises to full height again to hang it from one of the hooks, and leans around the wall to the entryway to pitch the second dog treat into the main area of the flat and watches Tango bolt off for it. 

Remus steps out of his room just as the bullet known as Tango finds the treat by the sounds of it, but Sirius is a bit distracted by the maroon and black houndstooth poncho Remus has donned and somehow taken his overall Look up five notches. 

“I—” Sirius starts, bracing the wall behind him for support, “—I need a second.” 

Remus crosses his arms underneath the poncho, his mouth twisting up into a smile as he shifts his weight on his feet. “You’re easily impressed.

“I’m really not,” Sirius replies. “When did you get that?” 

“Couple weeks back,” Remus answers.

“No, but — where?” Sirius asserts. “Where do you find these treasures?”

“This was a yard sale find,” Remus offers, smiling brightly down at it. “Six whole pounds, to boot.”

“A steal,” Sirius calls it. “I don’t want to say this personally, just with the risk it’ll pose of you taking it off, but are you sure that it isn’t going to be a little hot in that?” 

“It’s lightweight,” Remus says, pushing his hands up to puff up the material. “Feel.” 

Sirius does so out of a mixture of true curiosity and an excuse to get in close, taking the edge of it and having a feel. “I want it,” he says, petting it. 

“It’s mine,” Remus returns, pulling his hands out from beneath the poncho to hold it to himself. 

“Well, I want one one like it?” Sirius amends. 

“Well, that we could probably figure out,” Remus concedes, leaning in to leave a kiss on Sirius' lips. “Allons-y?”

Sirius cannot argue with the sentiment, but the least of all the language choices, stepping back to pull the door open and giving a sweeping gesture with his free hand for Remus to go first. On the way, Remus requests they stop in at his shop for a re-fuel as they near it, an appeal Sirius wholly agrees with so long as he gets this one. 

Remus neither confirms nor denies that the block and a half they walk to get to the shop, but he sighs long and accepts Sirius’ card for the purchase when they arrive, if nothing else but to avoid a public debate with the terrace right over there. 

“We should eat something,” he raises. “Should I get us a snack, too?” 

Sirius puts out the haul he’s in the middle of. “Yes, yes, and yes,” he returns. 

Remus smiles and heads in while Sirius hangs back and works on the cigarette he’s got going. He thinks about heading in once his cigarette is finished but as he’s weaving in between tables on the terrace to get to the door, Remus heads out through it, their respective drinks in his hands and what appears to be a protein box tucked between his left arm and side. 

“What, you didn’t get enough of that earlier?” Sirius raises, taking his drink from Remus’ hands and nodding at the protein box with a sly smile on. 

Remus, on the other hand, puts on an intense expression, lowering his voice. “We are in public,” he hisses. 

“Literally no one is listening to us,” Sirius hisses back, turning on his heel to exit the terrace. 

They make it four steps from the storefront before Sirius cannot help himself any longer, looking to Remus munching away on a slice of apple. “Can I get in on your box?” 

Remus huffs for that, but he sure does laugh about it as he holds the protein box out to him. “Leave the bread for me, please,” he requests. 

Sirius snags the grape stem inside the plastic box and hovers it over his face to eat one off of the branch like he’s a Greek God indulging in one of life’s simple pleasures. “That bread’s nasty so by all means, it’s yours,” he says of it. 

Remus hums brightly. “I’ll save you a bit of cheese, though,” he says, pointing the apple slice in his hand toward the cubed blocks of cheddar.

“A man after my own heart,” Sirius offers him, chuffed about getting some cheese. 

By the time they get to the grocery, Sirius is rather ecstatic to note that there’s much less weight to Remus’ steps, and while that may very well be because of the poncho and/or the protein box he got to snack on, Sirius has an inkling he’s had something to do with it, too. 

Remus goes to put the remnants of their snackage in the bin just inside the automatic doors while Sirius makes a beeline for the carts, pulls it out from the row it’s in, and straps his coffee into the baby carriage for safe riding. He plants his right foot up on the beam going along the back of the cart and leaves his left on the ground, scootering the cart in through the second set of automatic doors. He checks over his shoulder to be sure Remus is following him in, and he’s happy to note that he’s indeed a mere few steps behind him, eyeing Sirius’ scootering with reluctant amusement. 

“Whose phone did we write the list on?” Sirius asks, “‘cause I’ll level with you, I did not bring mine with me.” 

Remus smirks. “It was mine,” he says, pulling his phone out of his back right pocket and thumbing through it as he speeds up to walk alongside Sirius. “Flour was the first item I put down, but we can get that when we’re more down that way.” 

“Well, we’re in produce, so might that be a good starter?” Sirius raises. 

Remus looks up like he’s just realized that fact. “Mm, fruit for the pie,” he says, pointing at Sirius, “only issue is, we never actually made a decision.” 

Sirius sucks a thoughtful breath in through his teeth, looking sidelong at Remus. “What were our choices again?” he asks, Sirius pulls the cart to an idle near the fruits. 

“Cherry or apple,” Remus delivers, lingering to the right of the cart. 

“Well, now I know why we got stuck there,” Sirius offers. “Now, I’m just going to ask it; do we have to choose between joy and more joy?”

Remus lowers their list, looking over at Sirius. “I suppose we don’t _have_ to do anything,” he answers for it. “The world’s our oyster.” 

Sirius loves _that_ sentiment being quoted back to him and soon freezes as a jolt of a thought takes him over. “OK, hear me out,” he prefaces, and Remus stops short, freezing with his hands up in front of him as if readying himself for the catch, “what if we did a cherry pie, and then an apple crisp; that way, we get twice the joy and a little variety at the same time?” 

Remus pulls his raised hands into two fists. “_Yes_,” he returns gravely. “Remind me to stop for brown sugar then; my mum’s got the best recipe out there, but it just won’t be the same with plain old white.” 

Sirius pops Remus’ fists with two of his own. “Deal.”

Remus sticks his tea in the baby carriage alongside Sirius’, strapping them in together and leaving himself empty handed for the time being. He and Sirius split off there, Remus heading over to gather up some apples while Sirius heads off to the towering display of cherries. He picks the bag that looks the most pleasing to the eye and hawks it into the baby carriage in the cart, looks up and around for any potential onlookers and once he deems that the coast is clear, slides the zip lock open on the bag and pulls a cherry out of the bag, popping it into his mouth. 

Remus comes back his way with a bag of some of the roundest pommes Sirius ever did see, and he’d have told him that himself if his mouth wasn’t full. Remus sticks the bag in the cart, looks up at Sirius and pauses to search him carefully, and Sirius smiles bright around his mouthful. 

“You’re supposed to wash the fruit before you sample it in the middle of the store, you know,” Remus mentions, shaking his head when Sirius all but shrugs it off. “Where are you going to put the pit?” 

“Was thinking about spitting it at you maybe,” Sirius answers mildly, his voice a little muffled. 

“I’ll be in the next one over,” Remus replies at once, turning on his heel and heading off down the aisle.

Sirius takes the pit out of his mouth and flicks it in Remus’ wake, but he’s going at too quickly a clip for it to land. He sighs easily and leans his forearms on the cart, tying the stem of the cherry into a knot while he waits for Remus to come back to him. 

Remus, the shitter, heads up from behind Sirius from the other direction and spooks him as he slips a loaf of bread into the cart. Sirius budges Remus’ arm on its way by to get his attention and pulls the bowed stem of the cherry out of his mouth to hold it up like it’s a piece ready for the MOMA. 

Remus pauses still midway through putting a bag of bagels in the cart, dropping the bag altogether. “How did you do that?” he asks, mind_blown._” 

“Practice,” Sirius calls it, beaming bright. “Worked at it my entire final year at school to be able to do it.” 

Remus checks around him real quick, but there’s just one lady nearby feeling out a few oranges, so he must consider that as close to alone as they can get in here. “This,” Remus says, circling a hand around the vicinity of Sirius’ mouth, “and all that comes with it just makes so much more sense now.”

Sirius shimmies his shoulders a little in celebration, allowing that compliment to wash over him as he flicks the stem away, thankful for its service. “You’re making a mess,” Remus observes, not sounding all that boiled about it. 

“The pit’s over there, too,” Sirius extends. 

Remus gives an exaggerated sigh. “Can’t take you anywhere,” he says, shaking his head for effect before nodding it back the way he came. “There’s a sample table over there, by the by.”

Sirius perks and immediately pushes his arms off of the handle of the cart, dropping his hands to the handle and wheeling it around to face that direction, and then it’s full speed ahead. Remus catches up easily, apparently just as Ready for a sample. They head down to the end of the produce aisle, take a left since there isn’t much of an option to take a right, and the sample table comes into view as if it’s lit up by a spotlight. Sirius pushes the cart off to the side, gets in line with Remus behind a few other curious and indulgent patrons. 

“Did you see what they were?” Sirius asks, shooting it in a whisper toward Remus on his immediate right. 

Remus shakes his head for it, but with him being the tallest person in the surrounding area, he really only has to look straight over the heads of the people in front of him. “Taquitos,” he replies proficiently. “Chicken or beef.” 

“How do you know that’s what the choices are?” Sirius asks in an undertone. 

“The sign says it,” Remus responds, lower down to match Sirius’ whispering. 

Up until this very moment, Sirius felt like he’d come down quite a bit from their wake, shake, and bake, but apparently not so much. “Well, what are the rules, then?” he asks. “Is it one each and that’s it, or can I try both?” 

“Well, the sign doesn’t say anything about that either way,” Remus returns, stepping forward as the line moves forward. 

“A loophole for sure,” Sirius deems it, stepping with him automatically. 

“You could perhaps not be greedy and just pick one?” Remus puts out there, a pointed smile aimed sidelong at him, and Sirius simply puts out a weighted breath at the mere idea, and only half in jest. “You made so much fun of me for getting up in arms about thirty to forty drink options that I’d have to choose from, and here you are anyway, unable to make up your mind between two options; interesting.” 

“It’s a dilemma, OK?” Sirius shoots him, causing a snort from Remus for it. “You were always going to pick a tea, so in reality it was more like ten to fifteen options for you, but this — this is the question of my life.”

“Is it, though?” Remus sends him, trying to keep a laugh from bubbling out of his throat. 

“Listen, the dunderheads in here could probably tell that sample bloke what they want out of the two, but they don’t know what I know, haven’t seen what I’ve seen—”

“What,” Remus starts, voice suddenly much louder than the volume they’d been trading quips at, but in fairness, he’s doing it through a laugh, “have you seen exactly?” 

“Attack ships on separate coasts vying for victory,” Sirius recites, his chest heaving through it, “timbering ballasts hitting careening down and sending out shock waves of destruction to the rest of the soldiers on board, shrapnel flying left and right—” 

Remus ducks his head through his mirth. “I shouldn’t have asked.” 

“And when you’ve seen it all,” Sirius breezes on, smiling through it, “it becomes nearly impossible to—”

Remus lifts his head and immediately budges Sirius’ right arm with his left, collecting himself at once with a quick sniff. Sirius looks ahead, realizes the line has truly dissipated somewhere during his soliloquy, and it turns out they may have made a sole audience out of the sample bloke. 

“So, after all that,” he deadpans, “which one will it be?” 

Sirius’ gaze darts to his name tag. “Haven’t decided yet, Frank,” he chimes. “Haven’t decided yet.” 

“Chicken,” Remus says immediately after, making the decision for the both of them. 

Frank hands two taquitos over to Remus on cupcake sheets and he and Sirius depart for the cart, Remus snickering the whole way there. “Poor bloke was just trying to get through his shift, and then we came along,” he says, a little flushed as he hands over Sirius’ sample. 

Sirius holds onto it. “You know, looking back, he might think well of that little moment we all shared,” he offers, getting a disbelieving smile out of Remus as they indulge by the cart. “No, think about it: all day he’s probably heard the same yeses and nos, a few questions about the calorie count in them, I’m sure, and all we did there was give him a little variety to his interactions.” 

“Just a little variety,” Remus quotes. 

“Yes, in the middle of a sea of wooden reactions,” Sirius caps it off, cheersing Remus with his taquito, though Remus clearly didn’t see that coming and almost fumbles his own taquito to the ground. “Ooh, watch out.” 

“I can’t account for your impulsivity at any point,” Remus returns before tucking into his sample, perhaps before he loses it to the ground. 

Sirius lifts his fists in the air as he finishes his own in under ten seconds. “Good pick,” he offers him. 

“I think so, too,” Remus accepts, reaching to hold his free palm out for the empty cupcake sheet Sirius hasn’t figured out what to do with yet. “Here, I’ll brave going back over there.” 

Remus skirts around the new line formed at the sample table and tosses them in the bin, making his way back to him at a rushed clip. “Oh, he was not happy to see me again, so let’s just—” he says, gesturing for them to get out of the vicinity of the sample table. 

“Where to next, boss?” Sirius asks, taking up post as pilot of the cart once more. 

Remus pulls out his phone again, humming a vague tune as he has a gander over it, and ends up smirking. “Take a wild guess,” he offers. 

“Say no more,” Sirius returns, setting sail automatically for aisle four. 

At least, it would have been smooth sailing if the aisle they’re in weren’t a free for all with people headed this way and that without a discernible pattern. Remus heads up ahead of the cart, creating a thin but noble path behind him for Sirius to push the cart through as he weaves them along the back aisle running adjacent to the numbered aisles, and that does work for a short time before a pack of four pass in-between them to huddle around a display of picnic essentials at the end cap of aisle three and apparently just make themselves at home there. 

“Remus, no,” Sirius calls to him, garnering him to turn around and lean around the group of four, openly taking enjoyment out of the put-upon look Sirius knows he’s got on. Remus heads around the group, gesturing to head down aisle three instead, and the two of them head up the aisle to come back down aisle four the opposite way. 

That plan sounds a-ok to Sirius right until they come to the end of aisle three and get a glimpse of the circus that is the check-out lanes, and Remus lets out a low whistle for it. “I may have made a poor judgement call,” he says of it. 

“I was right there with you,” Sirius says, inching the cart around the corner as soon as there’s a break in traffic. 

Remus follows close behind him, one of his hands pressed to the small of Sirius’ back to keep up with him, and Sirius knows it has to do with simple logistics so as not to lose him in the crowd, but the rush he feels from the simplicity of the contact blooms all the same. He pushes for the last stretch with renewed vigor, taking a swift right and bringing them into a blessedly less hopping aisle save for one gent down at the other end of it. 

Sirius puts out a championed hoot as he pushesé the cart down to the midway point to get to the wall of tea and parks it a little out of the way. “I was genuinely seconds from ditching the cart and tugging you on out of here while we had the chance,” he tosses behind him. 

“Well, thank you for pressing on in the face of chaos,” Remus says, glancing up at the cornucopia of teas at his disposal. 

Sirius hangs back by the cart, sipping on his coffee and dwindling it down to about a quarter left in his cup, half-noting _Bleeding Love_ starting out over the speaker above their heads and then suddenly it’s too difficult to ignore. 

“Why do they always pick the most sultry ballads for places like this?” Sirius raises. “There you are trying to pick between tea options, indulging in the idea that you might spring for a new one when we both know you’ll end up going with one of your regulars, and how are you supposed to think clearly while she’s up there crooning in your ear the whole time.” 

Remus smirks, turning his head to glance back at him. “So, the first time I heard this tune,” he says, pointing above them in reference to the tune, “I was in a crowded cafe doing homework two tables away from a speaker, so too far away to hear it properly, and so I was absolutely certain I’d heard her sing, _you call me your banana_, and it really challenged me there for a few minutes until I heard it again on the second verse, and then I just had to look it up to be sure I hadn’t hallucinated—”

Sirius reels back from the cart, flying his hands in the air for mercy. “No — no no no,” he sends him through sudden mirth. “Stop it, you did not.”

Turns out, though, that Remus timed his tale rather well for it takes mere seconds for the crooning of ‘_you cut me open and I,_’ flows down from above, and then Sirius can’t _not_ hear what Remus once did and similarly cannot handle anything anymore, holding onto the handle of the cart for support. 

“It just changes the whole thing,” he puts out weakly. 

“For better or for worse, I don’t know,” Remus puts in, looking quite pleased by the reception of his tale. 

“Better, definitely better,” Sirius sighs out, lifting his hands to wipe at his eyes. 

“Did you want to pick a coffee since we’re here?” Remus asks, nodding his head down toward the coffee. 

Sirius drops his hands, semi-collected, and pushes out a few pondering breaths as he wanders down the aisle a little ways to the left, scanning the options ahead of him. A fully lime green bag of beans catches his eye fairly quickly when it certainly stands right out to him, but the design on the front catches his eye more than the bright colour even; a simplistic white lettering that reads ‘_ethical bean coffee_’ in all lower cases. 

“Hey, Remus?” he puts out curiously, plucking the bag off the shelf and turning it to face Remus a few steps away. “Would you like any of this ethical bean coffee here?” 

Remus presses his mouth in a line, turning his face toward the shelves a mere beat after looking his way. “I think I’m alright?” he returns, though it seems like it was a lot of work to speak.

Sirius waggles the bag back and forth curiously still. “You sure?” he raises, blinking quizzically, which never fails to get Remus fighting a laugh. “Remus, it says right here on the label that this batch of beans adheres to a strict moral code — just your sort of thing, no?” 

Remus purposefully doesn’t look his way again, and though Sirius can’t be fully certain what with Remus’ shades on, he’s quite of the belief Remus has got his gaze on the ceiling to avoid any accidental glance in Sirius’ direction or else that kid is going to explode. “Where was that bag when I was slugging through philosophy, hm?” he raises, a waiver to his voice. 

Sirius gasps at once. “You’re right?” he returns. “What does it think it’s doing, showing up after you could’ve used it the most? Laughing?” 

“Is that what that sound is?” Remus plays along, though he certainly reels back from the shelf and looks back Sirius' way once Sirius makes the bag of beans connect with the floor. 

Remus lifts a hand to his mouth, covering a reluctantly amused smile no doubt as he rushes down the aisle to him. “You’re lucky that thing didn’t explode,” he sends him from behind his hand. 

Sirius sends a non-committal hum back his way as he stoops to pick up the bag. “Now I kind of wish it had,” he says, slap it back onto the shelf. 

Remus drops his hand and exhales carefully so as to not encourage Sirius’ antics any, surely. “Amazing how it doesn’t matter what time of day we turn up here, you’re going to act out either way.” 

“Amazing how you’ll pretend you aren’t completely charmed by my acting out,” Sirius returns it, though he drops his airy tone the moment he hones in on the man down at the end of the aisle currently staring daggers their direction. 

Remus turns his head from Sirius’ placid stare and satisfies his curiosity by looking in the direction Sirius is sending his gaze and immediately faces the shelf, pretending like he’s very interested in the label directly in front of his face. 

“Stop that,” Remus sends him, under his breath. 

“Not doing anything,” Sirius returns, nonplussed. 

“Yes, you are.” 

“Just want to see how long it takes.” 

“Well, this is what happens when you treat a bag of coffee like a ball in a public place.”

“Is it? Is this what happens?” 

Sirius eases his stature the moment the man turns out of the aisle, sighing through his nose with satisfaction and putting his gaze back on Remus. “I won,” he says brightly. 

Remus has a look for himself. “By the skin of your teeth,” he says, turning his head back to him, “and if a staff member comes stalking over to us in a few minutes, I will ditch you and the cart the second I see them coming.” 

“I see how it is,” Sirius sends him, swivelling around in a whirl and going back to the coffee bags to actually pick one this time. “The disloyalty around here is enough to suffocate me.” 

“How low am I on English Breakfast?” Remus sends after him, plainly moving on from Sirius’ performance. 

Sirius hums a pondering note, picturing the state of the tin as he was making their respective cups the morning prior. “You’re down to the last few,” he offers, sidling up to the coffee bags with his hands in the pockets of his joggers, “and oolong is right down to the wire.” 

“Great, thank you,” Remus says. 

Sirius ends up picking one of his tried and true brands and wanders back over to the cart with an air of satisfaction as Remus is putting two tins of tea into it. “Oh, here,” Remus offers, holding up his hand for the bag. 

Sirius very nearly hands it over just from how casual his tone was. “Nice try?” he says, genuinely impressed. 

Remus drops his shoulders by an inch as Sirius tucks the bag in between his right arm and side, and more importantly, out of his reach. “Put it in the cart, please?” he bids. 

“I’ve got it,” Sirius insists.

“Sirius,” Remus says. “They’re my groceries, so it just makes sense if I pay for them.” 

“I’m going to consume half of this, easily,” Sirius says, circling his free hand around the admittedly sparse cartload, but it won’t be that for long. “This is expensive coffee to boot, Remus; it’s a vice, not a typical grocery item.” 

Remus sighs through his nose once, turns for Sirius, and reaches to snatch the bag out from Sirius’ grasp, but Sirius pulls it right out from where it’s tucked before Remus can get a decent hold on it and holds the up high in the air in his right hand, out of reach of Remus’ grabby-hands. Problem is, Remus is — to quote one Peter Pettigrew — ten feet tall and has a good three inches on Sirius even with the added height boost Sirius has with kicks on his feet, so it doesn’t take much for Remus to grab hold of it again.

Sirius clasps his fingers tight around it, his last ditch effort to keep it in his grasp foiled when Remus jabs his left forefinger into Sirius’ right side. Sirius buckles at once at a pressure point being hit and bows sideways to get away from Remus’ forefinger, his right arm coming down as his reflexes go wonky and his elbow connecting with Remus’ head as a result. 

Remus gives out a yelp and Sirius freezes. “Ohhhh, no,” he breathes out, half in sudden remorse, half reluctantly amused as he reaches to pull his favourite of Remus body parts down and into his chest, but Remus acts swiftly, taking the nurturing as a fine decoy as he tugs on the bag of coffee and wiggles out of Sirius’ reach, dunking it into the cart. 

Sirius huffs long and hard, putting his hands on his hips. “You’re a little faker.” 

Remus shrugs with a winning smile on. “I cannot believe you’d have actually got in line behind me just to buy that one bag yourself, rather than put it in the fucking cart and agree to sort the bill out after we’re finished here,” he chids. “It’s truly mind-boggling.” 

Sirius stares him down, reluctantly impressed by that takeaway. “Fine,” he says at once, holding up a finger, “but I will be forwarding you exactly half of what this cart comes to and you will not argue with me about it.” 

Remus puts a measured sigh out of his nose before nodding once. “Fine, but we’re actually going to need to put more food in it before we can have a bill to split,” he says, more of a hint to get back to it than a condition. 

Sirius moves back to helm the cart, leaning his forearms on the handle bar. “Onward, captain,” he 

Remus pulls out his phone to peruse their list as Sirius pushes the cart along the aisle, heading back toward the back aisle of the store. “Soup’s next up,” he offers.

Sirius hums easily in return, steering the cart around the bend as they take a left at the end of the aisle, a fancifully cut and tagged display of chardonnay catching Sirius’ attention at the end cap. The variety itself, not one Sirius cares for much, but he does find the advertisement blurb on the label rather eye-catching, if only for the fact that it insists in bold lettering that this particular chardonnay is unwooded. 

Sirius snorts, reaching to pull the cart to a quick stop with his right hand, garnering Remus to look up from his list, and reaches to hover his left forefinger underneath the word. “Me.” 

Remus puts out a trumpeted _pfft_. “Since _when?_” 

Sirius lets go of the cart in favour of strolling along with his wrists innocuously crossed behind his back. “Been many moons since I’ve been spelunked,” he says, aloof in tone, aloof in his steps. 

Remus tilts his head back and forth mildly. “Two days,” he corrects. 

“Been two days since I’ve been spelunked,” Sirius amends, keeping the tone identical. 

“Yeah, well, wait an hour,” Remus returns, so low down that Sirius stops still, unsure of whether he hallucinated it or not, but Remus’ face suggests otherwise. “Focus, and maybe we’ll get out of here before the day’s over and we could see what we can do about your spelunking needs.” 

Sirius pushes for aisle six, rejuvenated and taking a speedy left turn again, and brings them to the wall of soups. There, Remus lets out a cheerful noise, flicking a sale tag hanging from the shelf advertising a three-for-one sale. “My lucky day,” he says, looking up at the rows of soup ahead of them. 

Sirius frankly cannot control his face about Remus’ hardwired love of a good sale. “What do you think,” he starts ponderously, “is it a butternut squash kind of day?” 

“I want it to be that kind of day,” Remus returns, the left corner of his mouth twitching. 

“Then it is,” Sirius grants, scanning the shelves for the particular brand Remus knows and loves and reaching for the carton when he spots it. 

“Pick another for me?” Remus says, already sticking a carton of cream of mushroom in the cart. 

Sirius has another searching glance, lifts cream of broccoli off of the shelf being a long-standing fan of it and that being a trait they certainly share, and Remus nods his approval with a smile. Sirius dunks the two cartons into the cart, pulling a sound of horror out of Remus.

“There’s bread in here,” he says weakly, reaching in the cart to shuffle some things around. 

“Might I remind you that you chucked that coffee in there like a slam dunk,” Sirius mentions, “so I’m not sure why you’re fussed now.”

“A bag of grinds isn’t two cartons of soup, now is it?” Remus returns, moving the bag of cherries from the child compartment into the cart and replacing it with the bagels and the loaf of bread for safe keeping. 

Sirius pushes a laugh down when Remus lets out a breath of accomplishment. “Good to go, then?” 

“I think so,” Remus returns, already scanning the list again. “Now, I’m not sure I really want to say the word aloud, but we are low on milk and we’ll need it for the baking.” 

Sirius puts out an exhaustive breath, right sick of pairing a glass with nearly every damn meal for weeks just to consume the load of it before it could spoil. “Can we do a smaller one, then?” he implores, putting a bit of effort into his frown to make it a tad more exaggerated and, therefore, more of a jest. 

Remus smirks at him for it. “I’ll get one that’ll cover the baking and to go with cereal, but that’ll be it.” 

“That, I can get behind,” Sirius relents. “And on that note, we’re low on cereal.” 

“Are we?” Remus asks. 

“I snuck a bowl last night, what of it?” Sirius returns, smiling wryly. 

Remus nods, checks his list again. “OK, why don’t we split this up a little, cover more ground,” he says, his thumbs moving wildly on the keys of his phone. Sirius moves out of the way of a lady passing through the aisle and slips back to the cart once she’s passed, a bright ping sounding out from his mobile. 

“Did you send me a love letter?” Sirius asks, reaching for his mobile. 

“More like half of the list, but you could read it between the lines if you squint,” Remus offers. “I added cereal to it, so you just handle that part, I’ll double check with my mum what I’ll need for the crisp and get the rest of that handled, and we can meet up again with our respective bounties.” 

Sirius checks his list, seeing milk, eggs, and ice cream; bit of a pattern there. “Do you just not like the dairy section anymore?” he raises. 

“It’s just made sense to group them together and not have you going in a zigzag all over the store,” Remus justifies. “That’ll be my plight, so one of us should get the easier stuff.” 

“Do you want me to pick up butter, since I’ll be over there?” Sirius asks. 

Remus sighs as he puts thought into it. “Get a small one just in case, but I know we have some in the fridge, so we don’t need to go ham on it.” 

“Deal,” Sirius says, typing butter in at the bottom of his bit of the list. “You take the cart while I’m gone.” 

Sirius makes to head off but Remus halts him before that can happen. “You can pick the ice cream flavour,” he mentions, “only please try to pick something I’ll actually want a spoonful of this time?” 

Sirius huffs long and loud. “How can you not like Chunky Monkey?” he raises. “How?”

“It’s the banana in it,” Remus says exhaustively. “It’s like a pint of medicine with chocolate flakes dumped in it and it just doesn’t sit well in my mouth.” 

“You’re a madlad, and that’s all I have to say to you,” Sirius returns, turning from both Remus and the cart to strut off. 

“Oi,” Remus calls after him, and Sirius swivels around to face him again, “if you happen to find a box of those taquitos, I’ll look the other way if it ends up in the cart.”

Sirius sees Remus’ wry smile and raises it a grin, blowing him a kiss and heading off for good. He figures he’ll do well to gather intel on where the taquitos are before having to fill his arms up with all the dairy products he’ll need to bring back with him, so he heads back to Frank at the sample table, head held high. 

Sirius bypasses the line to get a sneak peek at the brand on the table, gets spotted by Frank by little to no surprise, and smiles in greeting. “Where can I find these?” he asks. 

“Aisle ten,” Frank delivers. 

Sirius flashes him an OK symbol with his right hand and heads right to it. He stuffs the box between his left arm and side and heads for the dairy aisle from there, gathering up the milk, butter, and eggs before stopping at the ice cream freezer and scanning over his choices. 

Thirty seconds into his debate, he lands what he thinks is a stellar compromise just as the opening lick of _Brass in Pocket_ starts up overhead, and it’s as if the plucky opening itself is congratulating him on his decision. Sirius opens the freezer door, plucks the pint of Half Baked off of the shelf, and reworks his armful of items around to carry them all easier, strutting along in beat with the tune when he really can’t hold off on that. 

He can’t reach his phone given that his arms are quite full so he struts along to the far end of the aisle and starts going along the rows from there, looking in each one for a tall curly Q, and singing along with the Pretenders accompanying him on his search. He spots Remus down in aisle three, chatting on his phone as he looks up at the shelf, but he turns when he hears Sirius coming more than he sees him, a lopsided grin on his face as he stands with his phone at his right ear and a bag of oats in his left hand. 

Sirius bobs his shoulders as he heads for the cart, noting Remus has gone and finished his tea in his absence, spurring Sirius to lean in and kill the rest of his own in one good swing. He moves around to the side of the cart, looking down at the haul Remus scrounged together in his absence, and trills on along with the tune playing as he works on fitting his own armful of items in and around the baking soda, baking powder, and a big bag of all-purpose flour already in there. 

“Yes, someone is,” Remus quips, pulling a bag of oats off of the shelf. “Alright, I’m heading for the checkout, but thank you ... say hi to dad ... yep, I will. Sunday, most likely.” 

Remus ends the call with dear Hope, pockets his phone, and brings the bag of oats over to the cart. “Did she like my crooning?” Sirius asks, fluttering his lashes. 

“She didn’t really work out that it was you, per se, but she enjoyed it nonetheless,” Remus rewards him.

“She will learn to recognize my pipes in time,” Sirius says of it, taking care in setting the carton of eggs down in the cart. “I got Half Baked, good with that?” 

Remus hums a vigorous agreement. “Very good.” 

“Are we all set?” Sirius asks. 

“Close,” Remus says. “I picked up a rolling pin and honestly my mixer spoons leave something to be desired, so I picked up a new pack of those, too, but those were on sale.” 

“It really is your lucky day,” Sirius returns. “Do we have pie sheets?” 

Remus reaches into the cart and shuffles some things around, lifting a pack to showcase that part has already been handled. “I got cinnamon, too, so I just need the brown sugar, and we’re free to go.”

Sirius blinks once before sending out a snort. “I’m really glad you remembered that ‘cause it went right out my head.” 

Remus taps his left temple in reply. “I’ll just go grab it, you watch the cart,” he says, heading off the way Sirius came. 

Sirius plucks the bag of oats out of the cart again, reading the back of it for no reasons than it’s the tallest item in their mound of many and to have something to do while he waits for him, but he really only has to wait under a minute, it seems, for Remus to make his return, stuffing a bag of brown sugar in with their haul and taking up post as the pilot of the cart. 

“So you know,” Sirius says, circling his right hand over the pile of groceries, “I was very frugal with my picks; so frugal even, that you’d have gotten hot just standing nearby.” 

“Unnecessary addition, but thank you for the effort,” Remus offers, wheeling the cart back toward the tills. 

“The ice cream wasn’t on sale, though,” Sirius levels with him, strolling along beside him. “I’m sorry to say it.” 

“It’s a vice I’ve made room for, but thank you for your candor,” Remus offers him. 

Check-out appears no less harried than their last glimpse of the area and Sirius puts out a small sigh as Remus wheels the cart over to the line that’s got the least amount of people lined up for it, getting in behind a mother and child, and very quickly getting locked in line by a lady coming and standing behind them, chatting away on her phone. 

Remus looks round at her voice and steps in a little more, apparently under the impression he’s in the way somehow. The conversation sort of stalls there given their line situation, but that makes it all the more easy to hear half of the lady’s phone conversation going on behind them. 

“Exactly... yes,” she says heavily, “....I mean, you’ve known her about six different ways...” 

Sirius darts his gaze to Remus — a foolish move in the simplest terms when Remus has a pointed smile painted on and then, Sirius breathes in long and aims to snip Remus’ direct line to his funny bone, but he can see for himself that Remus’ smile is telling him that Sirius isn’t out of the woods yet.

To make matters so much worse, Remus reaches up to flick his sunglasses up and down suggestively. “Stop that now,” Sirius shoots him, knowing he’ll burst if Remus keeps it up.

“That’s just a lot of ways,” he says under his breath, and Sirius moves his gaze to the ceiling in near-prayer. “And yet, very specific; not five, not seven.”

Sirius’ snort is far louder than he anticipates it’ll be once he knows he can’t keep it in anymore, and apparently it’s louder than Remus even saw coming, for he ducks his head down and conducts an intense staring contest with the floor. 

Sirius collects his own self, shuffling forward in line as Remus starts to an understanding that they’re expected to move now and rolls the cart forward a full wheel turn before hunkering it down until further notice. Sirius looks to his right before he swivels to the side, his back facing a few shelves of impulse buys very much on purpose when he does not need a candybar at the moment and knows he will have to avoid looking at them to accomplish leaving the place without sticking a bar into the cart, and then Sirius, for some gastly, unknown reason, gets his left foot used as a step-stool for the boy who used to be in front of them in line, but now apparently really wants to get at the candybars behind Sirius. 

Sirius steps aside, looking to Remus for help as the child boosts him aside another inch or three to get at the shelf. “Why is it always me?” he asks. 

Remus bites down on the right side of his lower lip, shaking his head as a reply; it’s anyone’s guess. Sirius looks to the boy’s mother, busy unloading the cart in front of them, but she certainly looks round when the kid hoots and runs a pick over to the cart in front of them that has him vibrating with excitement, and there, Sirius will cop to it; it’s cute. Borderline irritating, but it’s also cute — that’s the most anyone’s going to get out of him about it.

The boy’s mum, however, isn’t such a fan of the candybar that gets dropped into their cart. “No, not today,” she says, in a manner suggesting that is that on that, and for a moment there, Sirius feels hard for the little lad, catches the little kid’s gaze and aims a smile at him. 

The kid pouts up a storm, but doesn’t do much more than return the bar to the shelf. “Been there,” Remus whispers, scrunching his nose up a bit as if hating the memory of it, and there, if Sirius splices Hope and a tiny Remus in there in front of them in line, he’s got little to no choice in tamping down on thinking the lady’s a bit of a bag.

The lady steps up to the counter, unzips her wallet to pull out a card, and looks back and down at the boy, and Sirius thinks he sees a split-second’s worth of a guilt flash before she bends to pick him up, hoisting him up by the interac machine and lets him push the buttons on the machine, a task the boy seems unbelievably pumped to have allotted to him. 

Kids, hm. Sirius swallows, stares ahead in line, aiming for the wall above the bag boy’s head down at the end of this aisle, but in doing that, he finds the bloke was already looking directly at him, for some fucking reason, and it possibly being a split-second, innocuous meeting of gazes isn’t enough for Sirius not to tear his eyes away, hating that he’s even observable to anyone just then. 

Maybe not everyone. 

He chances a look at Remus, who's not watching him and instead taking in the little show going down in front of them with a knowing expression that lives and breathes nostalgia, and Remus must see Sirius studying him for Remus’ shoulders stiffen rather suddenly. 

“My mum used to let me press the buttons at the ATM,” he offers, lifting his shoulders a little sheepishly, and — it’s shit, all around it’s shit that Sirius can feel and see and read how reprehensible Remus feels about the silent but humongous elephant dancing in the room, hooting about how Sirius won’t ever be able to pick a single moment that he felt like Remus or that boy with the mother he ended up with, like it’s fucking Remus’ fault for getting a mum like Hope. 

Sirius feels as if he’s breathing through a straw as he moves in to start unloading their cart, but it’s all he really can do when he can’t really do much to even out the differences between their upbringings; it would take all day and all night. 

The action seems to wake Remus up, garnering him to start unloading from his end of it, and soon enough they’ve got an empty cart to bring back to the front. Remus passes his recyclable bags over toward the bag boy with a distracted smile, but the bloke continues to stare at Sirius even as he takes hold of the bags. Not in a way that might be kind of titillating if Sirius were single and looking, it’s more of a spooked, have-I-met-you-before gaze and it’s giving Sirius an inexplicably strange vibe that he’s not interested in.

Remus steps up to the counter to pay and Sirius goes ahead and wheels it back to the foyer, dumping the remnants of their drinks in the bin on the way back makes his way back to their checkout lane as Remus is taking his receipt and pocketing it. Sirius moves up to stand by him again, catching the eye of the bag boy again, who simply will not stop staring at him even while bagging their items, and by the time the bloke is close to the end of their haul and giving a dual attempt at watching Sirius while putting the grain based products at the top of the bags, Sirius has more than had it with him. 

“Can I help you with something?” he puts out sweetly, blinking twice at him.

The bloke shakes his head clear. “No,” he says, right quick. “Sorry, you just look identical to someone and it’s throwing me; that’s my bad.” 

Sirius nods, squinting a bit. “Regulus?” he guesses. 

The bloke’s eyes flash at once. “How—” he puts out, like his head’s gone and imploded on himself, and there, he smiles. “You knew him?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Sirius assures, and since the bloke is still blinking like he’s working with fifty less brain cells than even a moment ago, he figured he’ll just add the important piece to help with the puzzlement lining the bloke’s face. “Brothers; we got that all the time.” 

A confounded expression shows through before the bloke shakes it off quickly. “I didn’t know he had one, but God, you’re his twin,” he insists.

Sirius grins, lets a morbid laugh escape him, but Remus speaks before Sirius can lay the fuck into this incredibly brave bloke. “OK,” Remus says loudly, moving in quickly and lifting the recyclable bag right off of the counter and plucking the bag of bagels still in the bloke’s hands, “thank you and bye.” 

Remus quickly reaches for the second bag and shoulders that, gets his third, nearly forgotten recyclable bag quietly waved at him by Bag Boy, but Remus shakes his head quickly. “Keep it,” he insists, tugging Sirius along. 

Sirius’ entire face is equal to the sun’s total heat output as he leaves Remus to the task of getting him the fuck out of there, and boy does Remus work to rush them out the doors with their two bags of shopping on his shoulders. Sirius has a cigarette out the second he steps outside, lighting up as he moves away from the door and promptly speeds through the parking lot diagonally, pushing in the direction of Remus’ place. 

He takes a mighty haul of his cigarette, turning his head as Remus walks up on his right. “Why do people think it’s just fine to talk to me?” he shoots out. 

Remus purses his lips for a beat or two. “I don’t know, but I really wish they wouldn’t.” 

Sirius takes another heated haul. “And another thing?” he raises, flying his cigarette hand up and out in front of him. “Who the fuck says, ‘oh, I didn’t know he had a brother,’ straight after someone tells you that they’re the brother, who?” 

“I don’t know,” Remus says, sounding pained. “Him, apparently.” 

“He’s a piece of shit, then,” Sirius sends out. 

“Yeah,” Remus nods, and if he’s tamping down extremely hard on the urge to inject reason and impartiality into it, he’s doing everything right here as far as Sirius is considered; he doesn’t need to hear it. Sirius shakes his head while he takes yet another haul, fuming as he makes for the curb. “Please stop.” 

Sirius stops at once at the urgency in Remus’ tone, and goes still as Remus breathes out. “I didn’t want you hurdling into the road,” he says, relief lining his features. 

“Why would I do that?” Sirius asks. "Why?"

“You’re a step away from the road, and you weren’t stopping,” Remus defends. “Can we please take the quieter way back?” 

Sirius sticks his cigarette in his mouth, holds his right arm out for one of the bags on Remus’ shoulders, and gets the right one handed to him. He puts it on his right shoulder in turn, heads left instead of right, aiming for the burroughes instead of the boulevard they’re on. 

Remus heads up on Sirius’ left, going in between him and the edge of the sidewalk. “Well, this is good,” Sirius puts out cheerfully. “Now, whenever I feel a sharp pain of guilt for how I let things end with him, I’ll just remember to ask myself this; why put myself through that misery for a bloke who didn’t even tell people I existed?” 

Remus breathes in long, speaking once he lets it out. “He might not have known him long, or very well, even,” he offers. “I didn’t hear about Reg for a little while there—”

Remus falters the second Sirius even looks at him. “I’m just trying to help,” he tacks on quickly, shrinking back on the sidewalk so he’s a step or two behind Sirius, and then it’s Sirius’ turn to falter. 

“I’m not going to lose my shit on you, Remus,” Sirius says, his throat dry as he lifts his hands deftly for some of the fucking reason this man sprinkles around. “I’m upset, that’s all.” 

Remus looks out at the road on his left instead of at Sirius. “I don’t think that reflects on you, Sirius, and I’m going to want to help you get through this sort of thing, but you have to let me do it,” he says, clipped. 

Sirius breathes in and out, takes a quiet pull off his cigarette, shakes his head. “It is a reflection on me,” he offers. “I treated him like shit, all the time, and him not even mention my name isn’t anything I didn’t already know in my gut, you know — it just hit me hard; it’s like, I’ve had to squint to remember the good in that kid for so long now, even though I’ll jump at the chance to give him a break, he was the devil half the time and just knowing that he probably had to squint to remember I had anything good in me the whole time we weren’t speaking is—” 

Sirius cuts off as his throat wavers, feeling a tight knot in his throat, and startles as Remus links his right arm in with his left, a couple of chaps out on a stroll. “If it’s any consolation,” he starts, speaking so evenly that Sirius can’t feels just as anchored to his voice than him right then, “and I know I didn’t know Reg obviously, so all of this is probably going to sound like a lot of hooey coming from me—”

“Shut up,” Sirius says exhaustively, lifting his right hand to rub at his nose, “it’s always a consolation from you, I know you fucking know that.” 

Remus gives his arm a squeeze. “OK, then hear me out, please?” he prefaces. “I have seen you say a few very unkind things to a your friends now and again, who I know for a fact you love so deeply that you see them like they’re as good as blood — better than even, and I know for a fact that they see you the exact same way; they love more than they can stand. So, as much as it’s easy to think that you’re damaged beyond repair and you’re no good for anyone, you have to take those feelings about yourself and you have to throw them out, and just think about how _ I _ still manage to see so much good in you every fucking day.” 

“Oh, no no no no,” Sirius puts out, _not_ about to burst into fucking tears on the side of the road, he won’t do it. 

“Hey, was I not talking?” Remus checks. “I’ll ask you to back off my man’s quality of character right this second or I might have to make you do it myself.” 

Sirius puts out a snort, smiling sadly. “Oh, yeah?” he raises, budging Remus’ shoulder.

“Yeah,” Remus assures, a smile tugging at his lips. “Even if things were far from perfect between you two, all I’ve gotten about it is that it was very complicated, and even then, I still have no doubt in my mind that he would have had such a rough time not talking about you—”

“No,” Sirius cuts in, “it was probably the easiest decision he had to make.”

“Sirius,” Remus huffs out. “Whether that bloke back there was a classmate, a friend, or Reg’s best mate in the world, I don’t care, Sirius; even if Reg told himself he’d never mention your name and was so adamant about it that it worked; it’d have still been a task for him to just up and make himself forget about a sun like you, and I know it because I’ve had a hard time not talking about you many, many times and I’ve also been very angry with you before.”

Sirius stops them walking, turns his head right quick, and stuffs his face up against Remus’ right shoulder, momentarily silenced and without the brainpower to come up with a reply that could even follow that. Remus leans in to press a kiss to the top of Sirius’ head, out in the open, under the beating sun, and it’s enough to get Sirius lifting his head, trying again. 

“God, who the fuck cares?” he raises, rubbing at his nose. “He was awful, I was awful, we were both our worst selves back then and there’s nothing I can do about it now.” 

“No, except drag yourself over the coals, and between you and me, I hate that option for you,” Remus says to it. 

“And really,” Sirius tacks on, “who the _fuck_ cares if Hickery-Doo over there doesn’t know of me; who’s he anyway? Nothing to me.” 

Remus stutters out a laugh. “Just—” he tries, “I agree with you, but why ‘Hickery-Doo’ of all things?” 

A snort comes out of Sirius so ferociously that it sort of hurts on the way out. “What, you think I know?” he raises. “I don’t police what comes into my head and right out of my mouth at any given point, OK? I just let it flourish.” 

“Well, thank God for that in this case,” Remus says heavily, grinning at him. 

Sirius sneaks a kiss to Remus’ forehead while he’s still got the chance. “Sorry I had a meltdown,” he says, frowning at him. 

“You didn’t,” Remus pardons, leading Sirius to continue walking, but at a slower stroll. 

“I kind of did,” Sirius says. “Call it a mini meltdown, if you want.” 

“You didn’t punch a stone wall, so I would have to say that was more of a bump in the road,” Remus extends, lifting his left hand and passing it deftly over the left hand side of his jaw and then putting out a wince. 

“What’s up?” Sirius asks. 

Remus shakes his head a bit. “Just sore.”

“You shouldn’t have gone so hard at me,” Sirius sighs. 

“I didn’t hear you complaining at the time,” Remus puts in, “and it’s not got to do with that, it’s my tooth.” 

“Well, you’re right, that I can’t take blame for,” Sirius says. “Which one?” 

“Lower molar,” Remus says, tapping the line of his jaw for added visuals, but that backfires on him evidently when he pulls a face, wincing.

“Well, why’d you do that?” Sirius raises, snickering.

“I don’t know,” Remus puts out weakly, smiling reluctantly. “Is there Tylenol back at mine?”

“Asks the man who just left the grocery where stockpiles of it are,” Sirius narrates. 

“I meant in the first aid kit you brought home with you,” Remus implores, budging Sirius’ hip. 

Sirius brightens, at the idea sure, but mostly for Remus putting home and him in the same sentence without immediately backtracking. “Could be?” he offers. “I didn’t go scouring the label, mind, but we can see.” 

Remus nods, dropping his left hand to pull their receipt out of his left trouser pocket and lifting it to hold it up to Sirius. “Here, go nuts,” he offers. 

Sirius hums a bright note, snatching it from Remus’ hand. “You’re really going to let me split it?” he asks, grinning ear to ear. 

Remus huffs out a good natured laugh. “Well, if it’ll keep you smiling like that, I suppose I can find a way to accept it,” he says, giving him a tiny smile in return. 

Sirius has a look at the total, pulls his phone out, and throws on just a little more than half just to make it a rounded-off number, and then pauses. “Do you want me to send you a little extra for a check up?” he asks. “I can just tack it on right now.” 

Remus puts out an aggrieved noise. “Why do you have to ruin a good thing?” he sends him, completely tortured by the mere idea of borrowing some money for a damned dental appointment. “I’m fine, I’ve been working a ton so I’ve money to move around if I need to—”

“Right, but I could just _move_ some of mine around and _into_ your account, and then you wouldn’t have to dip into yours,” Sirius raises. 

“We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here,” Remus says. “It’s a twinge, I don’t think I’ll end up needing a root canal done, so just fork some of the bill over and let’s just leave it at that.”

Sirius puts a huff toward the sky, then straightens his neck out, hitting send. “There, it’s on its way.”

“Mhm,” Remus agrees, leading Sirius diagonally across the road while there aren’t any cars coming from either direction. 

“Alright,” Sirius says, putting his phone away with an air of finality. “Tell me about work, hm? We didn’t get to talking about it last night.” 

“Right, well, it’s sort of hard to talk shop when you’re inside of me, generally,” Remus returns. 

Sirius huffs, half-smiling over it. “Well, I’m not inside you now, am I?” he raises. “What’s the hap, hm? What’s the tea?” 

Remus smirks a laugh through his nose, leading them up toward his street. “I’m trying to think,” he says, a thoughtful expression on before he appears to be struck with something. “I had a elderly gent slap my hand at the till, early on in my shift.” 

“What?” Sirius sends out, whipping his head toward Remus’. “Excuse me? Who the fuck—”

“He’s a regular, but more of an early afternoon sort, so I don’t think you’d have seen him around,” Remus offers, given that Sirius really only tends to pop in for a visit later on in the evenings. “And that’s part of what was so strange about it, he’s usually quite kind, always been pleasant.”

Sirius isn’t so interested in a laundry list of reasonings. “Why’d he hit you?” he demands.

Remus takes a measured breath, lifting his free hand. “It was more of a rap over my hand to scold,” he says, demonstrating it on the hand he’s got linked in with Sirius’ left arm. “So, what happened was, he put a note down on the counter and started fishing out the coin for the rest of the change, and I reached to pick up the note and he did not like that, rapped on my knuckles, and said, ‘that’s not yours yet!’”

Sirius puts out a profound scoff. “It’s fucking paper,” he returns, making a face. “You probably reached to help gather it up, I highly doubt it came off as, ‘gimme yo fucking money, ya old fucker,’ he needs to fucking chill out.” 

“I didn’t love the method used,” Remus puts in moderately, ”but I suppose it’s a tactic that’ll work, seeing as now I’m definitely going to be less inclined to gather up someone’s money again before they’re finished counting it out.” 

“What time does he usually come in?” Sirius asks. “I might show up there and rap that fucking cup out of his hand to scold, see how he likes it.” 

“No, see, I’m not going to tell you that,” Remus returns. 

“You have to start telling Lily about more of this shit,” Sirius says. “I guarantee she’s not going to care more about that man’s three pounds daily over her employees getting their hands smacked at the till for trying to help gather the money up, I’m—” 

Sirius fumes, shaking his head. “OK,” Remus says, reaching up to quell Sirius’ fiery disposition, “she was in back when it happened and Elise told her all about it, so she does know and already has it out for the man, so if you come in and join the cause, I don’t know that this man is going to make it out alive.” 

Sirius smirks out a laugh, a smile budding at his lips. “You know, once, back when Lily was still at mine,” he starts, reaching to prod Remus’ arm linked with his, “she has been newly promoted so she evidently wanted to perform well but was having a bit of a time trying to balance what the company wanted from her versus what the rest of us wanted—”

“Which is to leave you guys alone to goof off and work simultaneously,” Remus comes in. 

“Yes, true,” Sirius accepts, “and a big issue for Lily was trying to balance what she would be expected to do if a prime regular started acting out with some of her staff, and so, one day, this middle-aged man with a pair of those god awful bottle-think spectacles told Mary that he liked that she’d dropped some weight, and when Lily found out about that she about hunted that man down.” 

Remus lights up brighter than a Lite Brite, taking in an audible breath of sheer wonder. “Did she really?” 

Sirius nods knowingly. “My girl went right after him the next time he was in, I swear she grew eighteen inches in height to puff out and look mean — lovely detail, and she puts a finger in his face and says, ‘don’t you ever talk about one of my staff’s bodies again or I will throw you out myself,’” he dictates, doing a stellar impression of dear Lilith on fire. “It was the best I’d seen out of her, and I wish I could superimpose you into the scene so you could see it as it happened for yourself, but alas, you didn’t come along until a good month later.” 

Remus sighs longingly. “I want to have been there,” he gives him, breaking into a laugh. “Did the man come back after that?” 

“Never saw him again, oddly,” Sirius passes along.

“Good,” Remus says of it. 

“She’s always been a spitfire, but that time she took on something fierce, and we were all bowing to her when it was over,” Sirius extends, an amused though undeniably fond smile on, “so, I’m just telling you now, it’s very good that she knows that happened to you, ‘cause I swear she’d have climbed you by now if she weren’t already happily taken—” 

“Oh, you need to quit it while you’re ahead,” Remus cuts in.

“What, you’re allowed to use Lily as an example but I’m not? I’m just telling the truth,” Sirius manifests, pulling his arm out of Remus’ grasp to have his hands free for a demonstration, “there’s zumba,” he says, flattening his right hand a little above his head, “James,” he adds, putting his left one underneath it, “you,” he tacks on, putting his right hand underneath his left and waggling it around a bunch, “And then me and Pete are like, all the way down here—” 

He sticks his left hand down by his hip, pulling a loud sputter of a laugh out of Remus for it. “That’s the extent of Lily’s love, right there.” 

“The puppet show helped, I won’t deny that,” Remus gives him, reaching his right arm out to link in with Sirius’ again, and Sirius wishes that they aren’t mere steps from Remus’ building, “but you and Pete are much higher up than that.” 

Sirius tilts his head back and forth evenly. “Point being, I’ll bet you the price of a root canal that this will likely work out in your favour because Lily loves you more than she can probably handle, and that man might get a ban sooner than you think.” 

Remus puts out a huff for the fuss of it, no doubt in Sirius’ mind, waving Sirius off and leading him up the path to his lobby door. The two of them likely could manage getting up the stairs while linked together, but there isn’t much point in that, so Sirius lets Remus go on up ahead of him on the stairs. Minerva is just locking up and, by the looks of it, heading out when they get up to Remus’ floor, and thus starts a joyous little meeting in the hall wherein Minerva makes it starkly clear that they’re expected to come over for tea soon, and a tentative appointment is made for late morning on Sunday and prior to Sirius’ zumba practice so they’ll both be able to attend. 

They head in through Remus’ door when that’s settled and Sirius heads for the kitchen while Remus takes a quick left and heads into the bathroom, opening up the cupboards and having a bit of a search through them. “Do you think there’d be something in the first aid kit?” Remus asks, and when Sirius looks round to him from the island where he’s dumping his shopping bag, he sees that he doesn’t really need to answer the question when Remus shakes a travel pack of Tylenol and a rattle echoes back over to Sirius. 

Remus pops it dry as per usual, flicks off the light in the bathroom, and carries his shopping bag over to join Sirius’ unloading at the island and pulls his poncho off, draping it over one of the stools nearest to him. 

“Pie?” Sirius raises, pumped up about it already. 

Remus hums a faint note. “I mean, sure, but I remember you saying something about going—” he says, putting a thoughtful face on before taking in a breath of remembrance, “spelunking, was it?”

Sirius fumbles and drops the brick of butter in his hands, pushing back from the counter easily. “By all means, the pie can wait,” he insists. 

“We do have all evening,” Remus says for it. He takes in a measured breath, halting Sirius up for a moment. “Let’s just get the dairy products put away and then we can see where you’ll end up?” 

Sirius grabs the butter, milk, and then comes round to Remus’ side of the island to budge in and sift through Remus’ own shopping bag to pull out the carton of eggs, heading back around the island to get to the fridge. 

“Wait, Half Baked,” Remus offers, reaching the pint across the island toward him.

Sirius shuts what’s in his hands away and heads for the pint, plucking it out of Remus’ hand and bringing it back to stick it in the freezer, and shuts the door with gusto, turning to Remus with an air of finality. 

Remus nods for Sirius. “Come here.” 

Sirius makes it around the island and up on Remus in a flash, fusing their lips together and tugging Remus back toward the room. Remus goes with, but puts out a short hum of discomfort, reaching up to press his hands against Sirius’ chest. 

“Just, careful?” he bids, puffing out his left cheek. “Tooth.” 

Sirius nods at once, leans in again, and resumes with a kiss he thinks must be the exact meeting of expertly tender for Remus’ knees to wobbly immediately and Sirius has to grip him at his waist to keep him walking properly, steering them back toward the bed. Sirius gives another flick of his tongue against Remus’ lips, requesting to be let in again, and Remus hums his affirmation before pushing Sirius down onto the bed. Sirius backs up to give the both of them some room to stretch out, Remus moves in over him and settles down, body warm against Sirius’ as he snogs him carefully, slowly.

He lays underneath Remus in a tender stupor, and while he doesn’t mind taking their time, he also wouldn’t mind some skin on skin right about then, skirting his hands down Remus’ back until he gets to the hem of Remus’ shirt, flicks his fingers underneath it to tickle at the small of his back, and tugs up on the shirt, lifting it up over Remus’ midriff in a signal. 

Remus pulls off of his mouth, lifts up to pull the whole shirt off for him, the obliging lad he is, and chucks it on the bed haphazardly, taking to getting rid of Sirius’ for him and smiling wickedly down at him as Sirius lifts his arms to help him out with it. He tosses Sirius’ tank aside and lowers himself down again, and Sirius sure thinks he’s about to get his face snogged off, but Remus ducks down and seems to take on the righteous task of covering every inch of Sirius’ chest and navel with kisses, and in all honesty, Sirius can’t oppose that one bit. 

Remus wraps his arms over and around the back of Sirius’ hips, pulling them in tight, and lets out a loud huff against Sirius’ skin. “Why do these look so good on you?” he puts out, tugging on the waistband at the back of Sirius’ joggers, and Sirius can’t help it; he’s just a human flush at this point. 

“On or off, on or off?” he chants. 

“I’m thinking on, if I’m honest,” Remus raises.

“That I can do,” Sirius assures, lifting his hands in surrender and dropping them again in mercy as he takes to gripping the sheets on either side of him as Remus starts in on him again. Sirius breathes hard, his chest rising and falling, his voice coming out tight, “shouldn’t I roll over?”

“In a minute,” Remus says, muffled against Sirius’ navel, and fuck, you do you, Remus. 

For a bloke who just told Sirius to remember to be gentle, it’s a rather interesting turn of events to find him giving Sirius all he’s got down there. Sirius thought it too soon, turns out, for Remus huffs and lifts his head, flying his left hand up at his jaw. “I’m trying, it just hasn’t kicked in yet,” he says, breathing fast. “It’s like it’s pulsating—”

“It’s fine,” Sirius assures, though it _pains_ him to lose the torture practice being used on him, “we can just say no kisses from here on out.” 

Remus looks down at Sirius' crotch region and back up at his face in the span of a beat. “Then I’ve got to switch up,” he says of it.

As hot as it is to find Remus has to change things up if he’s to be expected to not cover him in kisses, Sirius lifts a hand to point directly at Remus despite that. “I am still getting dicked down,” he asserts. “I deserve it.” 

Remus huffs. “I agree with you, turn over?”

Sirius drops his hands to push himself up as Remus moves up onto his knees, but then he just braces himself on the bed, eyes shut tight, head hanging. Sirius goes still, waiting for something, anything, but it comes out rushed and loud enough to spook Sirius even as he’s waiting for it. “_Get a boost_.” 

Sirius flies himself over to his bedside table, knowing he’s put one in there when he’s decidedly gone around Remus’ apartment and dropped little boost bottles in every spot that made any bit of sense to him. He twists the cap off for him, clears the distance between them in as quick a move as he can, and taps Remus with his free hand to get his attention. 

“Here, open up,” he coaxes.

Remus fights his eyes open and reaches for the boost, knocking it back one second, and truly shouting a sputter in the next. “Jesus fucking _Cunt_,” he puts out. 

“You don’t say,” Sirius returns weakly, his heart beating so fast in his chest he thinks he can hear it. 

Remus drops down on the bed and fucking belts out a cry against it, and Sirius reaches for his back, just wants to remind him he’s right here, but Remus shirks out of his reach and, worst than that, pitches forward onto so hard onto his own head that Sirius flies over him. He shoves him down flat on the bed and puts every pound of dead weight down on him that he has to work with, putting out sorry after sorry after sorry as Remus shouts and thrashes under him. 

He hates this part — Remus can’t fucking stand contact when it’s this painful, can’t stand being smothered, and Sirius can’t stand it doing it to him either, but it’s do or don’t; lose him or don’t. 

Sirius’ phone is out there on the island of no use to him, so he checks the time on the digital clock on Remus’ nightstand, dials it back a minute or so for the grand opening, and settles in for a long two hours at the least. 

At least, he was aiming to settle in, but if Remus keeps knocking back on him like he is, Sirius is going to lose his dick and/or balls in this whole process, and he’s rather attached to all three. He presses his left hand to the center of Remus’ back, holds him down as he shifts his hips up and swivels his legs around, thanking the re-addition of zumba in his life as it’s a tricky little maneuver to get himself seated on Remus’ back and it’d have pulled something fierce had he tried it even two weeks back. 

He crosses his legs over him, adjusts his package a little for his own comfort, and then, he settles in for the long haul, reaching up and slapping Remus’ arms each time he tries to beat the back of his head in for a few minutes until that just isn’t enough anymore, and then he shifts forward with his back arched up, plants his hands down on Remus’ wrists from behind him, and puts his weight down on them, flattening Remus’ hands against the bed. 

Remus kicks his feet in retaliation, but they can’t get Sirius from all the way down there while he’s all the way up here. Nice try, clusters, but Sirius isn’t playing. Fortunate for Remus’ feet in particular, they landed rather exceptionally well on the bed just a few minutes ago, so Remus’ legs can whip back and forth all they want and Remus can try and beat his feet into the bed frame all he wants, but his feet dangle off the bed and miss every attempt at smacking the frame, the mattress providing a cushiony bounce to every try, and look; this is rough, Sirius needs to get his funnies in some way. 

Banging sounds from the other side of the wall, and yeah, fair enough, Remus sounds like he’s being murdered, but Sirius doesn’t give a shit what the neighbour thinks. Call the police, fuck it; Sirius isn’t getting up to answer it, and they can break the door in and see for themselves how incapacitated he is. Sirius thinks it for a few seconds longer, but the banging keeps going and then — and he doesn’t love admitting this either — he re-thinks it and suddenly getting 911 called on them right now would be the worst idea; if they barge in and see him literally sitting on a bloke having a fit, that’s not going to look good one bit. 

Sirius looks up the bed, deems either of the pillows as too far to grab from where he is, chides himself for not grabbing one while he was at the top of the bed, and looks around him for other options. He takes a long look at his tank laying a little ways away on the bed, grimaces over trying to shove that in Remus’ mouth when he gallivanted around the park and grocery and undoubtedly sweat up a storm in it, and ultimately deems that an unacceptable offering.

Remus, on the other hand, had a pretty chill day overall, movement-wise. Sirius glances right, catching sight of Remus’ tee, hanging off the side of the bed and in danger of falling right off of it if Remus’ thrashing keeps up and it will, so Sirius puts out a long breath, takes in another in preparation, and lets go of Remus’ hands in one-go, pitching himself toward the shirt and nabbing it off of the side of the bed. Remus takes his momentary freedom and does well with it, crawling up the bed and heading straight for the wall behind the bed, and Sirius puts everything he has into tackling him down before he can reach it.

He sits on him again, reaches with his left hand to shove both their pillows in between Remus’ head and the wall, refusing to lose him to a piece of plywood. Once that’s done, Sirius reaches Remus’ t-shirt down to get it underneath his face and uses his left to come at the maneuver from both sides, tapping Remus’ mouth erratically until Remus gets so fed up with it that he shrieks in frustration, but that works, too; while his mouth is open Sirius shoves the t-shirt in it and leaves a single pat on the back of Remus’ head, urging him to scream all he wants and scream he sure does.

Sirius hunkers down with his hands pressed down on Remus’ wrist again, though now, because Remus took a trip up the bed, his arms now have to be spread out to the sides, but that does make it easier for Sirius to sit on him and hold his arms down while also giving the muscles in his lower back a break. 

The one good thing about Sirius being behind Remus for the next while is that he can cry about it without being seen. He hates that he’s doing it even, he’s not the one battling a ten right now, but the tears come all the same and Sirius can’t move his hands to wipe them away, so they’re here to stay, and once they really starts coming, Sirius picks a spot on the wall straight ahead of him to stare daggers at, but as much effort as that is, he really can’t see anything but red as the time slugs on.

Sirius feels, once he's finished and sniffling, that the universe should do well by him and throw him a fucking bone before he goes apeshit, and perhaps it’s the unfiltered rage he requests the iota of mercy with, but the universe, she listens, if only for the fact that Remus stills at an hour and thirty-two minutes from the get, and that, truly, is their best time yet. 

Sirius counts to ten, does it once more just for the hell of it, and shifts himself off of Remus and down onto the bed on his right, dipping down and catching a glimpse of Remus’ face, feeling like a whole pile of shit for not getting his mask on him sooner with the way he still has his eyes shut tight as he pushes, tiny, harried breaths in and out. 

Sirius pulls Remus’ drawer open, fishing in it for his black mask, not quite as eye-catching as his hot pink one, but this one will do just fine. He adjusts the band, shirks it down around the back of Remus’ head before stretching the front of the mask down over Remus’ eyes, and leans in to leave a kiss on his temple. 

Given that Remus will be out like a light in minutes if not sooner, Sirius lifts off of the bed and sets to gathering up the right sort of aftercare that’ll help being in reach of Remus; fetches him his quilt off of the couch, a glass of water, changes his mind on the mask situation when he feels Remus’ hot pink one out while standing at the freezer and thinks the chill of it would be monumentally nice for Remus to feel, and since he’s up and around, he heads for the bathroom to dig the travel bottle of tylenol out of the first aid kit again. 

He shakes one out, then another, thinking his own muscles need a break and Remus’ own might really need one. He twists the cap back on the bottle and stuffs it in the kit and the kit back where it belongs, holds the two pills in his left palm, and squints, thinking about how Remus makes dry swallowing look like a cinch and really, how hard can it be? Sirius knocks one back, tries it, and immediately coughs it back up, which is bullshit when he’s put quite a few larger things in his throat with much less forethought than he put toward this damned pill. 

Sirius moves to stand, runs the tap to cup a bit of water into his right hand, and pops the pill again, successfully swallowing it down and thinking he’ll sacrifice his own pride in favour of telling Remus the tale of this little oopsie just to hear him snicker; it’d be worth it. 

Sirius plucks the water glass and mask off of the bathroom counter where he set them, brings them back to Remus’ room, and heads around to Remus’ side of the bed, plucking the water down on his nightstand first so not to spill any, sets the Tylenol beside it, and then digs in Remus’ drawer again to pull out the bottle of melatonin and rattle one out from the bunch. Five come out, of course, but Sirius plucks one out of his palm and shirks the rest into the bottle, shuts it back up in the drawer, and leaves the pill on the nightstand beside the other. 

He hikes Remus’ quilt over his left shoulder for now and perches on the side of the bed by Remus’ middle, reaching to pull Remus’ mask off as non-threatening a movement as he can make, and quickly replaces it with the chilled one, smiling a little as Remus puts a distant hum out for it. He pushes to stand, pulls the quilt off of his shoulder, and flares it out in the air before bringing it down on Remus’ body, tucking it in around him and figuring he’ll want the warmth and wrestling a shirt onto him right now is a bit unrealistic.

He stands bowed over Remus for a few seconds, tracing his left thumb back and forth over Remus’ right hand, and in under twenty seconds Sirius feels a sting behind his eyes and cannot feasibly stay in this room another second longer. He moves quickly, heads out of the room and makes a beeline for his phone on the island and heads for the perch with James on speed dial. He pulls the perch door open as the first ring starts, winces and curses the sun’s positioning over the building across the street, and heads back to the island to knick Remus’ sunnies, and while he’s there, snags his poncho to pull on over his bare chest while he’s at it. 

James picks up on the third ring, right as Sirius is flopping himself down onto the Smoking Chair with a cigarette ready to light. “Allo govnah!”

“Jesus Christ,” Sirius puts out, flicking the lighter. 

“Not quite,” James singsongs. “What’s happening right now?” 

Sirius puts his first haul out slowly. “I rang you?” 

“Right, and that is a lovely if unexpected turn of events, but I well remember you harping on and on about the Great Gay Date Day and how none of us, under any circumstances, were to ring either of you during.”

Sirius lifts to lay across the arms of the armchair, his legs hanging off the left one, his head cushioned on the right. “Yeah, well, the Gay Day took a big ol’ dive, what can I say.” 

“Did it?” James asks, through clenched teeth. 

“Of course it did,” Sirius nods. “I don’t know why you’re even surprised; it doesn’t matter what fun little activities I plan out, Remus is going to get sandbagged by a cluster if I plan things or don't bother to.” 

“Was it a bad one?” James checks. “I mean, I have a guess; if it were mild, I don’t think I’d have the pleasure of hearing your dulcet tones today.” 

“It was bad,” Sirius assures. “Ugly Pot worthy, but I sat on him so he couldn’t repeat that part.” 

“Good on you,” James offers him. 

“Good on you for yanking me back into zumba,” Sirius turns it around. “I’ve limbered right back up.” 

“Glad to hear it,” James accepts. “Gonna tell me what happened or should I throw up some guesses?” 

“Gimme a sec,” Sirius bids, taking the time for a good, long preemptive haul and letting it out unhurried. “So, the morning was fantastique — truly.” 

“Oh good,” James sends him. 

Sirius sneaks another quick haul. “Mhm, and then we went for phase two; the tryst in the square, and I took the pooch for a run, Remus hung back and watched our things, then we had a lay down; lovely,” he details, “and then we went onto phase three, grocery shopping; always a great time, got stuff for baking and got all prepped for phase four; the bakage, and so we get back here, and, well, there’s really no point in pretending any, get a little distracted by the concept of fucking—” 

“Right,” James says, as if Sirius is speaking about a life constant, like how Earth ever-spins on an axis. 

“—And we’re going, going, going; shirts off, hot and heavy—” 

“—Mmkay, you can totally skip this part, if you’d li—”

“—And then he stops, mid-position switch, tells me to get him a boost, and it comes on before he even gets the tiny bottle choked down fully,” Sirius keeps on. “It was like, bam, bam, bam, _and_ here’s a cluster.” 

“Out of nowhere?” James asks. 

“No, not even close,” Sirius returns. “He complained about a toothache on the way back from the store, and I’m thinking that wasn’t a toothache.” 

James hums skeptically. “Why wouldn’t it have been one?” 

Sirius sighs greatly. “Oh, you sweet summer child.” 

“What?” James returns, wounded. 

“It’s never just an ache,” Sirius delivers plainly. “I should have picked it out straight away, so I’m not even excluding me or Remus here; we’re a couple of dinguses and it’s a wonder we can even put our shoes on the right feet.” 

“OK, the thing is?” James puts in. “It could literally have just been a toothache, which stands to reason why neither of you immediately thought a cluster was headed your way; it wasn’t a symptom you’d even look out for, and so, seeing as I’m woefully new to the world of clusters because no one ever gives me any background information, why would a toothache be a cluster on the way? Explain like I’m five.”

Sirius sighs out his haul, rubbing his free hand over his nose. “I mean, Remus has his warning signs; his left eye droops a little, he gets the sniffles, and lately he’s been feeling a stiff neck right before one hits,” he explains, “but when we were going at it his eyes were the regular size, I don’t think he had a stiff neck because he’d have immediately gone into react-mode, and he wasn’t sniffling so much as he was — well, breathing heavily since we were on our way to Poundtown, so all he talked about a pulsating happening in his jaw seconds before he went all still, and now I don’t find it that difficult to believe that a throbbing jaw could be any less a symptom than if his neck had been doing it — _and!_ The pulsing was on his left side, too; that should have been my first inkling that something was off.”

“Right, but hindsight’s always real nice and convenient given than it comes _after the fact_,” James says, lobbing a ball that Sirius doesn’t know if he’s even allowed to be catching just then. 

“It’s not good enough, James,” Sirius says finally. 

“Who says?” James raises. “Now you’ve got something to look out for — sure, it was a shit way to learn a new warning sign, but if you’re right, you’re right and you’ll know to act the next time he gets a suspiciously throbby tooth.” 

Sirius shuts his eyes for a moment, supremely aware of the fact that he sought out the one bloke who’d be his yes man in all of this and equally aware of the fact that he needs this sort of medicine more than any other kind. “The second it happens,” he assures. 

“Then I think you’re off the hook here,” James offers. “Any ideas on what brought this one on?” 

Sirius sends out a weighty sigh. “I’ve got three theories, each is shittier than the last.” 

“I’m listening,” James probes. 

Sirius takes the last haul off of his cigarette, reaching behind his head to drop it into the ashtray on the small deck table behind him. “First one, Remus sort of fucked around with his sunglasses while still under the wicked fluorescents at checkout,” he raises. “Which, if that’s what did it, means that a two-second slip-up, a little wag of his sunglasses while being the funniest person I’ve ever met is something he can no longer afford, and I do not want to have to tell him to police himself any more than he already is.” 

James puts out a low, aggrieved sort of hum for that. “Yeah, no.” 

“It’ll break his little heart, and then mine, too,” Sirius returns, frowning.

“Well, what’s the second one?” James asks.

“The second, a little worse,” Sirius raises, “I brained him on the side of his skull while we were in the middle of the coffee/tea aisle and having a game of tug-of-war over a particularly frou-frou bag of coffee—”

James snorts out a laugh. “Always on brand, glad to hear it,” he offers, a grin on his face, no doubt. 

“Yeah, well, you what, pal?” Sirius returns, unable to fight off a small grin, though he’s happy James isn’t present to see it. “I bet it’s all funny ha-ha over there for you, but if my elbow bonking his head ending up bringing this one on, I will be cutting my arm off from the elbow down.” 

“Don’t even,” James sends him. “I’m just going to put it out there, I don’t think your elbow was the culprit, but for the sake of argument, say it was: I highly doubt that you’ve taken up elbowing as a sport in the three days since I saw you last, so I don’t imagine this will be an instance that repeats itself, what say you?” 

“Bitch, have you _seen_ Remus and me?” Sirius raises. 

“Once or twice,” James allows. 

“Then you know as well as I do that I can’t promise we won’t get into another tug-of-war game again,” Sirius returns. “It’s our brand, remember?” 

“God,” James drags out. “I meant the game was on brand for you two, not your elbowing.” 

“I budge him all the time,” Sirius insists, feeling a twist in his gut. “Not hard, but we fool around a lot and I _love_ it.” 

“Well, you don’t budge on his skull much, do you?” James raises, the same damn point being made with an array of different words strung together. 

“No,” Sirius sighs deftly. “His head’s very important to me.”

“Right, and that’s understandable,” James accepts. “Just as it’s understandable that this could have been an accident that Remus is not going to blast you over.”

“I told him I’d keep him safe from them, and I gave him one, James” Sirius returns. “A ten, to boot; not even a mild one, so just, imagine this was you.” 

“OK, I know you’re feeling responsible, which I can get in a sense, but not here, not now,” James says calmly. “You haven’t even told me what the third theory is, and yet you want me to hop on the blame train toward your body on the tracks and I’m not about that.” 

Sirius drags his top teeth over his lower lip once. “The third is the worst of all because it brings into account the ever-present question of whether neither of us did anything wrong and he was simply slated to have one.” 

“That can’t be the only other option,” James says, convinced. “I know you’ve got a powerful brain in that skull of yours, so let’s use it, yeah?” 

“I have used it,” Sirius snips, wanting to kick something but his legs are curled over the left arm of the armchair still and they won’t reach anything with the amount of oomph he wants to kick with. “We didn’t go on a bender so it wasn’t booze this time, I already covered a funny light situation, and I covered a new idea, which is Remus getting brained forty to forty-five minutes before the cluster came round for a visit.” 

“OK, but let’s think outside the box a little more?” James raises. “Did he eat something funny? Did he spike a drink without you knowing it?” 

“James,” Sirius returns, making a face. “He hasn’t touched a drop since the day I suggested he avoid alcohol altogether; he’s not knocking back shots in the loo, alright?”

“I mean, I was kidding,” James offers. 

Sirius hums blandly. “You’ve been funnier before,” he says. 

“Fine, I take it back,” James sends him. “Yeesh, where’d your funny bone go?”

Sirius huffs a sigh through his nose, bringing them back around again. “I wonder where the fuck it went?” he returns, putting an effort once that retort comes out to breathe. “Point is, there was no booze consumed by him; we had a few bowls throughout the morning and early afternoon, but pot’s never been a trigger for him and apart from that, he consumed nothing but jizz, tea, and snacks throughout the day—” 

“I’m gonna go?” James slides in. 

“OK, but that’s my point?” Sirius insists. “I highly doubt the protein box we shared and the taquito samples we devoured at the store brought it on, and considering how often he has his fair share of jizz and tea on a given day, he’d be having clusters left and right if it was one of those—”

“Also, I’ve a feeling he’d just make room for clusters if jizz _was_ a trigger.” 

“Come watch him power through a ten and you’ll regret saying that.”

“I’d love to, but I haven’t gotten an invite.” 

“Are you seriously going to get pissy about this _now_?” Sirius demands. “We’re losing focus here; I’ve highlighted the only things I could pick out from the day that were odd and those were fluorescents bugging his eyes, my elbow smacking, or he was destined to have one, _on our Date Day_.” 

“Alright, the timing was shit, I’ll give you that,” James offers, “but then you’ll understand, I hope, if I ask you what the fuck you’re even doing ringing me, on your Date Day?” 

Sirius puts his mouth into a frown. “He’s sleeping it off, James,” he defends, losing steam. 

“What, does he sleep for nine hours after a cluster typically?” James raises, skepticism lining his tone. 

Sirius frowns even deeper. “A while,” he puts up, not liking this one bit. “You know, for someone who gave me so much shit for leaving you out of the situation, you’re acting real ungrateful for me including you.” 

“Right, and it had nothing to do with you needing someone to lick your wounds a little,” James says. 

“What, you don’t want the job anymore?” Sirius raises, feeling prickly at the back of his neck. 

“Sirius, that’s my job ‘til the end of time,” James says plainly, "but you picked an odd time to include me in this.” 

“I actually wanted a distraction from all this, so you know,” Sirius returns, “but then you went ahead and had to point out the elephant in the room, and you know what—” 

“Sirius, it’s literally just past five,” James cuts in. 

“OK?” Sirius offers. “I’ve had to keep track of the time, thank you.” 

“Well, I’m not sure you’re doing that so well,” James puts in thoughtfully, and he’s likely over there stroking his damned chin for effect, “because if you were really aware of the time and weren’t too busy throwing a pity party for yourself, I think you’d have realized that your fucking Date Day isn’t over yet.” 

“Fuck,” Sirius returns heavily. “And Remus says I drive a point home hard.” 

“You had to learn it from somewhere.” 

“That’s it, I’ll blame you from here on out.” 

“Do what you need to do,” James allows. “New plan: let Remus rest up, see how he’s feeling when he’s come to, and maybe, just maybe Remus will be absolutely chuffed to start back in with the Great Gay Bake Off, but you’re not going to find out on the phone with me, are you?”

Sirius reels a bit, leaning his head back on the right arm of the chair. “You’ve resurrected me with your words, young man.” 

“I was trying my best,” James tacks on. 

Sirius breathes in long. “OK, I’ll go in soon,” he says, “but I wouldn’t mind hearing about your day first?” 

“I,” James drags out, “fucked up grand.” 

“Oh no,” Sirius reacts, grinning. “What did you do, James?” 

James takes in a big ol’ breath, getting Sirius’ toes wiggling in enticement. “I went perusing some more ring shops earlier, as I had a free morning to do so, and there it was, Sirius,” he details, “the perfect ring, lit up like a halo itself.” 

“OK, go on?” Sirius probes, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Mhm, so I chat up the shopkeep, ask her all about that ring, and it’s in my price range—”

“What price range?” Sirius cuts in. 

“Exactly,” James puts back plainly, “and everything is going smashingly — to much so, turns out, for I was just heading out the shop with the ring in a box when the shopkeep made sure to tack on a mention about how they offer a great deal on resizing, and it struck me there; I truly haven’t a single clue what Lily’s ring size would be — none, zilch, nada.” 

Sirius throws his head back over the arm of the chair, putting out a profound bark of a laugh. “You have to be fucking with me,” he throws out. “Let me just remind you of all the shops you took me to, all the rings I pointed at only to hear, ‘no no, Sirius; I’ll know when I know,’ over and over again, and you didn’t once think about her ring size until today?” 

“She doesn’t wear rings, Sirius,” James enunciates. 

“Well, that might’ve been a key to note prior to this whole journey beginning,” Sirius sends back, waving his free arm around in the air incredulously. 

“Keep your voice down? Remus is sleeping,” James interjects, “and frankly, I’m not above thinking Lily can hear you, too.” 

“Oh, my— Sirius starts, pausing to cover his face with his free hand, peeking through his fingers in horror, “—you cannot be discussing this with Lily in the other room; there’s no way, you’re not that daft.” 

“She’s out with Mary, it’s fine,” James insists, “but you’re being fucking loud and I’ve half a mind to think she’ll hear your spouting and come asking questions.” 

“Oh, what, she’s got supersonic hearing now?” Sirius raises. 

“Are you going to help me out or not?” James turns it around. 

Sirius reels again. “I’m sorry, is that what I’m doing?” 

“Well, what else can I do?” 

“Postpone the wedding.” 

“Stop, Sirius.” 

“Oh, here’s an idea,” Sirius offers, whispering for effect, “keep the alleged perfect ring, give it to her on the date, and resize it after?”

“What kind of proposal is that?” James whips back in a hiss. “‘Lily-dear, love of my life, here’s a ring that will not fit; let’s get it hanging loosely around your finger for pictures and resize it later; don’t you just want to marry me tomorrow?’”

Sirius blows out a long raspberry in reply. “You’re the one who planned everything out before even giving a thought to her ring size, so all you’d be doing there is drawing attention to your inability to plan ahead fully—”

“—Well, thanks, Sirius; love getting your hot takes,” James sends him faux-sweetly. 

“Well, I don’t know what you want _me_ to do for you?” Sirius returns. 

“Gather intel for me,” James puts out. 

A laugh bubbles up in Sirius’ throat. “If I start asking her about her ring size, she’s gonna ask, a) why the fuck am I in her house, b) what the fuck I’m doing asking about her ring size, and then she will go to you, tell you all about how fucking odd that Sirius is, and you are not going to be able to play it cool; you _will_ cave,” he finishes. 

“Mmkay, but I wasn’t actually suggesting you turn up at her house unannounced,” James puts in thinly. “I’m saying, go have a spa day together, have a nice chat over a glass of wine or two or three, and then squeeze the information out of her like the spy I know you can be — that I’ve _seen_ you be for stakes far lesser than this.” 

Sirius snorts. A spa day does sound brilliant, but this doesn’t bode well. “James, it’s not going to work,” he says, puffing out a sigh at James’ colourful cursing. “Listen, it doesn’t make sense for me to take her on a spa day, we aren’t that close.”

“You fucking well could be, that’s the kicker,” James returns heavily. “You’re both so alike, it’s almost horrifying in a way, but also quite wonderful.” 

“I know, you went and found the female version of me, and it’s an honour to hear it confirmed, truly,” Sirius accepts, “but either way you spin it, we’re not spa day material yet. Maybe one day, but not right now.”

“Well, don’t ask her at a spa, then,” James returns. “The kitchen would work, too.” 

Sirius drags his free hand over his face. “No, see, now we’re back around to the question of why the fuck I’d even be asking what her ring size is—” 

“What, I gotta do all the thinking here?” James cuts in. “Say you’re getting her one for her birthday or something, and then change your mind last minute, get her something else—”

“Furthermore?” Sirius puts in, not done yet. “She’s a bright lady, how soon do you think she’ll put two and two together if her man’s bestie starts asking weird questions?” 

James puts out a frumpled breath. “What should I do, then?” 

“Ask her mum?” Sirius suggests. 

“She doesn’t wear rings, Sirius,” James repeats, each word its own sentence. “How would her mum know?”

“What, does Lily have her dad’s hands?” Sirius returns. “I’d imagine it’s something her mum could guesstimate pretty well.” 

“I don’t want her mum, who thinks I’m a wonderful bloke, to know I haven’t worked this out, thanks,” James sends him. 

Sirius puts a huff out through his nose. “Well, could always ask Pete to gather intel for you,” he offers, immediately falling into a bout of giggles that just garner James to hoot right along with him. 

“Fuck, would that not work,” James says of it. “If you can’t ask without risking suspicion, Peter doesn’t make a lick of sense.” 

Sirius sniffs, feeling so much better about his plight already. “I think we know who we need for this.” 

If Sirius were home to see it, he might’ve been able to catch a light bulb popping on over James’ head. “You’re a genius.” 

“He’d be so good at it,” Sirius insists. “Earlier, right before our coffee bag scuffle, he reached for it and put out such a casual, ‘here, I’ll put that in the cart for you,’ that I almost, _almost_ gave it up to him — course, now I wish I’d had just handed it over so I could clear my elbow of any potential charges, but I say this because Remus is really quite prolific in coercion.” 

James puts out an energetic hum. “Plus, he’s with her a ton,” he puts up. “Plenty of time to slip in a potential conversation about rings with a few of the gals in general and then loop back around to specifics, and have Lily just oh so happen to hear it and maybe give her best guess as to her size—” James takes in a quick breath through his teeth, “—it’s gold.” 

“OK, you’re getting a tad ahead of yourself,” Sirius mentions, aiming to quell the fire before it burns too strongly. “I understand the excitement, you want the results at your fingertips, but this can only happen if Remus agrees to it, and — you know the rest, I’m sure.” 

James puts out an easy _pfft_ for that. “He’s too good a soul, too big a sport to decline,” he says, convinced. “He doesn’t even have to work hard at it—”

“I’m aware, yeah,” Sirius extends, letting his legs go sideways off of the arm of the chair and pushing to sit up. “So, let him come to, let us have our Bake Off, and then tomorrow, ring him up, _ask about him first_, and then, you may ask him if he’s willing to do some espionage for you.” 

“I like it,” James says. “Only he never tells me the truth when I ask how he’s doing—”

“It’s the polite thing to do, James,” Sirius cuts in. “You don’t ask someone for a favour after neglecting to even ask how the lad’s doing, and on that note, you don’t get to pitch a fit on him if he says no.” 

“Why would he say no?” 

“I’m just saying, we took in and embraced a wonderful, but stubborn little guy.” 

“Little.” 

“Fine, gigantic; you’re the one who kept scoffing at a little innuendo—”

“I was talking about his height, actually, but of course you went with the dick.” 

“Well, that’s a given and you’d go with it too if given the chance.” 

“Bah,” James huffs out, but he doesn’t deny it, which brings a funny grin to Sirius’ lips. “Fine, you get him back, I’ll chill out, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow.” 

“Deal,” Sirius forwards, pushing up out of the armchair to head in. 

“Good luck in there,” James bids. 

“I don’t need it,” Sirius returns, ending the call as he opens the perch door. 

It’s eerily silent inside, not a detail Sirius is the biggest fan of at the moment, but blasting tunes without earbuds is just not appropriate without a pair of earbuds, and even with them in, he doesn’t want to risk missing a single noise while drowning the silence out. He heads to the island where their notebook tends to get put, takes a seat with his back facing the kitchen and his front facing Remus’ room, and if he scoots over a little, he only has to glance up to check on Remus from over on the bed, still conked out. 

He sets it open in front of him, flips through their growing case log to a new page, and plucks a pen out of the cup of many, jotting down what he can without Remus’ say. He starts with the time frame, recording the start and end times that have been variably tattooed onto his brain, and circles it with a different colour pen a few times, the importance of the record shortest cluster to date highlighted. 

He moves onto the rating, gives his own guess with a big, red _10_, but leaves a little extra room underneath for Remus’ opinion on the matter to be courteous, but Sirius’ is gut is telling him Remus will agree to that rating after he comes to. 

He moves onto triggers from there, writes key words, _ fluorescents + sunglass wigglin’_, and leaves a few lines open underneath to elaborate on once Remus wakes up, and repeats the same process with the keywords _ Sirius’ left elbow_ and _the general uneasiness of destiny_. 

He flips the page, starts on the back end again, creating a section for initial symptoms: 

_ \- eyelid not a factor _  
_ \- sniffles weren’t present _  
_ \- possible stiffness in neck, will have to wait for confirmation on that _  
_ \- pulsing ache in Remus’ jaw, NEW _

And moves onto general symptoms throughout:

_ \- desperation _  
_ \- screaming, shouting _  
_ \- the general want for something to bludgeon his skull into _  
_ \- tried somersaulting onto his own head; succeeded once, second try thwarted _  
_ \- fist beating, also thwarted _  
_ \- thrashing, restlessness, irritability **→** irate sobbing _  
_ \- discernible speech was possible initially, some choice swears, [jesus fucking cunt, our new lord and saviour], speech impossible once cluster settled in _  
_ \- moved at horse power when let go of for nanoseconds, attempt at using wall as bludgeon also thwarted _  
_ \- re: aftermath: it is possible two things could have occurred at 4:42: cluster’s intensity dropped off completely or the cluster’s intensity dropped to a mild number, symptoms include harsh breathing, inability to open eyes, no attempts at speech, little to no movement — difficult to deduce from symptoms which of the two it was, will need confirmation for either once Remus is up and at'em _

Sirius taps his pen back and forth, racking his brain for any other notes of importance, but in truth, he just wants Remus’ input from here. He sets the pen down, sets the notebook open but aside, and gets up off of his stool, figuring he’ll put the rest of the groceries away. He leaves the baking essentials out, shutting away anything unnecessary for the moment, and tucks Remus’ recyclable bags back into the closet by the entryway, breathing easier with a sense of accomplishment. 

Once that’s over, he checks the time on the stove, finds it nearing half-six, and decides he’ll let Remus rest up a little more before checking on him, and sets about creating a prime bakeage setup in the meantime. He figures why not start with the crisp and if Remus is up for it, they can decide on whether the pie is on the horizon once they make it to that point. 

He pulls the cutting board out of one of the cupboards, grabs the peeler and a big ol’ chopper for them apples from the utensil drawer, and brings the lot to the island to set them down by the bag of apples he left there. 

He figures it’ll be fun if they could have sections ready to work with and starts on setting up a spot at the counter to the right of the stove for pounding and rolling out the dough. He goes scrounging for useful tools, sets the rolling pin, big ol’ mixer bowl, and Remus’ newly acquired set of mixing spoons nearby, but with Remus’ tiny kitchen, some of the tools have to be set up on the stove top, or else they risk half of them falling into the sink if he sets them up to the right.

He turns round, en route to the island to fetch the package of aluminum pie sheets to round-off the whole section, but truly spooks right out of his skin in suddenly finding Remus standing under his bedroom doorway with his quilt wrapped around his body for protection and the most heartbreaking expression on his face. 

Sirius rounds the side of the counter, intent on clearing the distance between them in as little seconds as he can make happen. Remus moves for him the instant Sirius starts moving, walking on shaky feet and reaching out for Sirius as he meets him in the middle, letting out a cuttingly disconcerted breath as he presses his hands all over him in some hybrid of erratic and careful hands. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

Sirius shakes his head at once, a little difficult a feat with Remus’ hands fusing to the sides of his face. “No,” he insists, reaching up to catch him at his wrists and looking down at himself in demonstration. “I’m fine, see? No worse for wear.”

Remus screws his eyes shut, not the reaction Sirius was going for precisely, he pulls Sirius right in for what Sirius thinks is a simple hug, but once they’re wrapped up together it’s a little to ignore that Remus might just need something sturdy to lean up against, and fuck if that isn’t already in Sirius’ job description. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus puts out, sniffling hard against Sirius’ right shoulder. 

Sirius shifts the arms he’s got wrapped up around Remus’ back and presses the both of his hands to the back of Remus’ head. “OK, but you can’t say sorry every single time one happens or else that’s going to get very old, very fast,” he says, gently with his lips pressed to the top of Remus’ head. “We should come up with something new to—”

“You made so many plans,” Remus cuts in, nearly wailing now. 

“Ohhhh—” Sirius puts out to soothe, his gaze set unmoving on the ceiling to keep his own waterworks at bay, “—kay, I did, but hey? I think we had a lot of fun in between the shit parts, don’t you?”

Remus simply sobs a notch more than he already was, but Sirius thinks he’s trying to nod against him. “And, _and_ the day’s not over yet,” Sirius tacks on. “I was going to wait until seven to wake you and see how you’d be feeling, but I think we’ve still got ample time left for the Bake Off, if you’re still up for it.” 

Remus sniffs hard, lifting his head a bit, though his mouth remains pressed against the line of Sirius’ shoulder as he seems to glance over it. “_Oh_,” he whimpers heavily, lifting his head to fully peer at Sirius through a watery frown, “did you set everything up?” 

“Well, don’t sound so surprised,” Sirius says, smiling for him. “I thought we could tackle the crisp first, see how we’re feeling, and if we want to start on the pie, we can revisit the issue, what do you think?” 

Remus nods earnestly, putting out a teeny-tiny whimper as he shuts his eyes again and new beads form there that Sirius thinks he’ll get away with letting go of Remus in order to wipe them away. He takes his arms back, lifts them in the very little space between them, and passes his thumbs under Remus’ eyelids to do the trick. 

“There,” he says, admiring his handiwork. 

Remus reopens his eyes, sniffing hard. “Don’t we have to write in the book?”

“I already started, but I left tons of room for your input,” Sirius assures. “And I figure we can get into all that while we work, so for now I’ll hang back and add your thought bubbles to it as we work them out and all you’ll be expected to do here is to sit at that island and peel some apples; what do you think, can you handle being the peeler?” 

Remus puts a breath that might’ve been a laugh in any other scenario. “You’ve seen my peeling,” he raises. “What do you think?” 

“I think you’ve got an attention to detail that is both masterful and envying,” Sirius delivers. 

And Remus, beautiful bloke, smiles for him.


	15. 15.

Remus sniffs a few times once they’ve stepped apart, visibly shakes himself off, and then looks Sirius up and down before reaching up between the two of them and tugging on his very own poncho displayed on Sirius’ body, a plain and observant look about him now.

“OK, listen?” Sirius prefaces, lifting his hands between the two of them in a call for some reason, “you took it off and I needed something to throw on, and rather than putts around the room and risk waking you up, I threw it on. It just made sense, and plus, it’s smells like you, so call me a schmooze if you want, but—”

Remus cuts him off with a kiss pressed to the right corner of Sirius’ mouth. “Schmooze,” he offers, lifting his head to leave another kiss on the tip of Sirius’ nose. “Just don’t wear it for baking, deal?”

“Deal,” Sirius returns, going ahead and pulling the poncho off in one swoop.

He holds it up in the space between them and Remus takes it to his room with him at a slow, concentrated clip, and Sirius winds up following him until the doorway before lingering in it, feeling as though now that Remus is up and about, it’s a bit difficult to let him out of his sights.

Remus leaves his quilt on the bed and moves for his dinky little closet, sliding the door open and fitting the poncho over a wire hanger before hanging it up. He slides the door shut and moves around the end of the bed to get to his dresser, undoing the fly of his corduroys on the way there.

For a brief moment, the urge to boo Remus for it is insurmountable. “Ohh, relax,” Remus replies to Sirius' wordless heckling, tugging the trousers off of his legs in turn.

Sirius crosses his left ankle over his right one, scratching at a patch of skin underneath the hem of his joggers as Remus tosses his corduroys into the hamper nearby and pulls the third drawer open, taking his blue and white flannel trousers out of it.

A slow clap seems apt and Remus turns half-toward Sirius with a pointed smile on as he pulls the trousers on. “Are you planning on putting a shirt on or am I going to get to watch you parade about like that?” he asks, an amused lilt to his voice as he eyes Sirius’ bare chest.

Sirius gives a thoughtful hum. “Column B sounds a little more to your taste just now.”

“Caught that, did you,” Remus returns mildly, sliding the third drawer shut to make way for the second one, and fishing around in there.

Sirius, a supreme fan of how low these ones hang on Remus’ hips; just a little too big so they ride down and give him a scenic view of his happy trail, takes his shot. “You could always forgo a shirt and then we could match,” he raises diplomatically.

Remus looks up at him again and wordlessly lifts the billowiest jumper in his entire wardrobe — so billowy even, that the two of them could fit inside of it at once, a task they’ve tried and succeeded — and then, it’s fair that Remus didn’t bother speaking.

“Never mind, you’ve got great instincts,” Sirius passes along, lifting his hands in allowance.

Remus flashes him a smile before pulls it on over his head and walks toward him as he pulls it down and lets it hang ridiculously far past his midriff, but he’s a perfect portrait of lazeabout and it’s a mood Sirius can completely identify with.

Sirius swivels around on his heel in the doorway and Remus puts his hands around Sirius’ waist and his chest up against Sirius’ back, ambling close behind him as they head into the main room, and even though Sirius is supremely aware that the area they’re working with in Remus’ flat doesn’t give them much time to keep that up much longer, he’ll take it while he can get it.

Sirius stops at the island and Remus leaves a quick kiss at the back of his neck before stepping around him and heading to the kitchen sink to give his hands a good rinse. Sirius takes up a stool at the island, facing Remus and the kitchen while leaving the spot across from him and reserved for the task of peeling open for Remus to take up.

Remus dries his hands off on the tea towel hanging from the handle of the oven door while Sirius leans over the island counter to pull their notebook closer to him, turning it right side up on the counter and plucking his pen back up.

Remus takes a seat in front of the cutting board, pulls a large, rotund apple out of the batch of them, and Sirius waits until he’s peeling to start from the top. “So, first thing’s first,” he prefaces, tapping the end of his pen on the page below it decidedly, “I went ahead and gave this one a ten on the Lup Scale, but of course if you feel differently, you just say so.”

Remus’ gaze flickers up from his peeling before he gives a shake of his head. “No, I ‘d agree on that one,” he says, peeling on.

Sirius nods once, leaving the original guesstimation uncorrected. “And then, I’ve jotted down a ton of deets in here that you can go in and a look at any time, but you were there, too, and I think you know as well as I do that I had a lot to write down, so for now, I say we not dwell too hard on the deets,” he raises. “I’ve two points I want to highlight, and then we can move on to the meatier stuff, deal?”

Remus nods, giving him a tight smile. “Deal,” he echoes.

“First off, you have one hell of a mouth on you when you’re in a whopper,” Sirius puts up, amusement tugging at his lips. Remus gives a flat ‘ha_ha_ and itches his nose against the upper right sleeve of his jumper while his hands are rather occupied. “No, no ‘ha_ha_,’ you shouted, ‘Jesus Fucking Cunt’ at the sky so forcefully that you created a new deity.”

Remus lifts his head, giving a nod toward the notebook laying below Sirius. “Did you put that detail in there?” he asks.

“Not in so many words, but close enough,” Sirius says of it. “Now, for my second point, I have a guess that right about the time you let that out, the pin and/or the clamp made an appearance, but correct me if I’m wrong, mind.”

“Right again,” Remus grants, setting the first, newly peeled apple down and cutting it in half and then into quarters.

He sets the pieces aside and reaches to pull a new, rotund apple out of the bag while Sirius stares at him, waiting for further details that apparently aren’t gonna come on their own. “And/or?” Sirius clarifies.

“And,” Remus answers.

“Well, fuck them both, then,” Sirius says of it, holding off on jotting that anecdote down simply to get just a little more clarity out of Remus while he has him there. “So, I lied, three points I want to highlight.”

“Shoot,” Remus allows.

“I’m beginning to notice a pattern where you coming down from one looks strikingly similar to you going through a milder one horizontally,” he mentions, “and I’m not really well positioned to choose which one is happening because unfortunately I’m not in your head.”

“You don’t want to be,” Remus insists dryly, pulling a artisinaly peeled layer of skin off of the second apple.

Sirius shuts his eyes for a moment, not loving how literal that had to be taken, but reopens them again when he’s had a quick breather. “Just for the sake of clarity,” he reiterates, pushing for patience, “at the end there, it was difficult for me to tell whether it dropped from a ten to nothing versus a ten to, say, a three, because you were still breathing funny and you wouldn’t open your eyes, so then I went and got your mask out and a few other things, and I was only gone ten minutes at the very most but by the time I was back, you were out like a light; do you remember any of that?”

Remus nods morosely. “I’d call that last bit a four,” he clarifies, cutting the second apple into quarters. “The clamp lifted, but the pin hung out with me until the true end, but I don’t remember it leaving per se, I just remember waking up and trying to find you.”

Sirius nods again, well and truly appreciative of him being one if not the first thought to come to Remus’ head after waking up even if he shouldn’t take pride in it, and sniffs, leaning his left elbow on the counter in front of the notebook and coming from the right with the pen in hand, jotting the details down where applicable.

“OK, and with that, we can move on from that for now,” he grants, sensing Remus’ distaste for the topic. “So, I’ll admit it, I jumped the gun with this one.”

“How so?” Remus asks, his gaze flickering up momentarily to Sirius as he fishes another apple out of the bag.

Sirius tilts his head back and forth idly. “Well, I got so pumped about you settling down at the hour and a half mark, thinking, ‘this could be the shortest one yet,’ but clearly, it hung on longer than I thought it did, so if I add the ten minutes, give or take, that I was out of the room, this one still managed to clock in at an hour and forty, and I’d say we have something really fucking cool to celebrate—”

“What part of this is _really fucking cool_?’” Remus enunciates, blunt as a whip.

Sirius cannot, cannot cannot cannot, hold back on making a face, but it doesn’t really matter if he did or didn’t because Remus isn’t looking at him, he’s got his eyes fixed on the task at hand and that’s about it.

“Umm, wow, I don’t know,” he puts out faux-thoughtfully. “Could be the fact that you didn’t even get all of the boost down before the cluster really started going and by then you couldn’t be bothered to down the rest, and somehow you still managed to have a shorter one?”

“Mm, really fucking cool,” Remus nods. “Fucking tubular, brah.”

Sirius drips the pen in his right hand in order to fully nail an incredulous gesture with the both of his hands. “OK, could you not?” he returns. “We’re still working with a time-frame of under two hours and you didn’t even get a full boost down; so sorry I used the wrong phrasing apparently, but this means that so long as you even get a little of a boost down, you won’t be in for a six hour cluster—”

Remus gives a throaty scoff to that. “Well, I sure do love that this is cause for celebration—”

“Well, it really ought to be,” Sirius snaps. “Add that to the six other clusters a we cut short via the boosts already and we literally have all the evidence to suggest these things are doing some good, and that’s just with the boosts; once we get the shrooms going we’ll be coming at these things from two sides, so fuck it if I can’t be grateful for a little good news in—”

“OK,” Remus cuts in, louder than Sirius.

“No, not ‘OK,’” Sirius quotes. “You’re being needlessly critical so I’m going to need you to get a grip on this and cooperate with me even a little.”

Remus finally chooses to look at Sirius over the apple and it is harrowing, the way they narrow. “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head, “did you just come out of a ten?”

Sirius blinks at him sweetly. “I sure did,” he says.

“Mmm,” Remus hums, a thin, steady note to decline.

“Who held you down?” Sirius spits out. “If you want to start playing this—”

Remus’ face turns to stone. “I just saw hell, so I don’t know where you get off thinking I’ve got to be some gracious little wallflower about the smallest fucking detail,” he claps back. “I’m getting hit left and right, I can’t even get through a single good day without one fucking me sideways, and my neck is killing me right now which means I must have really fucked it up if I can even feel it throbbing like this, so maybe, _maybe_ you could actually give me a fucking break for not having a sunny disposition right now; I’m fucking trying to pie with you—”

Remus cuts off to fly his arms around in demonstration to the station he’s in front of and Sirius has to fight to not show amusement or else he’s going to be in deep shit. “Did you have the tylenol yet?” he asks.

Remus blinks, blatantly lost. “What?”

Sirius tosses his left thumb over his shoulder deftly, toward the room. “I left you one on your nightstand,” he tells him. “Beside the water glass.”

Remus’ eyes glaze over with something akin to wonder. “I didn’t see either of those,” he says; quiet, like a secret.

“Well, that’s why your neck kills, you dink,” Sirius sends him, hopping off his stool to go fetch both and calling over his shoulder as he goes, “you threw all your weight onto it, of course it’s going to fucking hurt if all ten feet of you went into it; we’re lucky you’re still walking, pal.”

Remus is quiet as Sirius scoops the tiny red pill off of the edge of the nightstand and plucks the water up, stays quiet as Sirius walks both out of the room and over to him, and he’s still quiet when he realizes he’ll have to quit playing with his hands to successfully accept both offerings from Sirius. He pops the pill dry as ever and takes a drink from the glass, more for thirst likely than necessity, and leaves the glass beside the cutting board before he swivels to the side on his stool and yanks Sirius in close with one, stark pull.

Sirius moves with it without question, biting his lower lip as Remus squeezes him around the middle. “I’m sorry I’m such a bitch,” he says, a deep frown etched on.

Sirius lifts his right hand and passes it through Remus’ hair and curls his left arm around the back of him. “I’m sorry I’m so wickedly sensitive,” he offers, frowning for him, too.

“You’re not.”

“I really am. You are too, though, so we make quite a pair.”

“Remember when we were a good blend? I liked that.”

“Oi, that little spat does nothing to erase our legendary free range Arabica blend, you hear me?”

“Free range is for chickens, not coffee beans.”

“Tomato, tomahto.”

“Well, now we’re just going all over the place.”

Sirius snorts, bowing his head to give Remus’ forehead a peck, and feels around at the back of Remus’ neck, curiously feeling around to suss out what they’re dealing with here. “Ohh,” he says deeply, “no wonder it smarts.”

Remus hums in question just before Sirius double checks a precarious, rock hard batch of knots to see how far it spreads, and feels from the back of Remus’ neck and over toward his left shoulder.

“Yeah, you’ve got like, five knots clotted together into one,” Sirius forwards, kneading the pad of his right thumb down on a small section of it in demonstration.

The simple act is enough to send Remus right into a tizzy, garnering him to reach out and up, digging his fingers into Sirius’ hips as he tosses his head back with a holler. Sirius knows his eyes have to be dinner plate status as he tries it again, bit harder this time, and Remus fucking loses his mind all over again, curling his arms round back of Sirius and holding on for dear life as Sirius lifts his left hand and both it and his right tag team the batch of knots, grinning wickedly and rotating his thumbs in tiny, hard circles as Remus grips him for purchase and writhes up against him.

Sirius digs in harder even at the tightest knot he can find on him, the ground zero of knots one could say, and Remus drowns out _yes_ after _yes_ into Sirius’ chest, and what, is Sirius supposed to leave it at that? Psh, make him.

Unfortunately for him, Remus stills quite suddenly and begins to wiggle out of Sirius’ grasp, aiming an incredulous look up at him. “Really?” he asks, eyeing the full on erection making itself wildly known from inside Sirius’ joggers. “Now?”

Sirius sends him his trusty gape/grin hybrid. “What am I to do about it?” he returns. “It just happened.”

“Unbelievable,” Remus calls it, but there’s a smile there too, so he can’t pretend that pride isn’t welling up in him on some level.

“Here,” Sirius says, guiding Remus’ shoulders toward the island in demonstration and gets in behind him as Remus faces the counter as bid. “You peel, I rub one out—”

“You’re five,” Remus cuts in.

“I had to,” Sirius defends. “You peel, I rub, and maybe we’ll actually just get through the rest of this heap before tomorrow, wouldn’t that be nice?”

Remus waves the white flag by picking up his peeler. “Go easier on me or I won’t be able to peel at all,” he conditions, pointing it over his left shoulder at Sirius.

Remus lifts the half-peeled apple he got sidetracked from and starts in where he left off while Sirius works the pads of his thumbs in tiny, moyen-pressured circles and gives a thought as to whether they ought to just move on from the cluster specifically and start looking at the bigger picture specifically.

“OK,” Sirius starts, smoothing his hands in opposite directions over Remus’ shoulders in a gesture of calm before resuming his massaging, “would you like semi-good news or semi-bad news first?”

Remus puts out a sigh through his nose, and Sirius can’t tell if it’s for the question or for the massage itself. “Good,” he chooses.

Sirius blinks. “Sorry, did I hear that right?”

“Hm?” Remus sends over his shoulder.

“It’s just not what your answer usually is,” Sirius offers.

“Well, I could use some good news right about now,” Remus sends over his shoulder.

Sirius pauses his massaging to squeeze Remus’ shoulders before resuming. “Alright, but you have to let me finish stating it, deal?” he conditions. “It’s going to sound like bad news at first, but I swear there’s a silver lining and I don’t want you hurdling for the abyss before I even get to the climax.”

Remus snorts. “Sorry, the what?”

“You heard me,” Sirius returns. “The toothache.”

Remus gives out a long sigh. “The toothache that wasn’t a toothache.”

“Oh, so you agree?” Sirius raises.

“No, there’s no way,” Remus says, quietly decided. “I thought it was, it seemed like a regular ache but at the root of the tooth, but then it was the entire side of my jaw, and it was like it pulsed back outward toward my neck, and then—”

Sirius leans in an inch or two, on the tips of his toes in all ways except physical until he realizes Remus simply stopped. “And then?” he goads, flicking Remus’ left shoulder.

“Well, I’m trying to figure out how to explain it,” Remus defends, putting his peeler down to swivel around on his stool, half-facing Sirius. “This pulsing, it wasn’t painful so much as it was fucking distracting, and then it spread up and blossomed out.”

Sirius follows Remus’ right hand with his eye as Remus lifts it to his face, tracing his right forefinger from the lower point of Sirius’ left jaw, up toward the top of his cheek, and on up to Sirius’ left eye before he fans out all five of his fingers and presses their tips down, covering Sirius’ eye, temple, and a good chunk of his skull.

Sirius meets Remus’ gaze at once, puffing out a breath. “I think we might be onto something here,” he says, and Remus nods, a circumstantial frown on. “It’s a much longer window than we’ve been used to, which was going to be my semi-good news.”

“Well, go ahead and frame it the way you’d like,” Remus offers, and what a guy.

“Well, you first said something about it on our way back,” Sirius starts, “had it been going for a while before you said anything, because I’d believe it.”

Remus works his mouth around a plainly reluctant smile. “It started at checkout,” he says, hands curled together between his knees. “Not a persistent pulse at that point, but definitely the first few pangs started there.”

Sirius puts a breath out his nose, nodding as he counts back. “So, in that case, there was a window of about a half hour, forty-five minutes if we’re being generous,” he puts up, settling in with that notion and giving Remus’ right knee a solid poke. “That’s a long, long time to prepare, so I know this is probably going to sound unappealing, but we might’ve just been given a blessing here.”

“We won’t really know until it’s a pattern, would we?” Remus raises.

“No, I suppose not,” Sirius allows. “Am I saying this is a new sign that’ll always show up right beforehand? I don’t know that, so far your nose clogging is the only sign we can bank on, but you gave me all the information I needed to know that the ache was a warning sign, and now, if you get another ache like that, we have an entire thirty to forty-five minute grace period, that gives us so much time to act.”

Remus gives his lower lip a solid chew, but he’s nodding, which is something at least. “‘Course, if we’re wrong about it and I happen to actually have a toothache come down the line, then we’re going to feel like a couple of kooks sitting there, waiting for a cluster to come that never will,” he says, pushing an amused breath out.

Sirius smirks through his nose. “I’m OK with feeling like a kook,” he offers. “Look, at worst, you get a toothache that’s an actual toothache, you act as though it’s a warning sign and you get home, safe, text me, down a boost, and worst that can happen is I come over and hang out and you’re wired for five hours—” Sirius lifts his hands in a mighty shrug, “I call that a good time no matter how you spin it.”

Remus gives him a prize-winning smile, breathes in and nods heavily, and pushes himself back to face the island counter, picking up his peeler and the apple that lays half-peeled on the cutting board. “What’s the bad news, then?” he asks.

Sirius steps up and comes at Remus from the left, moving in to resume his massaging. “Now, I combed through the day to pick out what might’ve gone wrong and could’ve brought that bad boy on, and I’ve come up with three viable options; a light-related oopsie, an elbow bonk, and the general unease of destiny, if you will—”

“Wait, hold on,” Remus puts in, turning his head a little to the left. “What light oopsie?”

Sirius switches to a lighter pace with his thumbs in hopes to help stave off the blow. “So, you dicked around with your sunnies while we were standing under a bunch of fluorescents,” he puts down. “Funny as fuck, don’t get me wrong, and you’ve a literal, direct line to my funny bone but I saw your eyes a good two, three times as you did it. So, who knows, right? There are two other options, but I’m only saying that you might want to chill out a little with the innuendo inspired sunglass waggling, even though I will miss it terribly.”

“Wait, wait, no,” Remus says holding up a hand for silence. “My toothache that wasn’t a toothache started in the checkout line, so as much as the sunglass waggling was a nice theory and all, it doesn’t track with the timeline.”

Sirius pauses his kneading, aiming a wide-eyed stare at the far wall between Remus’ bedroom and the bathroom. “It could have, though?” he raises.

“Unless we’re talking a split-second mistake that immediately brought on the ache that wasn’t an ache; there’s convenient and then there’s this,” Remus delivers, “and if I’m honest, I don’t think elbow bonk couldn’t have done it either; _that_ was a millisecond, less than, even.”

Sirius takes his gaze off of the wall and puts it on the side of Remus’ face, unable to not be amused here. “Less than a millisecond?” he puts out wondrously.

Remus sends a huff over his shoulder. “Could you just let me exaggerate a little since you’re the resident expert on it?” he raises. “It wasn’t even that hard a smack.”

“Boy, I fucking brained you,” Sirius returns. “_My_ elbow still smarts; you’ve one hard noggin.”

“Well, what am I to do about that?” Remus sends him.

“Nothing for it, just the way your skull is.”

“That’s not what I—” Remus puts a stewed breath out through his nose. “Say the bonk did do it, realistically how am I supposed to avoid flying limbs coming at me at a moments’ notice?”

Sirius pauses his massaging. “What, are you getting into street brawls every other night?”

Remus knocks his left shoulder back in an attempt to budge Sirius’ stilled hands. “Stop doing that.”

“The massage?” Sirius asks.

“The street-fighter joke,” Remus clarifies. “It’s not funny anymore.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sirius returns, resuming the gentle rotation of his thumbs. “I know it’s going to be rough for you to take a sabbatical from your double life as a vigilante, but we’ve got to protect your head so the street-fighting must go, there’s no other way—”

Remus sits up straighter on the stool, profusely peeling the rest of the apple in his hands before unravelling the layer of peel from it. “You’re the worst,” he says, the back of his neck rouge as a ripe tomato, “bane of my existence.”

Sirius holds in a hybrid of a laugh and cough while he looks around the island counter. “Where did I leave my phone?” he inquires. Remus looks up and reaches across the island to lift the front of their notebook, and voila, there Sirius’ phone is laying underneath it and there Sirius pushes out a thankful breath. “Good, once this is done I’ll have to inform the city’s criminals they no longer have to fear your fists—”

Remus huffs loud and oh so clear, waving his peeler around in the air. “I’ll peel you next,” he manifests, and Sirius can’t do much more than rest his face down and drown out a round of snickers into the line of Remus’ left shoulder. “You’ve made your fucking point, I’m getting ridiculously fucked off about nothing, but if you’re right and all it took were these split-second accidents to bring a ten on, how horrible is that?”

Sirius quits laughing right quick, breathes out against Remus’ collar, and leaves a kiss on the side of Remus’ neck for using the word ‘accident’ without prompt. “I know it is, but it’s really not going to be that hard to avoid,” he says assuredly. “We’ve already got a plan in case the lighting did it, we’ve already discussed the no more street-fighting rule, and I don’t go around elbowing your head for sport, do I?”

Remus puts out a sigh as he pulls the last apple from the bag; three down, one to go. “I’m only saying we can’t really afford to account for accidents,” he says measuredly.

“Well, no, you’re right, not as much as we’d like,” Sirius allows, “but I do think I’m also a bit right in thinking you’ll be extra careful with your sunnies from here on out and you probably won’t get thumped on the head unless you make a habit of going to pubs and starting fights, but that’s unlikely, and there’s still another side to the coin to look at, even if it’s a bit rusty.”

Remus hums blandly, peeling harder at a particularly rough patch of skin on his apple. “And what’s that?”

“Well, you know what it is, but I’ll play; say you do get bonked again, you’ll know to act quickly,” he offers. “Get somewhere safe, text me, dig out a boost, whole nine yards, and if I’m wrong, and I hope I am, then all you’d have done is be extra cautious, and I know you love being that way, so now’s your chance to caution it up; don’t let elbows come flying at your head, work on your blocking, and we have a system in place now for if you somehow can’t control a situation and do end up getting whacked in the head.”

Remus huffs, but it’s not his signature one. “Give me your brain,” he requests, his voice lower down on his register.

“You don’t want it,” Sirius insists plainly. “Point is, like not letting some stranger stick their phone in your face, don’t let an elbow come at you; it’s just small adjustments, and I’m going to have to work on it too, it’s not just you. I’ll think twice about lording something over your head from here on out.”

“Oh, well, now you’re just lying,” Remus returns, a smile audible from behind him.

Sirius reworks his mouth around a smile of his own. “I’m not, I am going to have to be more careful with you and I know that now,” he says. “No more flipping you over on a moments’ whim, fucking you into the headboard... or wall in your case—”

Remus pauses his peeling to point over his left shoulder with the peeler. “Oh, no, you listen here,” he says, determined. “We are _not_ going to let this seep into our sex life, I won’t have it; I’m not an antique, I’m just another person, so you’ll do well to remember I can handle a good dicking, thank you very much.”

Sirius had to bite down on his lower lip to keep from interrupting and/or laughing during Remus’ bombastic tirade, but thankfully he did for it was worth the strife. “You do love a good Dickens, I understand that,” he allows, “but your head is an antique to me.”

“Then you can put a pillow between my head and the wall, but that is the only change I’m willing to make, deal?” Remus raises, turning back to the cutting board. “And you may flip me over whenever you damn well please, I’ll just say that.”

Sirius lets the smile budding at his lips fly free, even if Remus won’t see it. “Deal.”

Remus nods once, must have heard the smile as it were, and calmly resumes his peeling. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the Dickens you deserved,” he puts up.

Sirius puts out a lengthy _pfft_, dropping the neck massage all together to squeeze the proverbial life out of the man wearing a way too big waffle-weave jumper in front of him. “You know I don’t actually mind, yeah?” he asks, hooking his chin over Remus’ left shoulder. “We have all the time in the world to give me the dicking I deserved.”

Remus pushes a sigh through his nose and turns his head enough to successfully plant a kiss on Sirius’ head. “I’m zonked,” he says, frowning.

“I didn’t mean tonight,” Sirius assures. “It’s whenever you want.”

“Tomorrow,” Remus decides. “You’ll get dicked twice over, trust me.”

“And I do,” Sirius assures.

Implicitly.

\--

Remus, in the end, makes well on his word. In fact, when Sirius finally does get his Dickens the following morning, he can’t quite form the speech patterns to effectively urge Remus on in the midst of it, but in a sense, he wouldn’t have had to when Remus, kneeling behind him and giving it to him like a champ, appears quite down for the task without Sirius’ urging.

Sirius chokes on a breath as Remus flattens a palm on the small of Sirius’ back and drives him back on his dick at a pace so delicious, speech isn’t even a thought in Sirius’ head anymore. He seizes the arm of the couch for purchase, but they end up slipping and Sirius goes face-forward onto the arm, certainly thankful for its plush material or else that’d have been a doozy of a problem. In all honesty, it’s so good that Sirius would not mind it one bit if Remus simply kept on going even with his face down for the count, but on the other hand, he does not mind at all when Remus curls his chest over Sirius’ back and pulls him from underneath the shoulders and up and out of his position.

Sirius moves right with it and inches back on the couch on his knees with Remus’ guidance, just fine with whatever Remus comes up with. More than fine with it, turns out, when soon enough he’s being held right up against Remus’ chest by a more-than-friendly neighbourhood reach around while Remus fucks him like they hadn’t paused at all.

Sirius shuts his eyes against the relentless speed behind him, sees white lights burst from behind them, and though speech still isn’t a feat he can reach, Remus certainly gets him hollering gibberish, his eyes welling up. He leans his head back against Remus’ left shoulder, reaches down to urge the hand on his cock on, and rocks back hard on Remus’ cock, creating a devastating case of sensory overload and coming so hard that if someone were out in the hall, they could probably hear exactly who is doing the fucking when calling out Remus certainly leaves little mystery.

Remus’ thrusts spike to a mind-numbing pace as he holds Sirius close and milks every last inch of his own release, the fingers of his right hand on Sirius’ left hip leaving divots in their wake. They remain stuck in place and connected for a few long breaths and then, Remus speaks. “Forward or back?” he asks.

“Forward,” Sirius answers.

Remus moves with it, lowering Sirius toward the cushions and off of his knees to stretch out along the length of the couch, over the towel they hastily put down prior to starting. Sirius is happy to report that Remus lays right down on top of him and doesn’t make any moves to pull out just yet, and that is precisely what good intuition is.

Sirius lifts his right hand up behind him and pats Remus’ arse twice. “What’s that for?” Remus asks, forehead tilted and leaning on Sirius’ upper back.

“I can’t high-five you from down here,” Sirius raises.

Remus smirks against his back, squeezing him around the middle. “Did I make up for your loss?”

“I don’t think I could walk again, pal; what do you think?” Sirius returns, budging his arse back on Remus’ dick since it’s there and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“Want me to move?” Remus asks. Sirius hums a frank no, quite comfortable as is. Remus mercifully lets that keep on for a few more minutes, but eventually, Sirius feels the vibrations of him humming delicately more than he hears him do it. “I’m going to be late if we lay around much longer, which means you will be very late.”

Sirius gives a loud _pfft_ for their respective employment obligations. “We could both play a little hooky?” he offers up.

Remus hums distantly. “Not my favourite game.”

“Live a little,” Sirius sends him, but all he gets is a _pfft_ pressed to his skin. “Fine, but I call the bathroom first.”

Remus huffs exaggeratedly for it, unwinds his arms from around Sirius and lifts off of Sirius’ back, and sets his hands on Sirius’ hips as he pulls out before patting Sirius once on the right hip. “Et voila,” he chimes, settling on his side and sweeping his arm in gesture for Sirius to go on ahead of him.

Sirius pushes up onto his elbows first, knees second, and pivots off of the couch, issuing a quick deal with his legs; if they get him to the toilet without crumbling underneath him, Sirius will lather those babies up in body milk as soon as he gets back later tonight.

Sirius makes it to the toilet without a hiccup and takes a seat, aims a circumstantial smile at the doorway as Remus steps into it, and the two of them startle at the sound of three raps on the front door.

Remus looks over his shoulder and back at Sirius in the span of a short second. “I’m not expecting anyone,” he whispers.

Sirius gives an airy glance to the ceiling and back down to Remus in a quick beat. “I mean, I did scream back there, so this could very well be a rumpled neighbour coming to tell us to keep it down?” he raises.

Remus looks right mortified at the idea and moves into the entryway. “What, you’re gonna answer like that?” Sirius calls after his bare arse.

“Yeah, I planned on just that,” Remus sends back. “I’m just checking who—”

Remus appears in the bathroom door again, looking bemused and tossing his left thumb over his shoulder. “Are you getting a lift to work?”

Sirius looks left, right, and back at Remus. “No?”

“Then why’s James here?” Remus tacks on.

Sirius sits in a beat of major confusion before the dots form a line and settles in again with a smirk of a laugh. “I told him to call you about something, not drop in, so you know,” he puts out there, reaching to roll out a strand of toilet paper.

Remus’ curiosity piques just there. “About what?”

“Oh, no no, it’s better if he tells you,” Sirius assures him, pulling the wad in behind him. “Believe me, sit down when he tells you, OK? You’re going to want to be.”

Remus, wonderful lad, perks right up and bounds into his room, for clothes, is Sirius’ guess. Three more raps sound on the door, pulling a huff out of Sirius. “We’re coming, relax,” he calls out, pressing the flusher down and pushing to stand.

Remus is back in very little time in his own housecoat and waits in the doorway with Sirius’ in his hands as Sirius washes off his hands. Sirius goes the extra mile and turns around when he’s in front of Remus and holds his arms straight out in both directions and Remus only huffs a little before he helps Sirius into the housecoat and drops his hands to tie the sash around Sirius’ waist.

He pats Sirius’ hips once to suggest they’re all good to go and the two of them assemble side by side in the entryway as Remus opens the door, causing James to blink rapidly in the doorway.

“I forgot you got a matching set,” James says, eyeing their attire, but Sirius simply crosses his arms, jutting his right hip out in pride over their classy robes, and gets the very same hip rammed into as Tango bumps in between him and Remus to get at James.

“Hi perfect, I missed you,” James coos at the dog.

“Hey, remember when I said call Remus, not drop in unannounced?” Sirius raises.

“Right, you did say that,” James allows, giving Tango’s ruff a solid rub-down, “but I really thought this was more of a face to face conversation for Remus and I, and I’ve so missed his face as is.”

“Remus is right here,” Remus says, putting on a bright beam.

“Not a mirage, then; good,” James nods, giving Tango one last head scritch. “You know, it’s always on to invite your guests in further than the stoop.”

Remus and Sirius look to each other once and step back to let James in, wherein they split off in separate directions, Remus going to the far side of the island, James moving to take the stool across from him, and Sirius draping himself along the couch, faintly noting Remus’ must have moved their towel from the couch for it’s nowhere to be scene now and facing the two of them with new ease.

James rests both his arms on the island counter and tucks his feet over the rod going underneath his stool, making himself quite at home. “How are you, then?” he asks, reaching to play with Mestophales’ ears when she’s quite plainly made the island her throne.

“I’m fine,” Remus replies before simply waiting for the punchline to come along.

James clicks his tongue and rounds on Sirius at once. “You told him already, didn’t you?”

Sirius lifts his hands above his head in insistence. “I didn’t say a word.”

“It’s true, he just said you had something to ask me,” Remus extends.

“And I did say it’d be funny, because it is,” Sirius says, sticking his hands behind his head easily.

James sends him a round of nonsensical noises before facing Remus specifically. “I’ve ran straight into a pickle, Remus,” he says gravely.

“You’re supposed to eat them, James,” Remus forwards along.

“OK, next time, I’ll do just that,” James allows, “but for now, the pickle remains in front of me and I need your help.”

“I see we’re framing the picture, but not actually doing any of the painting here,” Remus translates. “How bad is it, James?”

“Mortifying,” James insists.

“He doesn’t know Lily’s ring size,” Sirius says, moving this along when they really do have to get a move on.

Remus reels back on his stool seat and places a hand over his mouth, his eyes shooting to dinner plate status as his shoulders move up and down rapidly.

James picks up a pen from the cup of many pens and lobs it across the room, landing it flat on Sirius’ chest before it bounces onto the floor between the couch and coffee table. “What’d you go and do that for?” he sends him.

“I have to shower and go to work, so,” Sirius says, snapping his fingers twice in suggestion, “might want to hurry it up.”

“Well, by all means,” James says, sweeping an allowing hand toward the bathroom. “It’d be easier to do without you here, I’m sensing.”

“Sorry, you waltzed up to the door minutes after we’d finished shagging and he has to rinse off, too,” Sirius returns. “We’re all about water conservation in this house.”

James mimes for Sirius to zip it and then throws the key into Nothingland before refocusing on Remus. “He’s right, I don’t know it and that’s why I need you, Remus” he admits. Remus slowly lets his hand slip down from covering his mouth and drags five splayed fingers down his neck as he nods lightly, waiting for James to continue on because, smart lad he is, he can probably sense there’s more coming. “And don’t you suggest I postpone the wedding, or send Sirius to gather intel for me, or ask her mum — we’ve discussed those options and more already, but overwhelmingly, you are our best one.”

Remus’ gaze flickers over to Sirius for a moment, and Sirius can’t tell whether he’ll be in some trouble or not for this, not when he can’t quite read Remus’ quiet expression. “What could I possibly offer you in this case?” he asks, gaze back on James.

James scoots his stool in closer to the island. “I’m glad you asked,” he says. “Now, the fact of the matter is, Lily thinks you’re a motherfucking saint, and because of that, she won’t see any attempts at espionage coming her way if it’s you I send to her, so all I’m saying is, since you see so much of her, spark a minuscule conversation with her nearby one day, and see what you can get out of her.”

“A minuscule conversation about rings,” Remus reiterates.

James sends a flat smile to Remus at that. “I’ve heard you two discuss way less relevant things with decidedly too much passion.”

“Just enough, really,” Sirius puts in, an avid fan of said discussions and a worthy contributor to them.

“Fine, I’ll allow that,” James insists. “I just need you to get in there and see about a ring size, I don’t care how you do it so long as you don’t put one on her finger and marry her for me, I draw the line there.”

“Same,” Sirius puts in.

Remus gives out a heavy sigh, smiles between the both of them, and lifts his shoulders once. “Sure, I’ll try.”

James turns to Sirius’ bright grin/gape hybrid while he points his right forefinger starkly toward Remus. “You heard him say it, yeah?”

“I did,” Sirius returns, shimmying his shoulders a bit.

“We all heard it,” James insists.

“Only,” Remus puts in, lifting a finger to silence him, to which James makes a show of settling down and hearing him out, “if I can do it on a semi-relaxed time-frame.”

“That’s a fine term,” James says, not all that ruffled by the condition.

“Well, I just don’t quite know how to pull a conversation about ring size out of the air and make it sound organic by any means, so I’ll need time to think on the best way to do it,” Remus further explains. “I can’t just hold her purse over the bin and go, ‘tell me your ring size or I’ll drop it.’”

James sends out a mighty _pfft_ and a rolling laugh comes straight out of Sirius’ throat. “Can I visit the timeline where you do that, though?”

“Sure, just don’t let that be this timeline,” James bids, tapping a forefinger on the island counter. “How about, I don’t need the size until October, but if you get it sooner than, I’ll actually be able to resize it in time for the big night.”

“That’s a fine amendment,” Remus deems it. He takes his hands off of the counter and cracks his knuckles, looking between James and Sirius before pushing out a circumstantial breath and scooting his stool back to lift off of it. “Well.”

James readjusts the placement of his head as Remus stands tall, blinking up at him. “What are you doing?”

Remus gives a wordless gesture to the bathroom. “We do have to get that shower going,” he says, switching to gesturing down at his housecoat.

“Right,” James says, sweeping a hand in allowance. “Onward, soldier.”

Remus turns his right wrist in on himself, passing the fingertips of his left hand over it absently while he adopts a quizzical look. “You’re going to hang around here while we’re doing that?”

“Well, I thought I could,” James says, lifting his shoulders. “There’s a pooch and a chat to keep my attention, and I could drop you off after, if you want.”

Remus adopts a tiny ‘O’ for a mouth. “Well, it’s just a five minute walk, but that’s nice of you to offer.”

“I mean, I’m going that way anyway,” James insists.

“I’ll take a lift, Jimmyboy,” Sirius comes in, putting on a bright grin.

“Are you Remus?” James asks.

“No, he isn’t, but Remus doesn’t really need a lift a few blocks over,” Remus says of it.

And there, Sirius watches with very little excitement as he watches the telltale sign that James is peeved beyond belief, and, funnily enough, that comes in the form of a large, exaggerated grin.

“Alright,” he says. “This is good; I mean, I haven’t seen you in forever, and I’ve been here less than five minutes and you’re already shooing me out the door.”

“I’m not shooing you out,” Remus corrects, professorial in both speech and stature. “I just have to be at work in an hour.”

James gives him a smile that would be better described as a sneer. “Why do I get the sense you’d shoo out even if you didn’t have work to run off to?”

“Hey, James?” Sirius puts in sweetly. “Hop off his dick for me?”

“You know what? I’m not doing that,” James refuses.

Sirius gives him a plain look from the couch. “You’re really gonna do this now?”

“Now,” James quotes.

“It’s getting fucking old, James,” Sirius returns.

“Well, leaving it to you has done fuck all, hasn’t it?” James raises.

Sirius pushes himself to sit up, feeling the need to not be laying down for this. “I told you the plan, in small words, so you’d be able to figure it out—”

“Why don’t we settle down a second,” Remus puts in, smiling tightly between the two of them.

James gives a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, no,” he denies. “We’re well past the point of reasons here, thanks, especially from you; I still catch glimpses of him, but you all of disappeared.”

“Oh, talk to him like that again,” Sirius nods. “See where that gets you.”

“I think he can handle it,” James returns. “You can handle your own, can’t you, Remus?”

Sirius thinks he might’ve seen Remus’ eye twitch, but it’s his right one, so it’s nothing to do with clusters and everything to do with being gravely unimpressed. “I’ve been laying low for two weeks, so maybe you ought to simmer down.”

Sirius quietly bobs his shoulders from the couch, his mouth twisted up in enticement. “Simmer down?” James repeats.

“How is this any different than my finals?” Remus raises.

“How’s it different,” James echoes. “How’s it different, he says.”

“I rarely got to see you then and I didn’t get dropped in on unannounced,” Remus offers.

James lets out a laugh that borders on disparaging. “If I didn’t drop in, how long would this silence from you have gone on?”

“Ideally whenever these things are sorted out,” Remus retorts. “What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

“Well, at least you’re being honest now,” James sends him, grinning ear to ear.

“Alright, you,” Sirius comes in, circling his hand toward James’ vicinity, “need to take it down a peg because you are not helping the situation at all.”

“Right, you’re handling this,” James returns, waving Sirius right off and focusing in on Remus again. “You know, Pete would love to know you’re doing, too, but who cares about that, right? You can tell him you don’t hate him all you want, but he’s been ostracized, and somehow I suppose I got lumped into that list, despite having nothing to do with—”

“No one is ostracized,” Remus stresses. “You’ve all been kept in the loop.”

James sends out a trumpeted _pfft_. “Bits and pieces from that guy isn’t the same thing as being kept in the loop,” he says, pointing once at Sirius. “Thank fucking God for Lily giving me some information or else I’d have very little to go on here.”

“There’s literally nothing you can do right now,” Remus comes in tightly. “I asked you to be patient—”

James stamps his feet on the footrest on his stool. “You both should have known I’d be absolute shit at that,” he sends them. “Me? Patient? Twats, the both of you!”

Remus’ lips quirk before he looks to Sirius at once, who's already gone and put his mouth in a firm line to keep from laughing, and the two of them have to avert their combined gaze to avoid certain guffawing.

“I really haven’t been doing this maliciously,” Remus says, collected after his near fit.

James sends him a tch. “You wouldn’t know how to be malicious if you tried,” he returns.

Remus crosses his arms over himself, shifting his weight on his feet. “I just never know when one’s going to come along and I don’t want any of you to—”

“You didn’t listen to a single thing I said to you,” James cuts in. “And what am I even doing really, trying to get through to you now?”

“James,” Sirius puts in, lifting his hands in a near plea to just fucking leave it alone.

“Well, he didn’t; he didn’t listen to a thing I said,” James says, point blank, keeping his gaze on Remus. “And the really sad thing about it is that you truly think that dropping out on us is somehow protecting us in the long run, but what it’s really doing is just flying the bird at good people who want to help you.”

Remus slowly uncurls his arms from around himself, lets them hang by his sides with his fists clenched, and this is it; Sirius is going to have to watch Remus knock James out, and Sirius is somewhere caught between the urge to split them up before that has to happen, and simply letting it happen when Remus bearing his fists is hotter than Sirius can contend with right about then.

“OK, you’ve said your piece, made your point,” Remus says, controlled, measured, devastatingly hot, “and now I’m going to get ready, and when I get out of that bathroom, you’d better not still be here, got it?”

Sirius gives out an overcome noise, pulling Remus’ quilt off of the back of the couch and throwing it over himself.

“No need, I’m done here,” James says, curtly. “Nice seeing you, let’s make it ten minutes next time?”

“Maybe don’t show up ready to pounce next time, cupcake,” Sirius sends from underneath the veil of the quilt and it isn’t long before two doors slam in quick succession.

Sirius waits a good five seconds before coming out from his shield, looks around the main area, and makes direct eye contact with Mestophales on the island countertop, pushing out a quick breath of a laugh at her truly uninterested expression. The shower roars to life from beyond the bathroom door and Sirius gets off of the couch and heads for the bathroom, but promptly runs into the door as it’s very locked.

“Oi?” he calls out, rapping on the door. “Why’ve I been locked out?”

Footsteps sound beyond the door before the knob turns and Remus is standing in the doorway looking woefully sheepish. “I’m sorry, it was automatic,” he says, tugging Sirius into the bathroom, and truly, it’s forgotten when Sirius will let Remus tug him along just about anywhere.

Sirius knocks the door shut with his right foot, lets his housecoat fall to the floor, and follows a solemn Remus into the shower. “That was one salty bitch,” he says, flying an attempt at a post-tift takedown.

Remus turns away from the stream and looks round at him weakly and Sirius lifts his hands to halt that right quick. “No, it was a joke, coming from me?” he says, reaching up to swipe his right thumb across Remus’ left cheek. “James throws tantrums now and again, too; it isn’t only me.”

Remus frowns deeply, inching back to get his hair underneath the stream behind him. “Tantrum or not, he made some stark points.”

“And I’m going to sort him the fuck out, trust me,” Sirius insists. “He’s not allowed to storm your flat and pick fights; I’ve half a mind to ring his mother and tell her his behaviour.”

“Oh, don’t get his mum involved,” Remus chides.

“I mean, I was kidding there, too,” Sirius puts in, handing over Remus’ shampoo bottle since he’s closer to it.

“He’s right, you know,” Remus says, gaze flickering up to Sirius as he squeezes a glob of shampoo into his left palm. “I’m a shit mate, somebody had to say it.”

Sirius puts out a heavy sigh. “OK, no,” he says, shaking his head once. “Let’s back the car up, he didn’t say that.”

“He did,” Remus says, handing the shampoo bottle to Sirius to put back in its spot. “He read me like a book.”

“How so?” Sirius raises.

Remus lifts his already tense shoulders while rubbing suds into his hair. “I do that, I’ve done it for years,” he says. “I’ll know that I’ve overstepped my welcome and I’ll hate that, so I’ll just pull away before someone can get too sick of me; who needs a therapist when you’ve got James around, telling it like it is.”

Sirius puts a lot into the reel he’s subjected to. “OK, you want to do this?” he asks. “Yeah, you push people away, you do.”

“OK, thanks,” Remus sings, turning around and dunking his whole head under the stream.

Sirius bites back a smile, saunters up behind him, and sneaks his arms around Remus’ middle, and waits for Remus to step back from the stream, stepping with him. “I just mean,” he starts again; calm, collected, “you sat on my couch, in December, and full on told me to pass on you even after I delivered you a gorgeous monologue about how fucking striking I found you—”

“You had my heart right in your hands and I was afraid you were going to crush it in a week when you got bored,” Remus sends over his shoulder. “Nevermind that I thought it’d be too much for you to take on—”

“I know,” Sirius puts in. “I was there, I saw the fear in your eyes, for yourself and for me. And, hello? The moving-in fiasco? You shoved me back—”

Remus deflates right in Sirius’ arms. “OK, I don’t want to—”

“Shh, I’m just saying,” Sirius raises, “yes, you have a tendency to assume you’re too big a task to contend with and you block out love — that’s just a fact. And now, the clusters have ramped that up to the full degree, but I literally can’t let you just paint a blunt stroke over it and not give yourself any credit.”

“I don’t have credit,” Remus returns.

Sirius hooks his chin over Remus’ right shoulder. “The fact that you don’t even understand how fucking decent a man you are breaks my fucking heart,” he says, leaving a kiss on Remus’ neck. “Yes, you can slip up, go back to the old ways, but you work at it, all the time; I’ve seen it.”

Remus gives out a miserable little noise, wrangling himself around in the confines of Sirius’ arms to face him, and then, simply dips his face into the crook of Sirius’ neck. “Clearly what’s actually going on here is we are two stellar blokes on our own, but put together? We’re a force,” Sirius keeps on. “So unbearably cool, in fact, that poor James is having a rough, rough time having to be away from our fervor and charm for longer than a fortnight, and can we blame him, really?”

Remus lifts his head, levelling Sirius with a plainly skeptical gaze. “I don’t know if that’s it somehow.”

“Well, either way he misses us, you can’t deny that,” Sirius amends. “And, I don’t think you can deny this part either, but he clearly misses the fuck out of you, so bask in that a little; you won that bloke over months ago, and let me tell you, he was not easily impressed by the sorts of men I brought around, OK? This is the highest of compliments.”

Remus pushes out a heavy breath. “I don’t know what I did,” he says; quiet, another secret.

“I do,” Sirius insists. “Want to know what you did?”

Remus nods emphatically. “Of course.”

Sirius lifts his hands from around Remus’ waist and sets them on his shoulders, walking his fingers up the line of his collarbone. “So, I didn’t know about this until after you’d shown up at the flat mid-monsoon, so I didn’t know who the fuck was at the door when you knocked, straight up, had no clue it’d be you,” he details. “And then the next day, James was home and he told me that you’d come to him specifically to him to ask how I was doing, and I don’t know what you said to him because he wouldn’t tell me, the fucker, but he did say that you implicitly understood James’ role in my life, and therefore, after your little confab, he was rooting for us tenfold.”

Sirius watches entranced as Remus’ eyes cloud over and straight up jolts at the breath Remus puts out. “He stopped calling me ‘Lupey,’ right around then,” he sends out, lifting his hands to his temples in sheer wonder. “I couldn’t place why he just stopped and actually started calling me Remus.”

“Mhm,” Sirius hums. “Mind, he was already starting to take you in like the rest of us were, thought you were a riot when you got a pint in you, but it checks out, doesn’t it? I really fucking liked you, Remus; even more now.”

Remus leans his head forward on the line of Sirius’ left shoulder, giving out a bleary noise against Sirius’ damp skin. “I feel even worse for tossing him out,” he muses.

“OK, no, that’s not what I was aiming for, actually?” Sirius says, budging Remus’ head up with all the gentleness he can manage it with. “Point is, you’re not going to get of James. He’ll cool off, you’ll cool off, and it’ll be fine, but we are going to have to make more time for him — all of them, not just me and not just Lily.”

“Sirius, one could spring on me, like that,” Remus says, snapping for effect.

“Right, but one could also not spring on you,” Sirius raises. “And, look, we have a care-package here for you, why couldn’t we make a second, identical one for the flat? That way, if one does come along while you’re over, we’ll have everything you need ready to go.”

“That all sounds ideal, but it’s just that,” Remus says. “We’ll be lucky if yesterday doesn’t repeat itself while I’m there.”

Sirius pulls his top teeth over his lower lip once, his gaze darting to the wall behind Remus’ head before he puts it back on him. “Remus, we’re all compromising here,” he says. “It’d go a long way if you did a little of it, too.”

Remus’ brow furrows before he puffs a breath into his cheeks and aims it out at Sirius, and oh, turns out Remus is part horse; Sirius will never fully be prepared for all the new, little colours and shapes that come with Remus, and thank fucking God for that.

“Is that a,” Sirius starts, “‘yes, Sirius, I’ll work on that?’”

“I want it to be, it’s just really hard to say it,” Remus defends, holding his head high.

Sirius smirks a laugh out of his nose and leans in to leave a peck on Remus’ lips. “Next week,” he says. “Until then, you’ve the weekend to fully prepare yourself for the rejoining the group, but I think next week is fair,”

Remus hangs his head for a moment, huffs, and shuffles on his feet. “Full care package,” he conditions.

“Absolutely.”

“Two masks.”

“Hot pink again, please; it brings me so much joy in a shit situation.”

“Fine. And a thousand boosts.”

“A thousand and one.”

Remus nods once and leaves a kiss on the tip of Sirius’ nose, and that feels like it’s cemented. “We’d better hurry up here,” he says, reaching down for his loofah. Four to five seconds pass between them before Remus’ face scrunches up with quiet, wheezy mirth. “He doesn’t even know her ring size.”

Sirius’ snort echoes off the shower wall.

\--

Sunday marks a day of great importance, as it is Shroom Day, and quite frankly Sirius cannot wait to get started on that venture. But first, he needs to bounce right on out of this here dance studio before anything else can ensue, and he can’t do that until Tina Turner’s The Best finishes out, but he puts every bit of the current of excitement running through him into finishing off the last routine of the class.

The moment it’s done, Sirius heads for the loo, and once that’s over with he makes a beeline for the door, waving a speedy farewell at both James and Lily in the corner, but James sends a call over to him. “You’re leaving already?”

Sirius lingers by the door with a pointed smile and blink aimed at James, unable to just call ‘it’s Shroom Day’ out in the middle of the studio, and beckons him over. “It’s Shoom Day, pal,” he says as James and Lily get to him, lifting his hands easily. “You understand.”

James gives out a stammer of want, need even. “Is he still fucked off at me?” he asks. “I just really want to be in that room for this.”

“We’ve talked about this,” Sirius says. “You’re not getting in that room for the first session, it’s just not happening.”

James sniffs once. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m more fucked off at you than he is,” Sirius says. “We discussed it, he’s coming by the flat on Wednesday, and if you want to see him and apologize for reading him for filth under his own roof, you can be at the flat on Wednesday.”

“That sounds like a lovely idea,” Lily says, rather pointedly, Sirius is chuffed to see.

“Somebody had to say it,” James defends, lifting a hand toward Sirius. “He’s coming over because I read him for filth; sometimes a little bit of tough love is necessary.”

“I don’t have time to go over everything I hated about that sentiment,” Sirius says of it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Why so soon?” Lily asks.

Sirius veritably dances in the doorway so the both of them will plainly see how badly they’re holding him up. “I’m going to get them now, dear,” he says.

“He delivers, Sirius,” James reminds him.

“No no, I’m starting this off well,” Sirius details. “I’m going to go to him, it’s just good business.”

“Well, you don’t have to scamper off immediately,” James says. “I bet you a thousand right here that Remus has a tea and a book happening and he’s just fine with that.”

Sirius sighs. “Now I just want to see that, look what you’ve done,” he says. “If you’re around there tomorrow, I’ll obviously be there for Dora—” he glancing to Lily specifically, “—that means you, too.”

Lily brightens, giving a light shimmy of her shoulders as she comes in to leave a kiss on Sirius’ left cheek. “Take care of him,” she says, stepping back.

“He’s been high before, guys,” Sirius puts up. From in between James’ head and Lily’s mane of fire, he can both sense and see Andrew making his way over to them, and quite frankly, he’s already halfway out the door, he’s got every right to get fully out of it. “Alright, I’m out.”

“Fine, but I will not say no to a video of high Remus,” James says. “Just putting that right out there.”

Sirius looks left, right, and breathes in once. “If I can sneak one on the fly,” he conditions. “If not or he catches me at it, you’re out of luck.”

“Well, just be covert about it, then,” James insists.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sirius says of it, waving before he dips out the door, mere seconds before Andrew makes it over to them.

The pickup goes swimmingly, Sirius is happy to report, and from there, it’s a twenty minute ride back to Boots where he stops in for a quick grab, and before long he’s heading up Remus’ stairwell and in through his front door at a quick clip. He knocks his runners off on the mat, peeks into Remus’ room, and then steps into the main area to find Remus seated at the island with a mug and a book open in front of him; just divine.

“Guess what I have?” Sirius sing-songs, coming for the island and pulling the baggie out of the front of his slacks.

Remus reels. “Why were they in your trousers?”

“I had nothing else to put them in,” Sirius insists, slugging his shopping bag onto the island and piquing Remus’ interest.

Remus has a look inside, pulling out a chocolate bar. “Just felt like one?” he asks.

“Well, I’ll probably snag a piece, but it’s more for you,” Sirius passes along, taking a seat across from Remus. “I know without a doubt you’re going to hate the way they taste, but you can take your dose with a piece of this, and you won’t notice it so much; it’s why I got the dark one.”

“I like your thinking,” Remus offers, setting the bar down between them on the island and picking up his mug instead.

“Sometimes people take it in tea, but I don’t want to ruin your favourite thing for you,” Sirius mentions.

“I appreciate the thought,” Remus says, going for a sip.

“Did you eat?” Sirius asks.

Remus nods as he swallows. “I did, yes.”

“When did you?” Sirius checks.

Remus blinks, glancing up for a moment. “Noonish?”

Sirius glances beyond Remus at the time displayed on the stove. “OK, then you should be OK,” he nods.

“OK for?” Remus asks.

“Well, it could make you a tad queasy at first, just when it’s starting up, so it’s good not to have a full stomach on you, but I also bought gum to get you through the initial nausea,” Sirius offers. “Just want to cover all the bases.”

“Now, I don’t love that you just told me that point blank, but you have really taken this on and it’s impressive, the amount of thought you’ve put into this,” Remus lets him have.

“Thank you,” Sirius chimes, smiling brightly as he opens the baggie in his lap.

He eyeballs the amount Remus’ll need, hands that off to him by nodding at Remus and getting him to hold one of his palms out, and then Sirius opens the chocolate bar and breaks off two pieces, one for Remus, one for him.

“Godspeed,” Sirius offers.

“Godspeed,” Remus echoes.

Remus makes a face through his chewing, but Sirius will insist, it’d have been a lot worse without the chocolate. “How long ‘til it does something?” he asks, one eye shut as he shudders it off.

“Half-hour, forty-five,” Sirius offers, tilting his head back and forth. “Your stomach isn’t full so, once it starts digesting you’ll definitely feel something.”

Remus nods, grimaces, and takes a sip of tea and gargles it, which Sirius can’t even pretend not to find supremely entertaining. “How was practice?” he asks when he’s done there, passing a hand over his mouth.

Sirius perks up. “Good,” he says. “We’re officially going through the whole list without stopping, thank Jesus Cunt for that, and guess who has a spot right up front and half-center?”

Remus perks. “Is it you?” he asks, bobbing his shoulders a bit.

“It’s me,” Sirius chimes. “Similar to Baby and the corner, you don’t put me in the back row.”

“No, no you don’t,” Remus concurs. He takes another sip of tea, sets his mug down again, and sticks his arms straight down and his hands between his knees, smiling innocently. “How beat are you from practice?”

“No sex,” Sirius denies. “Not when you just took somma that.”

Remus huffs a laugh. “I meant, are you sick of practicing, or do you feel at all up to performing a few of your favourites?”

And that, Sirius definitely feels up to. A relocation ensues wherein Remus drapes himself along the length of the couch while Sirius stands in the middle of the living room section of the main room, performing songs one through sixteen on the playlist.

“Why are you so good at it?” Remus asks, his face alive with wonder as last beats of The Best play out and caps off the overall experience.

“I sold my soul to a demon years back for these hips,” Sirius says, moving for the coffee table to pause the list before it can loop back around to the beginning.

Remus lifts his right hand and beckons Sirius closer, and Sirius stops curiously, heads around the coffee table for him, and Remus sits up and scoots to the left side of the couch, reaching up as Sirius gets close.

Though the dopey grin Remus has had on for upwards of twenty minutes tipped Sirius off to Remus’ status, upon getting closer, Remus’ pupils are dinner plates all their own and act as full confirmation that Remus is good and blitzed.

Remus takes to rubbing his hands up and down the sides of Sirius’ hips. “You good there, bud?” Sirius asks, grinning.

“Mhm,” Remus hums, slipping off of the couch onto his knees and undoing the button of Sirius’ trousers.

“Ooo-kay, nope,” Sirius says, dropping both his hands to Remus’ head. “Appreciated, believe me, but—”

“Oh, come on,” Remus sighs, frowning as Sirius reaches for his wrists and tugs him back up to his feet. “We do it when we’re high all the time.”

“Yes, but there’s a we when that happens,” Sirius hints. “You can come get it once you’ve come down and not a moment sooner.”

Remus puffs a breath out and up at Sirius, pitches himself back into the corner of the couch, and smiles up at Sirius, and that is precisely the quickest Remus has ever forgotten about being horny.

“You’re my favourite person,” Sirius insists, breaking into a grin.

“You too,” Remus says, sitting easy in his spot.

At least until he’s so struck by a thought that he grabs up at Sirius with his left hand and beats his right hand excitedly into the arm of the couch, and then Sirius pushes himself to kneel, enticed for whatever’s about to come out of his mouth.

“I have so much gossip for you,” Remus insists.

Sirius truly gasps. “Where did you get it?”

“My dad, of all people?” Remus raises.

“What?” Sirius sounds out, overcome.

“Well, I talked to him earlier,” Remus says. “He didn’t sit down all excited about telling me gossip, but I had some questions for him and one topic led to another…”

Remus tilts his head back and forth in insinuation and Sirius practically vibrates out of his skin. “Can I smoke while you tell me?”

“Sure can,” Remus says, and soon they’re traipsing out to the perch and side by side in the Smoking Chair with Tango curled up at their feet.

Sirius lights up, tosses the lighter on the table beside him and pushes himself to face Remus, sitting cross-legged in the chair. “Well, you were right,” Remus says, patting Sirius’ left knee.

Sirius sputters put his first haul. “Say that again, but slower.”

Remus gives him a pointed, but lopsided smile. “I should preface this with the fact that I’m not as thrilled about this as you are because I find it a real shame, but you were onto something, at our little picnic,” he says. “Things weren’t good between them, and I honestly wouldn’t mind a sounding board to just, toss things at.”

Sirius takes a quick haul off his cigarette. “I have literally all night,” he insists. “Give it all, I am here for it.”

Remus snags Sirius’ cigarette from in between his fingers and takes a quick haul before returning it. “So, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad and his parents since we talked about them, surprise surprise,” he says, tilting his head back and forth. “And I didn’t think I’d really get a chance to talk to him about it, I wasn’t sure how I would even go about it, but then he’s quite sick and has been trapped in the house since Friday and is starting to get cabin fever, so when he called me, he was already being a spitfire, so I took my chances and got quite an earful.”

Sirius puts out a haul with a noise of gravitas. “I’m shaking.”

“I can feel it,” Remus puts in, and Sirius puts out a breath of a laugh. “So, there were two big things.”

“Mmm! Two,” Sirius echoes.

“Yes,” Remus says. “One is that my grandma, his mum, wasn’t a big supporter of his operation, which, I’m very biased about, obviously—”

“Ummm, me too; what the fuck?” Sirius puts up. “It was his last resort.”

“Well, exactly,” Remus says. “It wasn’t a matter of taking a vein from here and putting it there anymore, and that something had to be done about it; he couldn’t go on like that anymore — and the thing that really buggers me, is I talked to her over the phone while she was visiting after the operation and I didn’t get one lick of a sense that she didn’t approve of it, so this is of course from my dad’s perspective, which should get a spotlight, I know, but it’s fucking freaky to think that this went on in the background and I didn’t even know about it.”

Sirius gives out a pondering hum, reaching to flick the ash off his smoke away from the dog below their chair. “I imagine it’s like when a kid doesn’t see their parents’ divorce coming because they were good at hiding it,” he raises, and Remus’ pupils somehow get even larger with that. “I mean, I shouldn’t say it like I’m an expert here; I’m not, obviously.”

“No no, I’m listening,” Remus insists. “Very listening.”

Sirius can’t manage to hold in a laugh just for the style in which Remus chose to go with. “OK, ‘cause I wasn’t passing intense knowledge along, it’s just that Marlene’s parents got divorced back in year ten?” he puts up, thinking for a moment before a nod. “Ten, yeah, and she did not see it coming one bit, and it doesn’t mean she’s terrible at reading subtlety or picking out a crisis before it becomes one, she was busy and so were you, you were in the middle of school, and if she didn’t pass along her disapproval — which I still want clarification on, by the way, it’s not on you to have gone assuming anything; in fact, that’s not you at all.”

Remus pushes a fast breath out of his nose and turns in, leaning in and placing a kiss right smack in the middle of Sirius’ forehead. “You won’t let me give myself even a morsel of shit,” he observes.

“No, not me,” Sirius accepts, talking a haul and pondering some while he blows it out. “And if anything, would she tell her grandkid that? Hm? Is a shit-disturber, ‘cause you conveniently left that out of that’s the case.”

Remus pulls the side of his lower lip into his mouth but can’t help smiling around it while he’s doing it. “No, I don’t think she is,” he raises, somewhat quizzical before passing a hand over his face and, apparently more importantly, his smile. “This probably isn’t the best time to get into it, I feel like a goon.”

“Why not?” Sirius puts up, shrugging a shoulder. “If I laugh at any point, it’s because you’re funny and I like the way you phrase things, I won’t be laughing at the topic itself; I’m not that big of bitch.”

“No, I know,” Remus says, nodding. “Alright, but if I’m smiling at any point, it’s because of — well, you know.”

Remus traipses his right hand around his head a bit. “Oh, I do,” Sirius replies at once.

Remus gives him a little grin, but it still counts. “OK, well, for clarity, she thought there were other options they could look into, anything so my dad could keep the leg, but I don’t think it really sunk in for her that there weren’t any,” he offers. “So, what I don’t know, is how much of that came straight from her mouth or if this is my dad’s understanding of it — and I’m not saying he isn’t valid in feeling like this was an issue for them, OK?”

Sirius looks left, right, and back at him. “No, I know,” he says. “Didn’t think you were.”

Remus nods quickly. “Only I don’t know the full extent of the conversations they had, but he sort of started with her and then started dragging anyone who thought of him as a lazeabout for it—” he cuts off quickly at Sirius’ open reeling, “—those aren’t my words, they’re his; he expressed much distaste for how people have acted around him since the operation, and it’s little things with him, so if neighbours or friends in town who seem surprised he bounced back as well as he did, and my grandmother was at the forefront of that because initially she thought he’d be down for the count and unable to work, support his family, and I don’t know if she’s made better on that, but it doesn’t seem that way, if the way he was talking about it says anything.”

“Right, and we’ve already established that he’s allowed to feel the way he does,” Sirius revisits, “so, where are you on it, since I’m talking to you and you wanted a soundboard.”

Remus swallows, pushes up onto his arm of the chair, and matches Sirius’ stance. His legs are a little longer than Sirius’ so his knees are pressing against his, but Sirius doesn’t mind that one bit. “I don’t know how much of it is a projection,” he admits, and it is just that when he’s saying it so low it’s like he’s afraid Lyall will hear from all the way in the Rhondda valley. “He definitely feels they see him as an underachiever, which is really difficult for me to stomach because he works a trade, first of all, and secondly, I know how hard he worked just this year to back to work and to a new normal, and thirdly, I remember how restless and awful he felt about not being able to work when he couldn’t manage it.”

“I love it when you number your clapbacks,” Sirius puts in. “Let me just say that.”

“No, but then I’m realizing, did they know that?” Remus raises, missing the compliment completely or he’s just too blitzed to realize it happened. “I don’t think he leaned on them at all, if they could even think that of him.”

Sirius takes in a haul, nodding around it, and he can’t even pretend for a second that he isn’t grateful to the shrooms for giving him one chatty Remus for he heads right on, just giving Sirius more to chew on. “I mean, they didn’t see how disappointed he was when I came home with a job in year eleven either,” he says, raising his eyebrows and letting them fall in a quick beat.

Sirius pushes his haul out at once. “Disappointed?” Remus tilts his head back and forth, even as ever. “No no, don’t walk it back; elaborate.”

Remus quits his head tilting, giving him a pointed smile, and yikes, Sirius could literally get lost in those eyes. “He did not appreciate that I was working while in school, but especially because he couldn’t himself,” he says, frowning for it. “And then I made it worse by saying I was trying to help out.”

Sirius lifts his cigarette to his mouth. “You fucking monster,” he says gravely, taking a haul.

Remus ducks his head in a snort. “He’s a very stubborn man,” he says. “I know he did appreciate it, but he sure didn’t start to right away; he nearly marched me in there to decline the offer, but I really liked the sound of that job and I put my big ol’ foot down, if you can believe it.”

“I really can,” Sirius says candidly.

Remus flashes him a smile. “Part of me doesn’t want to hold her accountable for that because none of us were at our best at that time,” he says. “I think the only one of us who managed to put on a smile after the operation was my dad.”

“Hm?” Sirius probes, wanting a lot more of that anecdote.

Remus smiles, passing his right hand up through his fringe. “Well, my mum were buzzing around him like mad, her for real and me from all the way over here, and he just kept telling us to quit tiptoeing around him and he’d be fine soon, and I mean, I let off just a bit, but my mum didn’t listen to him one bit,” he says, laughing for it. “He had the best attitude about it, too; my mum sent me a photo from the hospital and he was just on his bed beaming, he wanted that fucking leg gone, so badly.”

“Fair enough,” Sirius offers. “After all that strife, get out of here.”

“He went into the hospital that time, turns out it was his last — knock on wood,” Remus raises.

Sirius looks around and there’s not a single wooden piece near them. “I’d knock on your dick, but I’ve half a mind to think you’d keep that going,” he says, smiling coyly.

Remus squints at him. “Mmm, nice one,” he sends him.

“I knocked on it in my head, so you know,” Sirius mentions, taking another haul. “Go on.”

Remus nods once. “So, he went in because of more leg pain, and I shit you not, he was so sick of getting operated on, getting out, starting to work again, just to fall back into the same pain over and over again, so his doctor walked into the room and my dad went, ‘cut this fucking thing off!’”

Sirius leans back into the corner of the gargantuan chair in the wake of an absolutely perfect Lyall impression, wheeze-laughing and unable to control it any more than that. Eventually, twenty to thirty seconds later, he gains a semblance of control, sighing out a single, affectionate word. “Lyall.”

“Mmhmm, he’s a character,” Remus chimes. “I think if he hadn’t made the choice for himself it would’ve been different, probably harder to accept, but his doctor was coming in to tell him they had no other options but amputation, so you can imagine how elated he was to find out my dad was already on that same page.”

Sirius takes a choice haul of his cigarette instead of answering that, Lyall’s doctor can kiss his fucking arse for dicking the whole Lupin fam around for years, but Remus doesn’t need that anecdote, not when they’re getting along so well. “So, we’re to assume she hasn’t been let in on the fact that he’s doing so well,” he says, moving them back.

“Not from what I can tell,” Remus allows.

“Well, her loss, really,” Sirius deems it. “Look at him now, driving again, scooting under cars, fixin’ problems; he’s back, babey.”

Remus’ face could light up a darkroom. “He’s doing so well.”

“He could run laps around her, too, I bet,” Sirius says, turning to butch his cigarette out in the ashtray behind him on the deck table.

“Well, she’s in her seventies, so it wouldn’t take much but,” Remus says, trailing off as he taps the end of his nose and gives Sirius a quick flash of a smile in agreement, and mmm boy, a vengeful Remus is such a treat.

It takes two-point-five seconds for him to walk that sliver of vengeance back, in true Remus fashion. “It’s such a shame,” he sighs. “She could’ve known him and us so much more if she’d… literally done the bare minimum in the first place, maybe things would have been a lot more different.”

Sirius levels Remus with a frank, quizzical stare. “Are we onto the second one?” he asks, already elated.

Remus gives him a plainly grim nod. “She didn’t like my mum at first.”

Sirius puts his hands up, splayed out in sheer dissonance, and screws his face up as he revisits that sentence. “How could any living soul not like Hope?” he raises. “She’s a literal ball of sunshine.”

“Well, agreed,” Remus says, clearly ruffled in a similar way. “And, she was a superhero when it came to my dad, especially when he wasn’t well, and my dad only told me about the early, early years, but I think it’s still there today because now that I’m really thinking on this, my mum never talked about her.”

“No?” Sirius asks, right eyebrow arched.

Remus pauses, hands up as he thinks it through. “No,” he says, distantly. “My mum and her were fine when she visited, but aside from that, they didn’t talk on the phone when she called, they always talked through my dad, and I never thought anything was odd about it.”

“Mm,” Sirius says, mulling it. “Backhanded compliments, do you think? Like, ‘oh, I love the drapes you have in the den; how much did you get them on sale?’”

Remus puts out a laugh that sounded involuntary. “No, there wasn’t any of that.”

Sirius smiles tightly. “Well, and I mean this in the best way,” he says before shooting a flattened palm over his head for show.

Remus puts out a breath through his nose that gives Sirius more of an impression of a bull than a horse, and good God is Remus versatile. “I know I’m a bit naive sometimes, but I do know when someone’s calling us poor, and I didn’t hear that sort of thing from them,” he says. “Granted, that time they were down was number two out of three on the visit list, I was in school, working, and had a dad recovering from his fifth surgery, so yes, I could have missed some backhanders when I wasn’t around, you may have that.”

Sirius, knowing he just spent time vying for a black and white answer, doesn’t know much of what to do with a grey one, but now that he has it, he’s not sure why he wanted it black or white; not much is.

“OK,” he allows. “Hit me with it, then; what stemmed this distaste for Hope that I’m still reeling over.”

Remus takes in a breath through his nose, his eyes widening a bit. “You’re going to love it, because it goes back to the way my mum and dad got together,” he lets him have.

Sirius gives a noise of stark anticipation at the back of his throat. “Was it dubious?” he whispers.

Remus smirks, shaking his head. “No, I wouldn’t call it that,” he says mildly. “So, I know much more about this one because I already got this story in my last year of school; my dad took me to our favourite day-trip spot, sort of a half-graduation celebration, half-hey, I’m still kicking around celebration, and we had a few on the pier, and I don’t know what happened there but I’m sure the drinks had a hand in it, and we talked about a ton of things, and strangely openly.”

Sirius repeats the same anticipated noise, only he adds a shoulder bob for effect. “Tell, tell, tell,” he chants.

“Well, I’m getting to some of what he talked about, so wait for that, ‘cause you’ll love it,” Remus makes known, “but that was the time he just asked me if I’d finally shagged somebody, half a dig, half-digging for information that now I’m positively sure he brought right on back to my mum, but I’d had a few drinks so I said I had, and all he did was go, ‘good on you,’ and ‘you using condoms?’ to which I said yes and then purposefully steered the conversation onto him so I wouldn’t have to talk about genders.”

Sirius taps his nose once. “Gotcha.”

“So, then we got into it about him,” Remus continues, “and I’d heard the age-appropriate story about how they met as a kid, but this time around, I got the full tale.”

“Oh, my God,” Sirius says, jiggling his right leg underneath him. “I need everything he told you; I need it, Remus.”

Remus eyes Sirius' leg with a smile and makes a show of settling in. “Alright, so, my dad took a lot of sporadic trips when he was younger,” he begins. “Starting around sixteen, wherein he’d set off at the beginning of a summer and make his way back home eventually, but typically before school was back in.”

Sirius breathes in once. “I — love — Lyall,” he puts out in three solid bursts.

Remus snorts. “Different time then, I think,” he says. “But nevertheless, he was a bit of a wildcard, and by the time he’d made it to his early twenties he was still taking these kinds of trips—“

“Metaphorical trips or literal ones?”

“Both.”

“Mhm, thought so.”

“And, at the time, he was in an on-again, off-again thing with a woman named Connie.”

Sirius lets out such a loud and lengthy _pfft_ that two passersby on the far side of Remus’ street look around and up for the source of the noise. “Who’s Connie?”

Remus’ eyes light up brighter than they already are. “I have to state my bias here and say that I’m sure that this Connie was just lovely, but she’s not my mum so I wasn’t rooting her in this story either, shh,” he says, tacking a smile on at the end.

“Secret’s safe with me,” Sirius insists, matching his smile. “So, during one of their off-again periods, my dad decided to embark on another trip on the grounds of some much needed soul-searching, his words, and did not plan an itinerary, just sort of floated around, seeing new places, and he made it to Wales, and then to a little valley there—”

“Is it,” Sirius cuts in, “_the_ valley?”

“The very one,” Remus assures, tipping his head to him. “Now, when I was a kid, he claimed he only meant to stop in for a quick night’s rest before setting off again the next day, which half of that is still true, but between you and me, let’s be honest here, he was looking for somewhere to stick it, if you will.”

Remus makes a rather wry face and Sirius barks out a laugh. “We’ve all been there.”

“Now, he didn’t tell me that in so many words, but he just so magically wound up at the pub, so I put two and two together the second time he told me this tale,” Remus tacks on. “And, funny thing, my mum was there that night, and he loves to say this part, said it when I was ten, said it again when I was seventeen; he says he walked into the town, saw my mum laughing from across a crowded room, and never left.”

Sirius makes a weak little noise. “I wasn’t ready for that,” he says, overcome. “My wee heart.”

Remus makes a flat noise. “We both know that thing is huge,” he says plainly and Sirius wiggles his toes in his socks. “So, dad struck up conversation with a few blokes who were near-ish to her and her friends, caught bits and pieces of her conversation with her friends, and thought, ‘well, shit; she’s funny, too.”

“What are you doing to me?” Sirius demands, falling back on the arm of the chair like he’s been shot.

“I’m giving you everything he told me, like you asked of me,” Remus delivers. “So, she wasn’t there much longer so he didn’t get to talk to her that night, but he booked a room at the motel, then looked for rooms to rent for longer, and lo and behold, rented the little flat above the pub, and once he got that he went back down there and talked himself into a job there, I am not fucking with you, it just all managed to fall together for him.”

“Yes,” Sirius champions. “Get it done, Lyall.”

“He got the shit end of the deal, though,” Remus mentions. “Nine to three am, Sunday to Thursday, and he was not chuffed about that, but he figured his chances of seeing my mum again would’ve been better there than nothing if he at least had a home base to go on.”

“Reasonable fellow,” Sirius calls him. “I assume it worked?”

Remus tilts his head back and forth idly. “Well, her and her mates did come by now and again, so he did get a report with her, and then a few weeks pass, he gets to know them all a bit more, and ends up catching word that my mum was quite involved with a man named Robert—” Sirius lifts his hands and blows a fart noise into his palms, taking Remus down for the count for at least ten, fifteen seconds.

Remus sniffs once he catches hold on himself, smiling easy. “Same,” he says calmly, and now it’s Sirius’ turn to lose it, and Remus heads right on once Sirius has control over his lungs again. “So dad didn’t love that information, but the thing I really like about this story is that he didn’t pack up and leave all defeated. He liked living there, he had a good circle of mates, he liked his job even if he did have the slower nights, he liked the flat he had, and he really liked my mum, so he stayed where he was.”

“As if I couldn’t like this man any more,” Sirius puts out.

Remus hums brightly for that. “And, after that, one of his mates worked at the garage in town, so my dad started swinging by there and getting himself all sorts of interested in that,” he keeps on. “He was a quick study, got himself a couple shifts a week there, and Bubba took him in almost as his own and carved the mechanic out of him, I swear; he loved my dad, then and now.”

“I love Bubba,” Sirius puts out at once.

“He’s going to love you just by how much you can spout about Priscilla,” Remus insists. “He’ll be so impressed.”

Sirius bobs his shoulders with a newfound zest brimming up in him, and truly three weeks cannot pass quicker. “So, when did Lyall snag Hope?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

Remus breathes out a laugh. “Not anytime soon, unfortunately,” he says. “They saw each other a ton and their friend groups all sort of meshed together, but she was with Robert for another few months, so it was a, how do you say, slow burn?”

Sirius blinks. “I’m not familiar,” he says, smiling wide at the end of it. Remus gives one hell of a huff, but lifts Sirius’ right hand and and leaves a kiss on the back of it anyway, and Sirius is almost down for the count just from that.

Remus sets Sirius’ hand back where he found it. “So, my mum did end it with Robert eventually and,” Remus says, pausing there.

“You cannot pause there,” Sirius insists.

Remus makes a pointed smile. “Well, she must’ve been rather taken by my dad because she pretty much ended it and went and started up with him pretty well right away” he says, low down and rather suggestive. “I mean, I’m glad I can say that they waited until they were both single and ready, but to this day I can’t believe my dad just said they’d to me, like it was a comment on the weather.”

“Well,” Sirius says, not all that pressed about it. “I think we can just separate the your dad thing with the whole he was just another bloke at the time.”

Remus puffs out a breath. “I know,” he says. “And I think it’s a bit of pride for him, knowing he stole her away basically.”

“Let him gloat,” Sirius champions. “I would.”

“Mhm, I know you would,” Remus puts in. “So, they dated for a while, got married about a year in—”

Sirius takes to shimmying his shoulders. “Wasted no time there, hm?”

Remus hums idly. “I suppose it was quicker than others, but they were doing well, my dad was at shop full time by then and mum was working phones at this notary and found that job dreadful, but they paid her pretty well for it because she stuck around there longer than she planned,” he says evenly. “So, they were doing well and they were ready to, so they did.”

Sirius nods for the very complicated but also oddly simple answer he got. “OK, touché.”

“It wasn’t a shotgun wedding either, in case that’s what you might’ve been thinking,” Remus mentions.

“I hadn’t been,” Sirius clarifies through a smirk. “So, no surprise Remus, then.”

Remus shakes his head. “If I was one, they never told me,” he says, shrugging lightly. He lets it go, stares at Sirius blankly for a few seconds, and tilts his head with a squint. “Why did I tell that whole story?”

Sirius blinks at Remus’ utter confusion. “Uh, aside from my begging you to?” he raises, putting out a laugh. “Grandparents.”

“Mm,” Remus puts out resoundingly, patting Sirius’ knees once, so it must have been the shrooms acting up. “Yes, so, he said earlier that the way things began had been quite an issue, but he talked more as he went on, and I think it’s a number of things.”

“I want the numbers,” Sirius says of it.

“Well, that wasn’t his first soul-searching trip; he pretty well graduated school and went on his way, and he’d come back, say hello, but taking his twenties for himself,” Remus says evenly. “And add that to his relocating for a lady, and not the one he was supposed to get back with, whom my dad said his parents liked quite a bit; so I think it might’ve been a lot of things, but all tied to my mum — which, if I can just say, seems a piss poor reason to wave off your son and his lady and only come round three times in twenty years.”

“You can absolutely say that,” Sirius says at once. “You’re the kid, you get to say it.”

Remus sets his hand on Sirius’ left knee and traces his thumb back and forth over it, and it does things for the butterflies in Sirius’ stomach when he can see with his own eyes when Remus has no interest in pulling back or breaking contact.

“Well, personally I think Lyall’s parents were a couple of hoity shits and I hope Connie cried,” Sirius says, thinking it a nice cap on a wondrous tale, and it sure does get Remus coughing out a laugh, however reluctant he is to be overcome by it.

Remus traces his thumb in another circle over Sirius’ knee, ducking his head for a moment. “I wish he hadn’t kept me out of it?” he raises. “I suppose he thought he was doing the right thing there, but I wonder if maybe I’d had even some idea of all of that, then I could have known how to help you better, help understand where you come from, and maybe I wouldn’t have been so stupid to have pushed you to go something that was so bad for you—”

Sirius moves to cover Remus’ hand with his left one. “OK,” he says, a little more faint than he expected it to come out, “I know what you mean, but you know I don’t regret going, and even if I’m starting to realize Reg likely wouldn’t have turned up at my funeral, I’m still glad I went his, OK? I sleep better knowing I did and I love sleep.”

Remus isn’t really looking Sirius in the eye though he’s nodding, and that has to change. “Look at me?” he asks, waiting for him to. “I haven’t blamed you for a second for anything else that happened there; you had nothing to do with it. Want to say that for me, real quick?”

Remus puts out a disparaging breath. “Sirius,” he implores.

“I think it’s fair,” Sirius tells him. “We’re eight months on from that, and you’re still thinking you dragged me in there, and you didn’t, and dragged you in there because I needed you there. I needed James, too, but you. I picked you, so you can probably muster up the stones to say that back to me, since I know the kind of stones you have.”

Remus makes a wounded noise in his throat, but he must push right past it for he reaches up to hold the sides of Sirius’ face as he leans in. “Can I?” he asks, his mouth inches from Sirius’.

“Oh, I’d be livid if you didn’t,” Sirius says plainly.

Remus sighs in the space between them, kisses him slowly, unhurried, and maybe it’s buying him the time he needs to drum up the stones to say it, but that’s fine with him. “I had nothing to do with it,” he says, sitting back and frowning with it a little.

“Not so hard, was it?” Sirius asks.

Remus promptly holds his left palm under his right hand to display a very pointed two-finger salute at him, but that just gets Sirius laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28Co8b6KaRQk9GiVHQfpW1?si=TpTlWGmJS1GKVEzXB2k9RQ


	16. 16.

Given that Remus took his dose minutes after Sirius got in and the time having been nearing three, Sirius projects that Remus will start to come down sometime between hour six and seven, and more specifically, between the hours of nine and ten pm. Until that point, they’ve a long evening ahead of them, so after a long and spirited perch visit, the two of them relocated to the couch to get in some prime vegging time, and after going two rounds with the Zumba playlist, Sirius really could use some quality time with Remus’ couch. 

He pulls up the Important Videos playlist to autoplay on Remus’ laptop, pauses it before it starts up, and sits the laptop on the coffee table. He pushes back on the couch and takes up the right corner of it, stretching his legs out the length of it and lolling his head back over the arm of the couch to keep an eye on Remus as he bumbles around in the kitchen heating making their respective cups. 

He looks a tad out of his element, but Remus, never one to ask for help, gives off a simultaneously determined energy, and for that Sirius can’t find it in him to budge in and take over for him. 

Fortunately for the both of them, it’s more an entertaining process to observe Remus trying wholeheartedly to correctly use the French press while blitzed out of his mind than it is a nerve-wracking one, and that could be because Sirius is a wee bit high himself, but he has a feeling it has something to do with the fact that Remus on shrooms, turns out, is really just Remus on pot but dialed up a few, wonderful notches.

Quietly, ever so quietly, Sirius slips his phone off of the coffee table and acts as if he’s simply scrolling on it when in reality, he hits record because the sight of Remus attempting to transport multiple spoonfuls of coffee grinds into the Press without spilling any on the counter, his gaze so incredibly focused, is something James will want to see. 

Eventually Remus must gain the understanding that he’s being watched and glances up, but it’s a rather sudden move of his eyes, so Sirius doesn’t have the time to hide the phone. “Oi,” he puts out, nodding at him for an explanation. 

“OK, _but_,” Sirius puts in, pressing to end record mode, “you’re adorable and it needs to be documented for historical purposes.” 

Remus sends him a wonderfully pronounced huff, turns both his body and reluctant smile away from him, but that’s a far better reaction than Sirius saw coming and he’d like to thank the shrooms personally for giving him this solid. 

The whistle of the kettle blows and takes Remus’ full attention and he gets their cups sorted out at a hysterically leisurely pace. He walks both cups over to the couch, holding Sirius’ out for him to take and moving in between the coffee table and couch to get to sit himself in the right corner of it. He sets his own mug on the coffee table and pulls his quilt off of the back of the couch, mirrors Sirius’ position and tangles his legs in with Sirius’ before he fluffs out his quilt over the two of them. 

He reaches for his mug and settles in and Sirius sips his coffee as he inches his socked right foot out from under the quilt and the tangle of Remus’ legs, extending it out toward the keyboard and hitting the space key with his big toe, starting the playlist from the top. He trades between watching the screen and watching Remus react to whatever’s on-screen, and has a grand old time with that, but once the clock strikes half-nine, Sirius studies Remus and finds his eyes much more lidded than they’ve been for hours now. 

He studies him a little longer, but it becomes quite evident that Remus isn’t really watching anymore; a far off, distant look about his eyes. Sirius leans forward and pauses the program they moved onto and untangles himself from Remus, patting his right knee. 

“Half Baked?” he offers. 

Remus hums, flickering his gaze over to him and nodding once the words digest, and mhm, there it is; if Remus is lackluster about the prospect of Half Baked then they sure are coming in for the landing. No mind, Sirius has been here before and who better for the task of pulling Remus out of his head? 

He pushes off of the couch and heads for the freezer to pull the pint out of it, stops for a spoon out of the utensil drawer, and glances over the counter, his gaze lingering on Remus’ teapot. 

“Did you want me to start another pot while I’m up?” Sirius asks, thinking plying him with a cup of oolong might help him out. 

It takes a moment or three for Remus to respond. “OK, sure,” he says distantly, and then Sirius can hear Remus trying to get up and moves for the doorway to the living room area, spotting Remus half-out of his corner of the couch. 

“You sit,” Sirius instructs, coming for Remus’ mug that’s long since been left on the coffee table. He hands the pint of ice cream along with the spoon over the coffee table toward Remus, thinking he might as well get a head start on perfection. “I mean it, I’m on kitchen duty, you just get to lie there and wait for everything to come to you, deal?”

Remus gives a disconcerted noise, holding the pint like he isn’t sure what to do with it. “I feel awful,” he says listlessly. 

Sirius taps his right thumbnail on the handle of Remus’ mug. “Nausea or just in general?” 

“In general,” Remus answers. “You’re always right, even with the not so great stuff.” 

Sirius nods, frowning for him as he perches on the edge of the coffee table. “Well, better you know ahead of time what you’re in for,” he offers. “It’s good that you know that it’s the come down and not necessarily reality, and the real good thing here is that you didn’t take molly; you’d be in a far worse state if that’d been it.” 

“Hm?” Remus probes, a crease between his eyebrows that Sirius has a strong feeling won’t be going anywhere for a time. 

“Oh yeah,” Sirius assures. “A shitload of dopamine and serotonin gets released and go all haywire, so while you’re on it you feel fucking fantastic, sure, ‘cause you’ve got all those chemicals exploding together, but you wake up the next morning and you’ve used up all your serotonin and you just hit a wall.” 

“Hm?” Remus hums a second time, watching Sirius unblinking. 

Sirius hums a note. “Mhm, it can be rough, especially if you’re not with someone while you’re coming down,” he extends. “Which is, consequently, where the term ‘chasing the dragon’ comes from, because a lot of people can’t handle the come down from it because it is bleak as fuck, so they keep taking more to avoid getting to that place, but it’s a double edged sword because you’ve used up your serotonin all at once and it takes time for your brain to make more, and so the next high isn’t going to feel anything like the last one, and thus, they’ll keep chasing that high they felt for those four hours a month ago.”

“That sounds horrific,” Remus says of it. 

“Can be,” Sirius allows. 

“Did you take it often?” Remus asks, his frown deepening. “This sounds a bit lived in, if I can say that.”

“Oh, fuck no, not me,” Sirius puts out plainly. “I mean, I tried it ‘cause they hand that shit out for near-free at the door of some clubs, I’m not kidding, but I had the one come down and said no thanks, Satan, I am good without this.” 

“Yeah?” Remus probes, half-smiling at Sirius' frank salute toward Molly and her bite. 

“Oh, Jesus Cunt,” Sirius delivers, “can you even imagine me without the ability to pull on even a little serotonin?” 

“_Fuck_ that, you hate seeing grey,” Remus extends.

“It’s like you know me,” Sirius sends him, smiling for him. “And that’s really more my point; you’re feeling a little weird and maybe a bit blue and that’s normal, but let’s be grateful that it’s not going to get anywhere near as shitty as that, and—”

He cuts off, drags his top teeth over his lower lip, and Remus shakes his head minutely. “What is it?” he asks, blinking at him. 

“Your anxieties could spike just a little,” Sirius says, delicately as he lifts his left forefinger and thumb to show an iota of space between them.

“Oh, good,” Remus puts out plainly, and even down in the dumps, he’s the funniest bloke Sirius knows. 

He smirks and reaches out with his left hand to fluff out Remus’ fringe. “I’m only saying it so you know that for the next while, your fears, big, small, in between, might be a bit heightened,” he says mildly, “but you can talk to me about any of it. Nothing’s too foolish, I’ve been there before, and I’m not going anywhere save for the kitchen and maybe the loo if it calls to me, but aside from that, I’m all yours, OK?” 

Remus nods, his lower lip caught between his teeth, and just when Sirius thinks that’s about all he’s going to get and moves to stand, Remus catches Sirius by the left wrist and presses his lips to the inside of it, and there he is.

“Brb,” Sirius says, flashing him a smile and heading for the kitchen; oolong definitely on the menu. He stops just before the kitchen alcove and points back toward Remus. “Have some of that ice cream, hey?” 

Remus nods, picking at the plastic ring around the rim of the pint with his right thumbnail, the spoon sitting in his lap. Once the water is heated and ready to go, Sirius pours Remus a cup and, after a beat or two of thought, decides he might as well bring the whole teapot back with him for easy access. He walks the cup and pot out of the kitchen and is happy to note that Remus has made a small dent in the pint of ice cream in his short absence. 

Sirius sticks the teapot down on the coffee table first, reaches Remus’ mug closer to him, and the two swap out, Remus taking hold of his tea while Sirius grabs the pint with the spoon stuck in it and takes the right corner spot back up.

He crosses his legs underneath him, sticks a spoonful in his mouth, and smiles around it as Remus watches him while running his right thumb idly over a spot on his mug. “There is something that’s bothering me,” he admits, frowning. 

Sirius nods, his mouth full, and blocks it with his hand. “All ears,” he says, muffled. 

Remus’ gaze drops and comes back up in the span of a beat. “It’s not going to make me look very good.” 

Sirius swallows. “Impossible,” he deems it. 

“No, it isn’t,” Remus insists plainly. “I know I don’t have a reason to be green about this, and earlier I was able to put it out of my mind and be fine with it, but—”

He trails off, lifting a shoulder to stand for the rest of his insinuation. “Bit tough to, now,” Sirius nods, scooping another spoonful out of the pint. “OK, no judgement here.” 

“It’s about Tom,” Remus says.

Sirius pauses with a spoonful hovering before his mouth. “He bothering you?” 

Remus probably would have reeled if he had much energy to do so, but the three blinks he sends Sirius works just as well. “No,” he puts out in what might have been a breath of laughter in any other circumstance. “He’d have to stop and remember I’m a living being to do that, I’d think.” 

“Oh, he knows,” Sirius says outright. “You’re not easy to forget, trust me; I tried once, didn’t work.”

Remus gives him a squint as he sips his tea. “It’s true,” Sirius adds, sending a nod nodding across the couch at him. “In the two weeks I didn’t see you in November/December, I did nothing but listen to _Channel Orange_, boohoo to James about how you weren’t into me, and work; thassit.” 

Remus pushes a smirk out of his nose, not quite a laugh, but there’s a twitch to the corner of his mouth so that’s something. “He’s not bothering me,” he says after a swallow. “My dad told me he got into Cambridge.” 

“Oh,” Sirius nods, having the bite of ice cream he held off on. 

“Mhm, he brought his car into the shop Friday and told him there," Remus says. He pauses after an intake of breath, poised to speak. “I didn’t know he was thinking about applying — and I know that sounds absolutely mad, of course I didn’t know that, I don’t know anything he does anymore—”

“OK,” Sirius puts in. “I’m listening to you, but you’ve never sounded mad a day in your life, so let’s call it something else.”

“I don’t know what else to call it,” Remus says, quietly candid.

“Go with a 'strange, arresting bit of information,'” Sirius offers up. 

Remus looks left, then right. “It was a little arresting,” he allows. 

“And that’s fair,” Sirius forwards. “Does he come up often?” 

“Here and there,” Remus gives him, shrugging the other shoulder. “It’s more that I hear about the people they run into, and he’s one of them some of the time.” 

Sirius scoops a spoonful of ice cream out of the carton but doesn’t immediately shovel it into his mouth. “Do they know you haven’t talked to him in, what, two years?” he raises. 

Remus hums around another sip of tea and, if he were in a brighter mood, it might’ve sounded circumstantial but now it just sounds one-note. “I think they just think we both got busy,” he says, lifting his right hand to scratch at his eyebrow, “but I still get updates now and again, even if I’d maybe rather not.” 

Sirius grunts for that. “So, what is it?” he asks, levelling Remus with a coy stare and a light smile, “you a bit green that he’s set for Cambridge?”

Remus pushes a sigh out through his nose. “I know I don’t have the right to,” he mentions, again, “I get to go to school in London, I get to live in the city for once, my grades are good, and I’m getting my own, great opportunity soon, I'll get to study in Paris, so it’s not that I don’t know all that—”

“Uh, yeah, I know,” Sirius cuts in, smiling bigger. 

“—But it’s bigger than just that,” Remus keeps on, “and honestly, even more something I don’t necessarily have the right to be pressed about, but I’m feeling it anyway and I don’t like it.” 

“Alright,” Sirius accepts, gentle in tone. “Well, you know I love it when you’re a bit shirty, so you won’t hear smack from me about it; trust me.” 

Remus goes for another sip of tea, but swallows it quicker than Sirius was banking on. “It feels like I’m the one who got him there and he dropped me,” he says curtly. “And I know that’s not true in all senses, but I’m the reason he can string his thoughts together onto paper, so I’d love to see that letter of intent because I’m betting you he used tools that I taught him how to use, and he just — tells my dad? He knows he’ll tell me that, and I feel as if I got led into this mood without my permission.”

Sirius sits prim, loving this. “I love this side of you,” he offers. 

“No, you don’t,” Remus insists. “You’re supposed to tell me it’s fine because I have a good life and I have you and Paris in the fall and that should be enough.” 

“Yeah, but you know that already,” Sirius raises, keeping his tone light, open. “No point in me telling you that; I’d just be a broken record.” 

“I’d be OK with you being a broken record in this case,” Remus says, holding his mug tighter. 

“I’d rather hear what you actually feel, not some Sunday school version of it,” Sirius returns. “Why do you think you got him there? I believe you without a shadow of a doubt, but I wouldn’t mind some tea on the matter.” 

Remus goes for a big ol’ drink of his literal tea, sighing as he swallows. “Well, I tutored him for years,” he says. “We were friends eventually, but that was our starting point and we carried on like that up until senior year when things got — messy the way they did.”

Sirius nods, not quite satiated just yet. “How’d you meet?” he asks, pointing the spoon toward Remus. 

“In level nine advanced English,” Remus gives, “because my professor picked me to help him—”

“Your sexual awakening?” Sirius cuts in to clarify. “That prof?” 

Remus nods plainly. “The one and the same,” he lets him have. 

“Just checking,” Sirius chimes, bobbing his shoulders a bit as he scoops out another spoonful. 

Remus tilts his head back and forth idly. “That’s honestly a good place to ask because I thought he was the most brilliant, nicest, coolest man on the planet and had the broadest set of shoulders I’d ever seen,” he insists to Sirius’ great pleasure, “so believe me when I say that he could have said, ‘hey, Remus, clean gum off this desk for me,’ and I’d have done it kindly.” 

Sirius coughs on the bite of ice cream he went for, cursing himself for thinking he could achieve eating while Remus is in the beginning stages of a tale. “You take this,” he insists, holding the pint out toward Remus. “I was a fool thinking I could eat while you talk.” 

Remus’ mouth quirks as he leans over to set his mug on the coffee table then takes hold of the pint. “So, when he asked me specifically if I’d help Tom out with the first paper of the term, I was more than happy to do it,” he adds, scooping a bit of ice cream out. “I felt like a star just being asked because at that point it was September and we’d really just done short-form essays, but I’d felt that he must have seen something in me and picked me for the job, so I was chuffed.” 

“‘Course he saw something in you,” Sirius asks, settling back into the corner of the couch. “What’d Tom need the extra help for?” 

Remus nods around a spoonful, swallowing. “His dad wanted him in advanced English and he had the grades to get in, but it was an adjustment at first, a lot more writing off the bat than he was used to in his old class,” he passes along. “Not to mention, he was the poster boy for 'less is more,' but we were in a class with a professor who wanted incredible amounts of detail, so fundamentally Tom needed a hand learning how to pull more out of a single concept.” 

“So he sent in the wordsmith,” Sirius concludes, tapping his right temple. “That’s a brilliant man right there.”

“Still is, I’d imagine,” Remus offers. “So, he assigned me to help him for our first paper of the term, and I could see just from reading what he’d had down that all the ideas were there, but he’d stuck to short and sweet, which is arguably a fine way to go about it if you’re actually packing a punch with what you’re communicating, but he wasn’t quite hitting the mark.”

“I love it when you talk shop,” Sirius puts in, needing to. 

Remus' mouth quirks a bit there. “So, I tried to help him out a bit, start abstract and work our way back to concrete points that we could then elaborate on, because he had all the right starting points, the texts we were reading weren’t going over his head, he was just _here_, and he needed to be up _here_,” he says, using his hands as place points, his right higher than his left hand holding the pint of ice cream.

Sirius raises his hand for permission to pepper a thought in. “How,” he comes in, “did you not know from that day on that you were destined to teach?” 

“Pointing out that someone needs to elaborate much more before they can turn in a paper isn’t the same thing as teaching,” Remus points out. 

“Well, no, but you were a fucking genius fourteen year old, what the fuck?” Sirius raises. “You just, read his paper, honed in on his issue, and immediately figured out a plan to address it; did your prof’s job for him, is what you did.” 

“My prof also had thirty other students,” Remus mentions. “I just had Tom, and to be fair, I’d already had the paper written by then so I didn’t even have it to worry about and had plenty of free time; I wasn’t even working in class that day, I was just reading for fun at my seat when my prof called on me to help Tom out, but shh.” 

Sirius tosses his head back over the arm of the couch. “I can’t with you,” he says. “Of course you already had it finished; this is you, what else would’ve happened?” 

“Do you want the rest of the story or not?” Remus raises, biting at his budding smile. 

“Want,” Sirius insists. 

Remus nods once. “So, we only had half an hour or so in actual class to work on it and the paper was due on Monday, so since we were doing a whole revamp, we stayed after school that day so he’d at least have something better to turn in after the weekend, and it sort of took off from there.” 

“‘It’ meaning?” Sirius probes. 

“Well, he sat in the spot in front of me on Monday,” Remus puts up, “and the thing is, he wasn’t magically cured of his 'less is more' attitude from one session with me, so he’d run into the same problems and I’d help him with them, and eventually every time we had to work on something he’d automatically turn around and work off my desk.” 

Sirius nods primly. “How much are we willing to bet that he purposefully left his work incredibly vague from there on out so you’d help him out?” he raises, pairing the question with the rise of his right eyebrow. 

Remus smirks, shaking his head. “That wasn’t it.” 

“I will bet every cent in my account that’s what he was doing,” Sirius maintains. 

“You really shouldn’t be betting that kind of money because your claim is false,” Remus counters. “This was a thing for him; he’d have these vibrant reads and opinions of the texts, and yet his writing would come out so, so curt; we’d be discussing our takes and he’d say the most clever thing and I’d just—” he flails his free arm up in the air like he’s waving down a plane, "_write that down!_”

Sirius lifts his hands. “I’m just saying, you can be and do two things at once, but I digress,” he says. “So, what then? Did the literary terms get you all warm in the pants and that’s when you planted one on him?” 

“He planted one on me, thank you very much, and that wasn’t for months,” Remus corrects. 

“Oh, and you pretend like you had nothing to do with his vagueing,” Sirius sends out haughtily. 

“I have a real hard time thinking he was purposefully getting low marks in class just to hang out with me,” Remus insists. “The kiss is beside the point.” 

“I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to get you to admit you’re a catch, I really don’t,” Sirius says, falling back on the arm of the couch like a wounded soldier. 

“I was not a catch in level nine,” Remus returns plainly. 

“I bet you’re lying,” Sirius says, shifting a bit. 

“Take this and shush,” Remus says, holding the pint of ice cream out to him. 

Sirius lifts off the arm of the couch to reach it. “Fine, so he surprise-snogged you, not the other way around,” he reiterates. “Funny, I’m more used to you making the first move, don’t know why that is, though.” 

Remus smiles into his mug, swallowing a gulp of tea. “Well, I wasn’t quite so sexually frustrated back then, you understand,” he lets Sirius have, the gent he is. 

Sirius grins, feeling like a bit of a star. “But nonetheless, sexually frustrated to a point?” he raises. 

“Oh, Jesus Cunt, yes,” Remus allows emphatically. “Far too nervous and ill-equipped to try anything , so I just pined from afar — I don’t know if you know anything about that, but we eventually moved onto after school sessions for just your regular classes, ones we didn’t even have together, and we moved onto spending time on Christmas hols, and at that point I was so excited that our time spent wasn’t immediately contingent on school work, as I’d absolutely convinced myself that this was the case, and after that it was all very soppy stuff on my end, and then he leaned in for it and I thought I was hallucinating it and—” Remus lifts his free hand toward Sirius, “—you know where it went from there.” 

“Barely,” Sirius says. It’s not the cleverest idea he’s had, picking this particular, shoddy evening’s end for this point to be made, but Remus stares at him with dinner plates for eyes and, well, that’s a better sign than, say, telling him to fuck right off. 

“I’ve told you a lot,” Remus says, not unkind, just a statement of fact. “That year was where it all just fell apart; I had my own crisis, my dad’s crisis, plus I worked almost all the time, and he was off spiraling for most of that year — I’ve told you.”

“You told me a load of it first day we started, which was really more of a rant and an output of pent up feelings that went nowhere for years so I was happy to get anything out of you on it, and then there’ve been quips and comments made now and again since,” Sirius clarifies. “I mean, I didn’t even get his name until, what, February?” 

Remus looks down at the contents of his mug and back up at Sirius when he’s got it in him to manage it. “It’s not on to just harp on about a fling,” he says, huffing after it. 

“Don’t call it that,” Sirius asks of him, now feeling odd just sitting there holding a pint of ice cream while he does this. “It wasn’t a fling.” 

“I don’t have much else to call it,” Remus says. 

“Well, flings don’t tend to last as long as you guys did,” Sirius raises, tilting his head toward him a little. “I get it, there were no labels, and there was a lot of Tom in and out of your life whenever he decided, but you don’t have to keep cheapening it when it’s clear there was a lot more going on between you two than you even feel comfortable saying, and I hate that for you; you shouldn’t have to lose six years of experience to him — fuck him."

“I appreciate that you’re saying this, but,” Remus says, pausing to look up and around, “is now the time to discuss all that?” 

Sirius tilts his head pointedly. “You know I’m talking on a bigger scale than right this very second,” he says. “More recently you’ve been a little more transparent, and maybe it’s the leap we’re about to make or you’re just feeling a little more free to talk, but I do want you to talk more; and I don’t mean tonight or even tomorrow, just — you can talk about that time as freely as you fucking feel like and not kick your own arse letting yourself do it, OK?” 

Remus nods, but it looks as if he’s having a hard time doing it. “Maybe not when I’m like this?” he raises. 

“That’s fine,” Sirius grants. “And not to linger too long, but there’s literally no world in which I’d have taken you talking about him and what happened with him as you ‘harping on about it,’”

Remus takes in a quick breath. “I’m not choosing my words well.” 

“No, but it’s stemming from somewhere, right?” Sirius raises. “How about this; if you’d made a reference to Tom once a day from Christmas day until today, I might have wondered what I was dealing with here; that — that would be fucking weird—” Remus cuts in with a snort that seems to jar himself, “—but you’ve gone so, so far the other way that I can count on my hands how many times you’ve referenced anything to do with him, do you see what I’m saying?” 

“Yeah,” Remus says, his voice hoarse. “I do.” 

“OK,” Sirius accepts. “And, so you know, I don’t think it says anything terrible about you if you’re feeling a bit about Cambridge — you got him in there.” 

Remus huffs, ducking his head down for a few moments. “All I’m saying, is that letter of intent had better have done me fucking proud,” he says. “Otherwise, what a waste of a spot, hm?” 

“Mhm,” Sirius returns spiritedly. “Guess where he’s not going, though?” 

“Paris,” Remus answers. 

“Exactement,” Sirius returns. “You’re fucking killing it, Remus; let him Cambridge have him.” 

Remus takes in a sturdy breath, reaches to set his mug on the coffee table, and crosses over the cushion in between them, and Sirius scoots down to lay on his back, waiting for Remus to settle in between Sirius and the couch, but Remus goes one step further and situates himself directly on top of him, crossing his arms over Sirius’ chest and setting his chin on them. 

Sirius breathing hitches, but it’s got nothing to do with the weight on him and yet, everything to do with it. “Am I squashing you?” Remus asks. Sirius shakes his head, snaking his arms around Remus’ waist so he won’t get any other ideas about it. Remus settles in just a touch more, his mouth twisting into a strange sort of frown. “Doreen and Phil are separating.” 

“Oh shit,” Sirius puts out. “You got so much fucking tea today.” 

“I know,” Remus echoes. “I just rang my dad to see how he was faring, but I hadn’t talked to either of them in a bit, so I guess I got the updates since the last time.” 

“It’s really been a Day for you,” Sirius says, curling up to kiss the tip of Remus’ nose. 

“It’s really sad,” Remus says as Sirius lays back down on the couch. “I'm really sad; they’ve been together almost as long as my parents have; I’ve known them as _Doreen and Phil_ since I could walk, and I know I haven’t been back in quite some time but it’s thrown me — I didn’t think it’d ever not be the two of them and—”

Sirius budges up on Remus’ body from underneath him. “And?” he probes. 

Remus shifts his right arm out from under his chin, places his hand over where Sirius’ heart lives, and presses his thumb back and forth. “Apparently they can’t work around it,” he says. “They love each other, but they aren’t in love anymore — or Phil, more than Doreen, which is a terrible thought because she’s great and he’s great, and—” Remus stops, just looking at Sirius. “If I ever give you grief or get huffy with you, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, and I’m sorry I’ve been so up and down lately—” 

“Nope,” Sirius cuts in. “Two points, you want to hear them?” 

Remus looks left, right, and back at him. “Yeah.” 

Sirius lifts his right hand from the small of Remus’ back and sticks it in between them, his forefinger extended. “One, that sucks for Do and Phil, but we’re different,” he says, pulling a reluctant snort out of Remus before he stuffs his face down against Sirius’ chest sheepishly. Sirius pokes the top of Remus’ head with his middle and forefinger, “and two, I love that you give me grief and you know I love it when you get huffy with me.” 

Remus’ head comes up and reveals a morose expression. “You don’t, I’ve seen,” he says. “Not the huffing, but I’ve seen that you’re upset when I give you shit, especially with all you’re doing and you should be upset, I don’t know how I landed someone who's so willing to give me so many breaks—” 

“I want you telling me when shit I say fucks you right off," Sirius insists. "I don’t want you pretending you’re fine to save face or avoid a squabble or else I will just keep doing and saying shit because I’ve no idea it bothers you; you’re supposed to kick my ass, remember? I can’t do better if you don’t tell me how to do it sometimes, can I?”

“You’re allowed to kick my ass, too,” Remus says. “Deal?” 

Sirius leans in for another quick nose kiss. “Deal,” he echoes. “And you know I do, when it's called for, so this is simply reiteration time.”

“I’m OK with reiteration time,” Remus says. “I think it’s good to touch base.” 

Sirius sneaks his hands back around Remus’ waist, holding him close as he makes a faint noise. “Well, now I know why Hope shut the Doreen and Phil talking point down real quick,” he puts up.

“Mhm,” Remus affirms. “I don’t think she wanted to toss out bleak news with you sitting there; you might think of her badly and she’s my mum, so you can probably imagine she’d feel terrible about that.”

Sirius sighs long for that. “I want her to learn I am literally the best person to come to with gossip,” he extends. 

“Oh, I’ve no doubt she will,” Remus says for it, quite candidly. “You’re very easy to talk to; I learned that eventually and she’ll know it by the end of the trip or you can eat my hat.” 

“Please let her know it.” 

Remus huffs a deep breath, pushes up the couch, and pauses hovered above him, his face inches from Sirius’. “I know we can’t have sex yet, but,” he says, pulling the right corner of his lower lip into his mouth, “can we kiss a bit?” 

Sirius answers him with one, feeling it a fine answer in itself. They do kiss a bit, but Sirius has to put a pause on that when things get a little too steamy for comfort with a bloke coming off of shrooms. 

Remus chases after Sirius’ lips the moment he pulls back, breathing heavily in and out of his own kiss-soaked lips, and while that’s a lovely detail Sirius plans on putting in his pocket for a darker day, Sirius cannot let himself get too out of hand. “Wait a little longer, OK?” 

Remus pushes a sigh out of his nose, retreats back to his prior position, and crosses his arms over Sirius’ chest, but he smiles quietly up at him, so Sirius basks in their ability to compromise. “What’s tomorrow like for you?” Remus asks, moving past the boner Sirius can feel against his right thigh. 

Sirius gives a thoughtful hum, sticking his right arm behind his head while he leaves his left curled around the back of Remus’ waist. “I have to meet Andromeda at the venue to talk shop,” he puts up, “and then I have a free few hours before Dora’s class, so I think I’ll drop by the flat early, get some James-time in, and I think Lily’ll be there, too.”

“Well, that’s a good day all around, I’d say,” Remus responds. 

“Mhm,” Sirius accepts, smiling a bit, “and once you’re nearing the end of your shift I might head on down to you, grab a coffee from the best barista in town, drive said barista back home, ravish him a little once we’re there; what do you say about that?” 

Remus ducks his smile down behind his arms, but his eyes are doing it for him all the same. “I love that plan.” 

“Though you might,” Sirius returns, lifting his left hand and whisking it up through Remus’ hair. 

Remus’ eyes fall shut as he kneads the back of his head against Sirius’ hand, and Sirius can’t help but study the face he feels so, so lucky to get to stare at as often as he does; how long Remus’ eyelashes are, that then get Sirius thinking of what he could do with them if given the chance to play around with them a bit, the darker shade of skin around Remus’ eyelids in comparison to the rest of his face, signs of lost sleep and trickster clusters but somehow have it looking like Remus always has a faint layer of eye shadow on and making his eyes pop effortlessly, the patch of curls in his fringe, hanging down lower and longer than the rest of his hair that make Remus have to push them aside often to see better, and Sirius knows he’s due for an all around trim soon, but he hopes with all he has that Remus agrees to still leave his fringe a little longer than the rest of his hair because it is a Look and Sirius is all about it. 

Remus takes a gentle breath in and flutters his eyes open, pulling Sirius back into the room. “If I nap right here, are you going to mind it?” he asks.

“Not even a little bit,” Sirius answers, reaching his right arm out and inching his phone closer to him on the table, and pulls up his alarm app. “I may move you to bed in a while so you don’t wake up with a crick in your neck, but for now, nap away.”

Remus lets his breath out his nose calmly, moves his arms down and sneaks his hands underneath Sirius’ shoulders, squeezing him there. He leans his head to the side, leaving the right side of his face resting against Sirius’ chest while Sirius leaves his phone on the table again, an alarm set for an hour from then, and settles in himself, thinking he might squeeze a nap in, too. 

\- 

Sirius wakes around eleven-ish, feeling well-rested, and putters about Remus’ room to get to the dresser with a spring to his step, his nine-hour sleepfest giving him the opportunity to wake feeling rejuvenated and, dare he say, jolly this fine Monday morning. 

Remus himself looks much better than he did the evening prior as he appears to be awake and alert, paused sitting at the foot of the bed in his pyjama trousers and sans shirt, thumbing through his phone and whatever it is on-screen is taking most if not all of his attention. 

That won’t do, Sirius is feeling like a million pounds and just a tad interested in something else. He pauses with his briefs on, wandering a little closer to Remus with his hands innocently crossed behind his back, and winds his groin in a circle near Remus' phone, thinking that it deserves Remus’ full attention. 

“Oopise,” Sirius says airily, orbiting his hips once more for effect.

Remus looks up at him at once, a half-smile painted on, and the two of them stare at each other for, oh, three seconds before Remus tosses his phone aside and reaches out for Sirius’ waist, tugging him closer to the bed and dropping off of it to get to his knees. Sirius lulls his head back as Remus inches his briefs down and starts right in on him, clutching at the back of Remus’ head as he puts all his will into remaining standing. 

That works for a little bit, but Remus has also apparently not forgotten how badly he wanted to get this done over the course of the day prior and for that is having a grand old time down there, and Sirius’ knees start to buckle as Remus sets to an immense speed, has to back up and grab onto the edge of Remus’ bureau for purchase but Remus just crawls forward on his knees and pins him right to the bureau, and Sirius clings to the bureau with one hand and to the curls at the back of Remus’ head with the other, thrusting up into Remus’ mouth as Remus swerves down on him, and comes with his toes curled and a shout in his throat. 

Remus moves with it as Sirius rolls his hips through the last of his shudders and licks Sirius clean once it's officially over. Already for that little bout of hospitality alone, Sirius is counting the seconds until he’ll be ready to reciprocate in kind, but Remus then goes and rises to his feet, tugs Sirius’ briefs over his hips on the way up, and leans against Sirius like he’s the one who just visited Nirvana and lived to tell the tale. 

“That was so worth the wait?” he puts out breathlessly, and fuck it, Sirius doesn’t need to recover, he needs Remus. 

Sirius swoops in and catches him by the lips, then moves his hands around the back of him and dips them below the waistband of his flannels, catching a full feel of his arse. He hurriedly walks Remus back toward the bed, drinking in the sounds coming up and out of Remus’ throat. Remus’ breathing hitches as Sirius steers him down onto the foot of the bed, chest heaving hard as Sirius tugs down on his trousers and leaves them handing down around Remus’ knees. Sirius shoves his legs apart and settles in between them, holding Remus’ thighs down and in place so he’ll squirm like mad the whole time but won’t be able to do much about it, and descends on his cock like he’ll never get enough of it, and he won’t, in a sense. 

Remus prattles his hands along the stretch of bed on either side of him, pulling hard at the sheets and fighting against Sirius’ hold on his legs, but Sirius’ isn’t budging when it’s pulling delicious noises out of Remus every time he tries. Remus' chest heaves hard and he shuts his eyes tight before he hangs his head back, making it harder for Sirius to see his face in ecstasy from down in between his legs, but Sirius knows that image like the back of his hand, can see it all the same, and runs his tongue along the vein underneath Remus’ cock at every draw back, and Remus shudders his head forward after at least five repeats of that motion, and Sirius will take seeing ecstasy in real time.

Remus screws one eye open and Sirius lifts his eyebrows, waiting on him to get the picture, and Remus breathes out a stuttered breath before he lets go of the bed sheet and sinks his hands into Sirius’ hair. Sirius lets go of Remus’ thighs at once, fist pumps the air with both arms, and Remus chokes on a laugh before he fucks Sirius’ mouth with abandon, his hands curled at the back of his head and laying open in Sirius’ locks, so they won’t snag on any one possible tangle, Sirius can only assume, and the fact that Remus still gives a shit about Sirius’ well-being while getting blown is supreme; Sirius loves this man more than he loves just about anything. 

Remus stutters out one word — Sirius — repeats it the closer he gets to release, and Sirius lights right up, moves his arms down and curls his hands up and around back of Remus’ hips and tugs them in for the finish, fingernails digging into Remus’ skin as Remus leans back on the bed and comes down Sirius’ throat, his hands twitching in Sirius’ hair as he rides it out. 

Sirius sits up straight and bobs his shoulders as he swipes his right wrist past his mouth, smiling brightly as Remus heaves back onto the bed and drags his hands over his face, overcome and sated by the looks of it. “You’re welcome,” he chimes. 

That seems to remind Remus who he’s in the room with for he sits up quite quickly and scoots up close, reaching his right hand out for Sirius and pushing his fringe back; his signature studying of Sirius features for even a single, visible problem. “Good?” he asks softly. 

“Great,” Sirius returns, putting a grin at the end of it for Remus to do what he wants with it. 

Giving him a kiss is what Remus wants to do with it, turns out. Sirius breathes in contentedly after it, pats Remus’ bare thighs once, and pushes to his feet, heading to the dresser to finish putting clothes on his body, another successful detour under his belt. “Want a cup?” Sirius asks, pulling the second drawer open to get at the shirts. 

Remus gives a sudden, declining noise as he pulls his pyjama trousers off his legs in turn. “No no, I’ll make them,” he says, lifting off the edge of the bed to budge in at the dresser to pull out a pair of briefs. “You made yesterdays’ cups, it’s my turn.” 

Sirius lifts his hands in surrender, fine with this compromise when he does need a good loo visit as is and Remus might as well get a head start on them. “Fine,” he chimes, pulling a white tee over his head. 

“Wouldn’t mind if you pair that up with my favourite of your trousers,” Remus flies out there, maneuvering his tree branch legs into the leg holes of his briefs. 

“Which ones?” Sirius asks, keen to find out. 

“The black ones,” Remus says, pulling his briefs up around his waist and snapping the waistband for punctuation. 

“I have a thousand pairs of black trousers, Remus,” Sirius sends him. “You’re going to have to be a touch more specific.”

Remus huffs. “You have four, and two are still back at yours,” he corrects, shutting the second drawer to make way for the third and sifting around in there until he finds the ones he meant. 

“Ooh, you like these?” Sirius asks, taking them off of Remus’ hands. 

“They hug your arse like they were made to and give you legs for days,” Remus puts in, going to his bedroom door to pull his housecoat off the hook on the back of it. 

“Give me legs for days?” Sirius puts up, perching his right leg on the edge of the bureau to pose with it. “Honey, I just _have/em> them.”_

__

“Well, then, they sit so well on them that it sort of hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt,” Remus clarifies, heading out of the room. “Which coffee would you like?” 

__

“The new one I got,” Sirius sends after him, taking his right leg down to the floor and shimmying into his trousers. 

__

Sirius heads to the loo once dressed and takes care of that urge, then heads for the island to wait for Remus to finishing brewing his cup o’ joe, and he has just enough time to finish his coffee at a semi-leisurely pace while Remus works on his own across the island from him, but once Sirius is finished the last drops of his, it’s that time. 

__

“OK, gotta head out,” Sirius says, pushing off of his stool and heading around the island to rinse his mug. “Ring you a bit later, maybe for your break?” 

__

Remus nods emphatically around a sip of tea, turning half-around in his seat so Sirius will see his face for it, which is pleasantly cheerful, he’s happy to note. Sirius leaves a kiss on Remus’ head on his way to grab his own sunglasses off of the island and heads for the entryway, stopping there to foot on his loafers. 

__

“Hold on,” Remus calls to him, and then he is very suddenly in the entryway too. “Sunscreen, sir.” 

__

Sirius sighs a big ol’ good natured huff and stands up straight with his arms extended on either side of him, prompting Remus to go get the bottle from the bathroom and bring it back over to him. 

__

Remus squeezes a dollop into his left palm, sticks the bottle between his legs for keeping, and spreads the glob of sunscreen over both his palms before covering Sirius’ arms. He pulls the bottle out for one more quick squeeze, backs up to leave the bottle on the bathroom counter, and comes back in to paint a thin layer of sunscreen over Sirius’ cheeks, and Sirius simply stands there, smiling big, as he waits for Remus to deem him suitable for the outdoors. 

__

“OK,” Remus says, sighing pleasantly through his nose before he leans in close. 

__

What Sirius thinks is going to be a peck on the lips gets proven wrong when Remus places his free hand on Sirius’ waist and tugs him in a step or two, kissing him full and pulling a righteously stupefied noise from Sirius’ throat. He gathers his wits enough to lift his right hand to the side of Remus’ neck, leaning in and milking as much of this pleasantly passionate goodbye as he can get, feeling like he must have done a few things right over the course of Shroom Day and this morning to win himself a quality snog like this. 

__

“OK,” Remus says, muffled against Sirius’ lips before he pulls back an inch to speak, “you have to go.” 

__

Sirius whines for it, catching Remus’ lips once more and drinking in one last, quick kiss. “OK, ok ok ok,” he repeats determinedly, reminding himself he loves his work and stepping back from Remus and more toward the door. “You’d better be ready to get wrecked come this evening; are we understood?” 

__

“Completely,” Remus assures, crossing his arms at his middle with his right hip jutted out, maybe just to ruin Sirius just a little more before he’s off. “Say hi to her for me.” 

__

“Done,” Sirius assures, opening the door and slipping out of it.

__

He rides on down to the venue from Remus’ place, forget feeling like one, he’s fifteen million pounds today. He parallel parks near to the building, congratulates himself on performing a swift pull in, and holds his helmet at his right hip as he strolls down toward the venue, choosing to bypass the front door and head in the back way when there are three construction men working on sanding off the front archway as is. 

__

He passes by at an easy clip, looks back as he thinks he feels a pair of lingering eyes, and confirms that he’s getting a checked the fuck out by who may be the hottest of the three men working, but the moment Sirius sees it, the moment he flashes back to gripping the end of Remus’ bureau for dear life as Remus blew him to Nirvana and back, and the spring to his step as he rounds the side of the building and heads down the alley beside it has nothing to do with being ogled by a strapping young stranger. 

__

He lets himself in through the back door with his key, heads down the back hallway and up toward the front, taking in the high ceilings first because he loves those, and taking in the few other construction men sprinkled about the place, hammering, working, making the place look exactly the way they like, even if for right now it looks a right mess. Andromeda is up near the stage, nodding and conversing with their contractor, Mike, and spots Sirius lingering in the doorway and beams over at him, holding up a forefinger. Sirius nods, hangs back there watching the crew do their jobs, and soon Andromeda heads over to him, a certain sort of incredulous smile about her that Sirius knows he’s got on himself.

__

She heads up beside him, facing the room along with Sirius, and tosses her left arm over his shoulder, and Sirius looks at her sidelong, leaning into the half-hug. “Nuts, hm?” she says, looking up and around with a whimsical air about her. 

__

“It’s better than I even thought it would be, and I had high hopes,” he says candidly, nodding his head toward a specific image of a construction man bent over. “The plumber shot adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole picture.” 

__

Andromeda snorts, budging on Sirius. “Alright, why don’t we go into my office and confab there?” she raises. 

__

“Your office?” Sirius raises airily, turning around with her. 

__

“Ours, ours,” she corrects, nodding as they head down the hall he came through down toward said shared office. She shuts the door behind them, heads for her desk. Sirius drags the chair from his own desk over to sit across from her, drops his helmet on the desk, and takes a seat, leaning back in the chair and propping his feet up on the desk. 

__

Andromeda barely bats an eye and merely scoots her chair in, propping her elbows up on the surface of the desk and criss-crossing her hands together. “'K, so, before shoptalk, I wanted to get your thoughts on something,” she prefaces, appearing quite determined. 

__

“Give it to me,” Sirius goads, taking his shades off and hanging them from the collar of his tee. 

__

“I woke up, 2am with this overwhelming thought, and had to jot down keywords in hopes of remembering it come this afternoon, but hilariously it’s just been thrumming in my head all morning so the quick notes wouldn’t have made a difference,” Andromeda tacks on. 

__

“I’m shaking, would you let me off the hook here?” Sirius returns. 

__

“How,” she starts, airy in tone, “do you feel about drag?” 

__

“Never heard of it,” Sirius replies, deadpanning. 

__

Andromeda snorts, taking the determined look of her face and replacing it with quiet mirth. “OK, I know, dumb fucking question,” she allows, “but, I really think this place could use a drag night or two, we have gigs covered, but why stop there? Let’s do something with the free nights we have, what do you think?” 

__

“Absolu_fucking_lutely,” Sirius returns. “I’m all in.” 

__

“I knew you would be,” Andromeda says, practically vibrating in her office chair. “And, since you know every gay in this city—”

__

“One or two,” Sirius puts in, faux-modestly. 

__

“—And I know you can network your tail off,” Andromeda finishes. 

__

Sirius nods for it. “This is actually stellar timing as Pride’s in, what, a week and few?” he raises. “I’m going to see a fuckload of mates, young and old, every direction I look in, and in between my own celebrations, I’ll see who I can round up.” 

__

“I have every faith in you and this plan,” Andromeda says of it. “Now, you want the bad news?” 

__

“Hit me,” Sirius delivers. 

__

“Well, I just got word from Mike that the wiring in here is nowhere near up to code,” she puts up. 

__

Sirius glances to the side and back at her in a beat. “Which we knew was going to happen when we scouted the place and subsequently fell in love despite the work that would need to be done.” 

__

“Yes, I remember, only thing is,” Andromeda says, dragging the last word out in a bit of a melodic tune, “it’s going to cost more than we thought it would.” 

__

“Well, what are we talking here?” Sirius asks. Andromeda pulls a post-it note off of the stack of fifty highlighter orange ones and jots the number down, pulling the post-it from the rest and reaching over the desk to stick it to the sole of Sirius’ right shoe. 

__

Sirius leans in, grabs it off of his shoe, and drops his legs to the floor, turning the post-it around to face him and having a gander. “Andromeda,” he puts out, blinking across the desk at her. “How is this a problem?” 

__

“What do you mean?” she raises. “It’s more than we budgeted for.” 

__

“Well, I’m willing to shell out so that this place doesn’t go up in flames one night, how about you?” Sirius returns. 

__

“Well, I just wanted us on the same page before I gave Mike the go-ahead,” Andromeda implores. 

__

“Give him the go-ahead,” Sirius instructs. “We have the money, we just need to move it around a little, and I made room for the idea that we’d need to fork over a little more when we’re sitting in a building that’s as ancient as it is; it’s all going to be swell.”

__

Andromeda breathes in once, relaxes a little more in her chair, nodding once. “OK, “ she allows. “I can’t argue with any of that.” 

__

“I’m glad you figured that out sooner than later,” Sirius offers, tipping his head to her. “Was that all the bad news?” 

__

Andromeda smiles tightly. “We might have to gut the stage.” 

__

“No,” Sirius says at once, plainly spoken. 

__

“We might have to,” Andromeda says. 

__

“I will tie my body to that stage before I let you gut it,” Sirius declares, pointing in the direction of it beyond the office walls. “It’s gorgeous.” 

__

“Well, _I_ wouldn’t be the one gutting it, but it’s an old foundation and I worry it won’t hold,” she says. “The boys out there don’t even want to step on that thing and that should tell you something.” 

__

“We employed a bunch of cowards?” Sirius puts in. 

__

“We don’t want our valued musicians and queens coming in here and falling straight through the stage floor, now do we,” Andromeda says, switching angles. “Can you say, lawsuit?”

__

Sirius puts off some righteously peeved energy, sitting back in his seat with his arms crossed. “We’re not touching those ceilings,” he instills. “Especially not around the stage; it’s fucking gorgeous.” 

__

“Of course not,” Andromeda insists and Sirius squints at her over the desk. “Maybe a new paint job, but I agree, that entire stage area is one of our best assets and I will make sure that we keep the same vibe even as we replace the stage, alright? I won’t let it stick out like a sore thumb.” 

__

“You’d better not,” Sirius caps it off. 

__

Andromeda puts her hands together in humble thanks. “OK, let me go give Mike the go-ahead for the wiring and I’ll see about a trajectory for the stage while I’m there,” she says, pushing out of her chair. “Have a coffee while I’m gone.” 

__

Sirius looks over to the red Keurig in the corner and thinks that might just be the thing to restore his once blindingly good mood. He pushes off his chair and heads to the corner, pulling the drawer underneath the desk the machine is perched on and has a gander at the many packs of K-pods at his disposal, and blindly picks a mystery flavour out of the Donut Shop Favourites box, happy to let his taste buds find out what he chose once the coffee is brewed and let it cure his bout of ennui. 

__

Andromeda comes back into the room after Sirius is a good three-quarters of the way through his coffee, relays her findings, and Sirius bids a sorrowful goodbye to the stage that will begin to be taken apart this coming Thursday. 

__

From there, it’s another two hours worth of shoptalk wherein they discuss literal floor plans for the sound stage, the lounge, and the bar seating, further leads on decor possibilities and quotes for pricing, a tentative date for the end of the week to do a little more browsing, and from there they move onto the long checklist that include the proverbial floor plans regarding the arrays of insurance they’ll be needing to acquire, the liquor license, a provider and distributor for said liquor, and before long they’re coming to the end of their scheduled meeting, having doled out the list of responsibilities in half, with the understanding that Sirius will be taking two weeks off starting the tenth of July for sleepy Wales is calling to him stronger and stronger each passing day. 

__

“Are you excited?” Andromeda asks, shutting her books and pushing out of her seat. 

__

Sirius puts out a guttural noise. “You’ve no idea,” he says, pushing out of his chair and following her out of the office door.

__

Andromeda trills faintly. “I mean, I have some,” she says moderately. 

__

“Well, multiply that by a thousand and you’ll be about there,” Sirius raises it, tracing the fingertips of his right hand along the wonderfully kitschy wallpaper in the hallway they’re heading through. “Remus says hi, by the by.” 

__

Andromeda places a hand over her heart and trills much less faintly and that is a feat, seeing as they step out into the main hall of the venue and the commotion would have been enough to drown her out. “I love him,” she says, stopping by the back door. 

__

“I know you do,” Sirius chimes, pleased as all hell to keep on hearing that. 

__

“How’s he doing?” she asks, her smile tapering off just a bit. 

__

“He’s good,” Sirius says. “It’s a bit touch and go, but we had a good weekend, and this morning he seemed happy and I almost didn’t come meet you because he was so sweet and I didn’t want to leave.” 

__

“I don’t know if I could even be fucked off about that omission,” Andromeda says of it. 

__

Sirius grins to that. “We on for later?” he raises. “I was thinking six-ish?” 

__

“Are you going to be feeding her dinner while you’re at it?” Andromeda inquires, leaning back against the wall by the back door.

__

“I can feed her dinner,” Sirius accepts, nonplussed. “You can come too, the usual suspects will be around there, I’m sure.” 

__

“Will Remus be there?” Andromeda asks, pretending she’s not interested at all in the rest of them, but Sirius doesn’t mind the jest if Remus is the highlight of it. 

__

“He’s at work all evening,” he supplies, heaving a shrug for it. “Lily’ll be, though.” 

__

“Then I’m there,” Andromeda puts up. “You still good to take over things around here tomorrow? 

__

“More than,” Sirius returns, wanting to instill confidence that Andromeda can absolutely tackle the day of varying familial appointments ahead of her. “I bet you my left arm that they’d rather me stay far and away from their work which I plan to do. I’ll just set up shop in the office and be there in case anyone has any problems that need working out; a strong, silent overlord, if you will.” 

__

Andromeda bows her head to him. “Ring if you need me, yeah?” 

__

“I won’t,” Sirius chimes, shouldering the back door open. 

__

“Lock up behind you.” 

__

“No.” 

__

Sirius locks up behind him, pushes a hand up through his hair, and slips his phone out of his back right pocket to have a gander at the time, pleased with it nearing half-three and tickled by the idea of a few hours to fuck around back at the flat before he’s expected to entertain a variety of house guests. He heads round the side of the building, back down the alley, and over to Priscilla, hopping on and snapping his helmet onto his head. He switches the ignition on and kicks off of the sidewalk, rides out of his spot after a quick check over his shoulder to check if the coast is clear, and soars back to the flat; forget feeling like fifteen, he’s twenty million pounds and it’s only three o’clock. 

__

He pulls into his usual spot outside the flat, hops on off of Priscilla and thanks her for her continued service, and heads on into the lobby. No sounds of bagpipes greet him this time either, a lovely bonus to his already certifiably great day. He gets to his landing and while there are no bagpipe notes floating his way, there is however the undeniable cadence of a lass getting laid, and Sirius has been around long enough to be able to tell that’s Lily’s particular lilt. Sirius heads on into the flat with smirk on and a creep to his steps, thinking he’ll slip on into his room and blast something on his earbuds to get through the rest of the clear rendezvous happening here, but once he shuts the front door he notes that the two voices he’s now close enough to hear at once are a touch too close to be coming from James’ room. 

__

Sirius takes to a sprint down the hall and leaps into the living room. “A-ha!,” he puts out, pointing fiercely toward the couch where James is sitting straight up in the middle spot on the couch with Lily perched right on his face with her dress pushed up around her waist and her hands gripping the back of the couch for leverage, and this truly couldn’t get any better if Sirius had prayed about it first. 

__

Lily shrieks, James hollers, and Sirius covers the lower half of his face with immense glee. “Wow, Lily,” he observes, bobbing his shoulders in the doorway, “get it.”

__

Lily hops off of James at once, pulling her black work dress down and adjusting the white lace collar a bit. “You said you had a meeting,” James puts out. 

__

“Meetings end, sweetie,” Sirius sends him jovially. 

__

James shakes two fists in Sirius’ direction while Lily looks down and tries to do something with her tights as they’re halfway off her left leg and completely off her right, but that’s a little moot at this point. “No no, don’t you worry,” Sirius insists, beaming brightly. “I get it; sometimes the call of desire is just too strong and you have to answer the call, no matter where you are even if it means the couch.” 

__

“I’m so sorry, Sirius,” Lily says, peeking through her fingers at him, face otherwise covered. 

__

“Literally, I don’t need it,” Sirius denies, waving her off. “So, here’s what I’m going to do; I’m never, ever going to let either of you forget this, but that’s more of an ongoing thing. For right now, I’m going to talk a little walk around the block, let you two finish up, and then I’ll come back and ruin your lives all over again, how’s that sound?” 

__

Sirius heads right back down the hall. “Half hour at the least, if not more,” James calls after him. 

__

“Oh alright, you raging bull,” Sirius calls back, letting himself out the front door. 

__

He pulls his phone out and descends the stairs at a near-jig, typing out a quick ‘_please, for the love of jesus cunt, take your break and call me’_ and firing it off to Remus. He slips his phone back and gets down to the ground floor in no time at all, heads out the lobby door into the warm, sunny day he’s living in, feeling like thirty million, all things considered. He sticks his hands in his trouser pockets and makes a left, thinking he’ll head to the shop, drop in and see Charlotte, and maybe wrangle himself a coffee out of it; not a bad plan. 

__

_Kiss Me_ is echoing out of his back right pocket by the time Sirius is getting to the end of his block and that is record timing in itself. “Oh, my God, Remus—” 

__

“Are you OK?” 

__

Sirius blinks wildly at the apprehensive tone. “Oh, no no, everything is a-ok on my end, promise,” he says. “The text was written with a tease in mind, like get your arse out on break and call me ‘cause I got some fucking news for you.” 

__

Remus puts out a thankful breath. “My mind went to a thousand places, and none of them good.” 

__

“Well, rest easy, everything is fine,” Sirius assures. 

__

“What is it, then?” Remus comes back with, sounding much more piqued as he rightfully should be. 

__

“I,” Sirius starts valiantly, grinning ear to ear, “just walked on into the flat and caught Lily sitting on James’ face, wait for it” Sirius extends the moment Remus puts out a righteous gasp, “on the fucking couch. ” 

__

Remus takes in another, though this time rather charmed gasp. “Those little shits,” he observes. 

__

“Right?” Sirius sends him. “I’m a whole new being now; I’ve died, resurrected, and come back with a new perspective on life.” 

__

“I’ve one, too, and I wasn’t even there for this,” Remus returns. 

__

Sirius shoulders his phone so he can clap his hands jovially. “This is such a good day, all around.” 

__

“Yeah?” Remus asks. “How was the meeting?” 

__

“Quite good,” Sirius nods. “The place looks a right mess, but there’s a lot of work to be done so I’m not letting it mare the vision I see for it down the line.” 

__

“Good, don’t do that,” Remus agrees. 

__

“Mhm, and the rewiring is going to be more than we initially thought it’d be, but personally I think we ought to shell out the cash now so we don’t regret it later if we cut corners now, you know what I’m saying?” Sirius puts up. 

__

“I know exactly what you’re saying,” Remus says of it. 

__

“There is horrid news, though; I should warn you,” Sirius prefaces. “Are you sitting?” 

__

“No, but go on,” Remus probes. 

__

Sirius snorts for it. “We have to gut and replace the stage.” 

__

Remus puts out a sort of soul-crushed noise that Sirius wholeheartedly agrees is what’s called for here. “But it’s gorgeous,” he muses. 

__

“I know,” Sirius laments along with him, “but Andromeda is of the opinion the lawsuits we could get from not restructuring it won’t be so gorgeous.” 

__

Remus snorts before taking in a breath of air. “Well, she’s got a point there.” 

__

“Unfortunately, and I don’t like admitting that one bit.” 

__

“No, I can’t imagine a world where you would.” 

__

“On second thought, your world in particular might spin off its axis if I were to simply get over losing that beautiful specimen of a stage in a quick finger snap.” 

__

“It’s like you know me.” 

__

Sirius ducks his head with a big ol’ grin on, breathing out long and taking in a new breath, ready to croon. “_Never knew I could feel like this_—”

__

“Oh, you stop right there,” Remus instructs. “I’m at work, there will be no sultry serenading from you when I can’t reasonably let if waft all over my body in this establishment, you hear me?” 

__

“Hard not to,” Sirius returns, snickering at the end. 

__

“You save that for tonight,” Remus tacks on. 

__

“Saved twice, just in case,” Sirius raises it. “How’s work?” 

__

“Good,” Remus says. “Stan was just in and Agnes made his drink perfectly, and while I know it’s mostly due to her willingness to succeed, I certainly don’t mind knowing I taught her how, but you go repeating this to anyone else or I’ll deny I said anything.” 

__

“Secret’s safe with me,” Sirius says of it, tapping the tip of his nose even though Remus won’t see it. “I’m glowing over the fact that you even had the thought, let alone shared it with me; I'm touched.” 

__

“You’re about the only person who’d not kick my arse for it,” Remus reasons. 

__

“Well, I think just about anyone who's had the pleasure of knowing you for longer than a week would thrum at the idea of you bragging even a little,” Sirius mentions, “but you’re right, I’m beside myself with glee, personally.” 

__

“That’s about all you're going to get from me, I think.” 

__

“I know and I’m working on it,” Sirius returns. “I’ve yet to find you chanting, ‘I’m the best, I’m the best,' over and over again, and until that day comes, I will work toward it.” 

__

Remus puts out an amused breath. “Oh, that’s going to be a long ways away, isn’t it.” 

__

“I don’t mind one bit,” Sirius says of it. “Did they let you off on break that easily?” 

__

“Well, it’s Agnes and Elise on,” Remus puts in circumstantially, “so neither one was going to question me when I pleaded to step out for a few — and I think I might’ve looked a little spooked, if I’m honest.” 

__

Sirius gives a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry I spooked you.”

__

“It’s forgotten what with the gift you gave me straight afterward,” Remus returns. 

__

“It is a gift, isn’t it,” Sirius considers. 

__

“Now, you will gloat, I’m sure of it,” Remus starts, his reasonable tone on now, “but we’ve been there, too — thankfully, never quite that busy, so do try to back off of them a little once you’ve stuck it to them a little.” 

__

Now it’s Sirius’ turn to gasp. “You’re going to let me stick it to them a little?” he checks, turning down the mall strip toward the shop. 

__

“I’m planning on it, so by all means,” Remus says. “It’s fair you get a round as well.” 

__

Sirius sighs contentedly, pulling the front door open. “Stay with me, I’m just grabbing a café.”

__

Remus smirks a laugh. “I like it when you add a French word at the end of a sentence, makes it fanciful, rather than the most ordinary thing ever like you getting a coffee.”

__

Sirius heads past the tiny line in front of the till and Charlotte at the helm to head up around toward the bar. “Now, when you say you like it, do you mean generally in this case, or do you mean you like it in the crotchal region?”

__

Remus sighs. “Are you walking around the shop asking that question?” 

__

“Mhm, I am,” Sirius assures, stepping up behind the counter and breezing on past David’s scoff. 

__

“You’re impossible.” 

__

“Weird word for charming,” Sirius mentions, heading for the stacker of cups and flashing Charlotte a grin. “Gimme a minute?” 

__

“Sure,” Remus allows, and Sirius shoulders the phone. 

__

“How’s the day?” he asks, plucking a large cold cup off of the stack of them.

__

“Just stopping in for one?” Charlotte asks, marking a cup with her sharpie. 

__

“And to see you,” Sirius raises it, heading back to the bar. He slips in at bar two while David’s rinsing out a blender pitcher across the way at cold bar, pulls the left-hand fridge open, and realizes his phone is gonna hit the counter or the floor if he keeps it shouldered and leaves it face up on the counter instead. 

__

Charlotte walks her cup over to stick it on the bar and David walks over and snatches it up, turning to Sirius pointedly. “Would it be so difficult for you to line up?” he sends him. 

__

“Yeah, probably,” Sirius says, squirting his regular vast array of syrup pumps into his cup. 

__

“You’re expected to wait in line like everyone else does,” David returns. 

__

“Listen,” Sirius says, stopping with the iced coffee pitcher ready to pour, “nobody, and I mean nobody here gives a shit either way, and it’s frankly a little embarrassing for you to be wandering around admitting that you haven’t gathered that yet.” 

__

“This whole place is due for a complete overhaul,” David says of it. 

__

“Yeah, good luck,” Sirius bids, pouring iced coffee to the near-top of his drink, leaving a smidge of room for a wee bit of ice at the top. He crosses over to cold bar, tops his drink off with a few cubes and reaches for a lid, popping it on the top of his drink, grabbing a straw, and sneaking his phone off the counter on his way off of the floor. 

__

He puts his phone back at his ear and stops just inside the hall, en route to the posted schedules. “OK, I’m back.” 

__

“Is that a short peek into what a typical shift with you two is like?” Remus asks. 

__

“Oh, yeah,” Sirius assures. “It’s that, over and over again, until we lock up.” 

__

“Seems as if you can’t really step without him lodging a complaint about it,” Remus says frankly. “Not a fan of that, if I may say.” 

__

“You may scream it from the rooftops, Remus,” Sirius insists. “Anything for you to sympathize with my plight.”

__

David turns up at the door to the back hall, on the hunt for something surely. “Move,” he drags out. 

__

“Eat my dick,” Sirius sounds out, flipping the first schedule up to have a look at the next week’s in behind it. 

__

“Yeah, you’d love that,” David returns, heading down the hall to snatch up a new bottle of syrup. 

__

Sirius might’ve responded if the week after next’s schedule didn’t have a big ol’ problem on it. He swivels on his heel, shoulder checks David on his way past because that’s what he deserves after a retort like that, and heads for Will at the back desk. “Remus, I have to go.” 

__

“Yeah,” Remus says softly. “Don’t stick around too long.”

__

“I won’t,” Sirius says, heading up the hall. 

__

“I love you,” Remus offers. 

__

“Love you, too.” Sirius ends the call, sticking it back in his pocket. “Oi? What is going on with the schedule?” 

__

Will looks round at him, his hands hovered over the keyboard in front of him. “Elaborate,” he says plainly. 

__

“I can’t make it to that shift on the tenth,” Sirius sounds out, elaborating quite plainly, he thinks. 

__

“I need you on the tenth,” Will returns. 

__

“Well, I’m going to literally be on a train headed out of the city that day, as I told you, so I won’t be showing up for it,” Sirius presents.

__

“Oh, no no no,” Will says, determined. “You didn’t say the tenth.”

__

“I certainly did,” Sirius maintains. “I leave on the tenth, I’d have said the tenth.”

__

“Mary booked the fourth to the ninth of months back and I fucking need you that week, Sirius,” Will puts out, agonized. 

__

Sirius pushes a long, exhaustive breath out of his nose. “I’m willing to come in and work a shift or two to earlier that week to help you out,” he puts down, “but my point is, I’m won’t be coming in on the tenth, so you might want to get that covered.”

__

Sirius heads back up the hall with that and only that, and he knows he can get away with it when the only reason he’s even still working presently was for a favour anyway. “You’re busting my fucking balls, Sirius,” Will calls after him. 

__

“Mmm, that’s why I’m your favourite,” Sirius calls back, and he hadn’t timed it to be in earshot of David, it’s more a happy coincidence that he hears the claim and scoffs so hard it sounds like it hurts, and Sirius blows him a kiss and watches the colour drain from his face, pure disdain dripping from his features. 

__

Yep. He’s Reg for ya.

__

Sirius heads out of the shop with a pointed, forced spring to his step, stands on the curb outside the shop for a moment gathering himself, and supremely wishes he’d kept Remus on the phone. 

__

Nothing to do about that, unfortunately, Remus is probably back up on the floor by now and since he agreed to make himself scarce from the flat for at least a half hour, he’s a bit stuck. 

__

He pops the paper off of his straw on his right hip and sticks it in his drink, taking a good long first sip of heaven before he already has a budding idea for a time-waster. He pulls his phone out, dials hits four on speed dial, and waits two rings before the line picks up. 

__

“Yo yo yiggity yo?”

__

“What the fuck, Pete?” 

__

“I just rewatched _Juno_, ignore that.” 

__

“I think I will,” Sirius returns. “You coming over?” 

__

“Yeah, I’m a block away.” 

__

Sirius’ eyebrows shoot to the top of his forehead. “You don’t wanna go up there,” he insists. “Stop this instance and head east.” 

__

Peter’s voice comes back vaguely spooked. “What’s happening up there?” 

__

“Relations,” Sirius forwards. 

__

Peter sighs. “Sirius, when are relations not happening in there?”

__

Sirius takes in a quick breath. “Alright, fair point,” he allows, “but they decided the couch was a prime spot to see to said relations on despite the fact that I was due to walk in at any given moment, and so it’s all going down a tad out in the open and I worry about your innocence if you were to stroll in right about now.” 

__

“The couch,” Peter returns. “You’re never going to let them live this down.” 

__

“I certainly won’t,” Sirius returns. “In any case, I told them I’d fuck off for a while, so I’ve found myself at the shop, cold and alone.” 

__

“Oh, hold on a few, you cheeseball,” Peter returns, and in moments the call drops and Sirius grins a bit, looking around at the terrace out front of the shop and stepping up on it. 

__

He picks a free table to wait at and Peter wanders around the corner and up the mall strip about minutes later, heading up onto the terrace and plopping down in the open chair across from Sirius, and huffs a great sigh. “Hot as balls,” he greets. 

__

“Is it?” Sirius raises. 

__

“You just can never tell,” Peter returns, running his right hand up through his dampened hair. 

__

“You’re catching sun,” Sirius observes, eyeing the rouge tint to Peter’s visage. 

__

Peter nods. “I forgot about sunscreen,” he confesses, frowning. 

__

“You need a Remus,” Sirius offers. “He almost never lets me forget about it.” 

__

“Well, tell him I’m single,” Peter offers, and Sirius coughs out a laugh around a sip of coffee. “Speaking of, I hear he’s coming out of his cave soon.” 

__

“Wednesday,” Sirius supplies, tipping his head toward him. 

__

“How hard did you have to bargain for that?” Peter asks. 

__

“Not that hard,” Sirius puts up. “I mean, lets not pretend any that it didn’t take James storming his flat and giving him a world of shit for Remus to start thinking about the message he was inadvertently sending you guys by keeping away, so once that’d happened it wasn’t that difficult to broach the topic of his re-emerging since it was a gigantic elephant in the room after the fact.”

__

Peter makes a wary sort of hum. “James said when Remus gets fucked off, his eyes go all narrowed and the air in the room leaves at once.” 

__

“Oh, instantly,” Sirius nods. “Good rule to live by: if that boy doesn’t have dinner plates for eyes, that’s when you know you’ve said something he fucking hates.”

__

“Logged away for further use,” Peter accepts.

__

Sirius nods, going for another sip of his quickly dwindling coffee. “And really, as far as I’m concerned, James got off easy because there’s one of two things Remus will do when attacked,” he says, raising his free hand to count on his fingers, “he’ll leave the room to decompress or he’ll square up verbally, though for a second there I was certain Remus was about to give James a stiff right hook, but thankfully Remus chose to kick James out rather than enter the ring.” 

__

“I don’t ever want him to square up with me,” Peter says wholeheartedly. “If Remus looked at me like James said he looked at him, I think I’d just lay down on the ground and play dead until he forgot I was ever there.” 

__

Sirius snorts around his straw. “Safest route to take, honestly.” 

__

“Funny he ended up with you, mind,” Peter says, tossing a hand toward Sirius. “You take on Death Eyes when you’ve been wronged, and now there’s substantial proof that Remus has some powerful ones too, so a tag team like you would kill a man in seconds.” 

__

Sirius sits back easily in his chair, snickering. “Good thing we’re never fucked off about the same thing, hm?”

__

Peter nods severely. “A good balance,” he calls it. 

__

“Too right it is,” Sirius says, lifting his coffee to cheers. 

__

They decide to give James and Lily a tad longer than previously stated and shoot the shit at the shop until the full hour mark, and from there they head back to the flat, ducking into the corner shop nearby and picking up a pack of spritzers to bring back with them. They ascend the stairs and head on in through the front door with a quick check-in for any precarious noises from the front hallway, but voices appear rather conversational and carry over from what seems like the kitchen, so chances are that the coast is clear. 

__

Sirius foots his shoes off on the mat rather carelessly, heads down the hall and through the empty living room, and heads on through the far hall, passing the bathroom on the way to the kitchen. “I’ve brought spritzers,” he sings, holding up the pack as he traipses into the room. James is taking what looks like a very long look at the contents of their fridge while Lily has gone and stolen Sirius’ spot by the window, but Sirius is in too good a mood to be pressed about that, all in all.

__

Lily beams at his announcement and puts out grabby-hands toward him, and Sirius tears at the side of the package and maneuvers a can out of it. “I bet you’re parched,” he observes. holding it out for Lily to take with a flourish.

__

James sends out a scoffed _bah!_ and waves Sirius off from half-inside the fridge, and Lily snaps the can tab of her spritzer in reply, though Sirius does note a rather keen smile half-hidden behind the can as she has herself a sip, and that, he’s oddly proud to see.

__

“Would you like one, you big, strapping man, you?” Sirius offers, holding another can out in James’ direction. 

__

“OK,” James says, shutting the fridge door at once, “you don’t get to act all prim and proper, when I can list off all the places you’ve gone to town in this house, and yes, I’d love one.” 

__

“As if I give a shit where you two consummate,” Sirius returns, passing a spritzer along to James, “the point is, you’re a rich man in a few ways now — Lily, on the other hand, I’m just proud of.” 

__

Peter looks around, spritzer-less and curious, but Sirius remedies the former by handing another off to him and walking the rest of the pack to the fridge for keeping. “What’d Lily do?” he says for the latter and Lily coughs on a sip of spritzer. 

__

“Nothing,” she says, waving him off right quick. “Nothing at all.” 

__

Sirius shuts the fridge with a spur of gusto, snaps his own can open, and walks toward Lily, his left hand outstretched. “Madame, come with me,” he bids, and Lily quickly shuffles out of the window spot, openly quizzical. “There’s a tune just for this occasion and I haven’t played in quite some time; come, gather.” 

__

Lily brightens and takes Sirius’ hand with renewed fervor, practically traipsing toward the hall. “Honestly I’m surprised you didn’t just airlift that thing over to Remus’ place,” James calls to him. 

__

“I’m ignoring that,” Sirius sings back, leading Lily down the hall and into the living room, piano bound. Sirius and Lily take up residence on the piano bench, Sirius cracks his knuckles, waggles his fingers around to stretch them, and looks up and around, thinking something is missing. “James, I need your vocals for this one and I must ask that you come drape yourself over top this machine.” 

__

Footsteps pound down the hall before James appears in the room in one moment and launches himself up onto the piano’s back and scuttles himself further over it, laying flat on his back and tossing a dainty hand over his forehead. “I’m ready,” he says, though to be fair, Sirius gathered that himself already.

__

Peter appears in the door to the living room with his and James’ spritzers in hand and with that, Sirius clears his throat, shakes himself out, and begins a rendition of _Fuck Her Gently_, and it takes a whole five seconds before James comes alive with realization and and adopts the sort of passion that Sirius is already putting into the performance, crooning out from atop the piano, and before long, the first chorus even the rest of them are joining in when it’s incredibly difficult not to partake.

__

The beat goes on like that; the other three tossing out requests for Sirius to quickly remember how to play, and although it’s been a little while since Sirius sat down and churned some practicing out, he’s grateful to see that some of this will always stick around. 

__

A good time logged away into their impromptu session, Sirius takes a short break to wander out of the living room and into the kitchen, thinking he’ll sneak a quick puff. He checks the time on the gargantuan fish-shaped clock mounted on the wall above the fridge, notes it’s just past five, and thinks he’d better start thinking about what he’ll offer for dinner, but a smoke first, he decides. 

__

Lily takes over the piano in his absence and by the time he’s out back she’s settled on Soap&Skin’s Wonder. Sirius takes a seat at the head of the table out back and lights up, half-soaking in the rays of sun beating down from above and half-listening to Lily’s playing.

__

Lily’s playing stops quite suddenly, not even halfway through the tune she started, and Sirius jerks with the abrupt pause, though the familiar jingle of Lily’s ringtone taking over where the piano left off rather puts the pause into perspective. 

__

Sirius leans his head back in the chair, getting a half-upside down view of the living room window just as a flash of red brings Lily into the frame, heading for the coffee table where it likely got dropped earlier in favour of a good romp. 

__

Sirius smirks, shaking his head as he levels it out and takes an easy haul off of his smoke before Lily’s words echo back through the open window and bring him another pause. “OK, Elise?” she says, Boss-mode activated, “I’ll come in, alright? Just keep an eye on him—” 

__

And Sirius is bolting out of his chair before he even needs the rest. He checks the screen door open with his right shoulder, leaps over the two steps down from the terrace, and takes to a run out of the kitchen, sprinting down the hall. Lily is in perfect view from there, standing rooted to the spot between the coffee table and couch, gaze vacant as she nods along, mouth poised to speak, but the moment she registers or hears Sirius coming, her gaze lifts and visible dread takes over her entire visage. 

__

Sirius bounds around Peter to get to the piano, swiping his phone off of the ledge and pressing the button on the side of it, and he doesn’t really even need to press the new text message waiting for him when the sample blurb on his lock screen says enough: _Hgkrfhfka_

__

“OK, perfect, thank you,” Lily says, “soon, I just have to drive over—”

__

“It’s a bad one,” he puts out, pocketing his phone and moving for Lily with his left hand outstretched. “Here, let me—” 

__

“No no, of course, see to them, but please check on him when you’re done there, OK?” Lily rushes in. “Yes, there soon. Thank you—”

__

Sirius watches in abject horror as she presses her right thumb over her screen to drop the call. “Lily,” he snaps, waving the hand he would’ve held the phone in if she’d passed it to him as bid. “Use your fucking eyes.”

__

“She’s got customers, Sirius; she can’t chit chat,” Lily returns, going for her purse sitting on the left-hand side of the couch. 

__

Rather than blow the room apart from nuclear fission alone and waste precious time going that, Sirius claps his hands twice, jolting the other three to stand to attention. “Vite, vite,” he calls, gaze on Lily as he sweeps his right arm toward the hall. “We need to go now; _now_, now—”

__

“Alright, Jesus,” Lily returns, shouldering her purse as she takes to a jog toward the hall. 

__

“No, not ‘Jesus,’” Sirius sends out, right behind her with both Peter and James apparently bounding along behind them like a couple piranhas looking for scraps. “He could be on the floor bleeding out by now—” 

__

“Oh, she didn’t say that, Sirius,” Lily calls over her shoulder, skidding to a stop at the mat. 

__

“Well, I wouldn’t know what she said, would I?” Sirius returns. “He sent me fucking gibberish; that means it’s bad if he can’t even type our code in—”

__

“Alright, everyone just chill out for a fucking second,” James puts in.

__

“Oh, that is real easy for you to say,” Sirius snaps, kicking his shoes upright so he won’t have to waste time tugging them on. 

__

“She thinks he’s got food poisoning, Sirius,” Lily relays, putting her own shoes on. “He’s in back, checked out and clearly can’t work, which is why I’m going in to cover—”

__

“Well, fantastic, then,” Sirius puts out brightly, waiting with his slip ons already on for Lily to either tie her fucking laces or be done with them entirely. “We can just coast on down to the shop, maybe stop for takeout on our way; Elise obviously knows best.” 

__

“Not everyone’s a cluster maestro, sweetie,” James extends, leaning past Sirius toward the mat. “Obviously we know it’s not food poisoning, but if he’s just doubled over in back, then why would she know what it is?”

__

“Just because she found him doubled over and dry-heaving doesn’t mean he won’t go fucking apeshit the second it—” Sirius cuts off, watching unblinking as James tugs his own shoes on, “—what the fuck are you doing?” 

__

James looks up, wildly bemused as he tugs his right shoe on his foot, beside him Peter’s fucking hopping on his own right foot in order to tug his left shoe on, and Sirius thinks he might pass out from overwhelming exertion right then and there. “You said we had to go now, remember?” he raises, dragging the last word out unnecessarily. 

“I wasn’t talking to _you?_” Sirius sends him, reeling. “If Remus even catches a whiff of you two there, _I’m_ the one in the doghouse; neither of you are tagging along—” 

__

“Tough,” James cuts in, standing up straight, shoes on. “What are you supposed to do while Lily’s covering, carry him home by yourself, princess-style?” 

__

“I’ve done a fuck of a lot worse,” Sirius returns on a dime. 

__

“You’re not going to be able to do that, Sirius,” Peter puts in, hopping on his right foot now. “Remember antimatter? You need us.” 

__

Sirius shuts his eyes and brings his hands up through his hair, feeling stretched thin in two directions; he gives breathing a solid shot, but it’s as if there’s an hourglass painted directly on his eyelids, spewing out sand and highlighting how little time he’s got to even log in a debate about this.

__

“We don’t have time,” he puts up, yanking the front door open and trudging through it. “Pick up the pace, asshats.”

__

Foot clomps echo behind him in the lobby as the other three file out. “We’re right behind you, dolt,” James returns.

__

Sirius figures the boisterous stomping behind him mean that they’re all keeping up with him, but he makes it down to the ground floor and can’t deal with how little information he has going into the fray and Sirius needs some context. 

__

He skids to a stop before the lobby door to hold an expectant hand toward Lily and all three of them skid to a stop, barely avoiding a head-on collision. “Oi, smart lad, you are,” James puts out, deeply unimpressed. 

__

Sirius presses the two finger salute directly onto James’ face with his free hand. “Give me your phone,” he demands, waving his right hand toward Lily. 

__

She looks up from fishing in her purse. “What, why?” she asks, procuring her car keys. 

__

“What, you think I have your shops’ number on speed dial?” Sirius raises. “I need to figure out if he’s running his skull into a wall before _I_ go apeshit.”

__

“Oh, here,” Lily says, clicking to unlock her car before she gives it up. “Be nice to her, she has no idea the scope of this.” 

__

“Well, she might as well learn,” Sirius returns, slamming the lobby door open as he thumbs through Lily’s recent calls. He hits the first on the list and looks up as he puts the phone to his right ear, just in time to catch James surge on ahead of them. 

“I call shotgun,” he pronounces. 

__

Sirius kicks his right leg out instinctively and clocks James square in the arse for that one. “Fucking brat,” he tosses after him. 

__

James recovers without too much more than a few odd skips on his feet to avoid falling face-first onto the pavement and heads round the front of the car to open the passenger side door, completely undeterred. “You’re-the-brat,” he sends back, all one word.

__

The other three pile into the car, Peter taking the spot behind Lily before Sirius can get to it, and he’s so busy hating on the dial tone ringing in his ear incessantly to give a shit about it, heading around the back of the car to slide in behind James’ seat, and finally, the dial tone cuts out and a thoroughly flat female voice comes through. 

__

“Hello, this is Starbucks, how may I—” 

__

“Stop that, it’s Sirius,” he cuts in, shutting his door. 

__

“Oh, hey,” she says; simple, like it’s a regular Monday. 

__

“How’s he doing?” Sirius probes. 

__

There’s a beat of silence, and then that silence gets drowned out by Lily roaring the car to life. “Um,” Elise puts up, her tone remaining somewhere between indignant and bored out of her skull; not Sirius’ favourite blend. “Well, I really don’t know? Seeing as I’m up front, with a line of drinks.” 

__

Sirius puts out a laugh that isn’t a laugh, lifts his free hand and bites down on the knuckle of his thumb, and shoves the phone up between the two front seats, not really caring who takes it off his hands so long as somebody does it soon. 

__

Lily sees it first, eyeing the move quizzically as she winds the steering wheel around to pull out of the spot she snagged out front and Sirius takes his knuckle out from between his teeth. “She’s giving me ‘tude, so I’m going to need anyone else to take over or I will end her whole life,” he instills, not all that pressed about whether his voice carries or not. 

__

Lily certainly seems to, however, for she shoots him a panicked look and quickly nabs the phone back from him, sticking it against her left ear and shouldering it so she can continue pulling the car out. “Hey, Elise, it’s me again,” she says, pulling the car half-out of the spot before James hums pointedly, “just checking, how—” 

__

“Don’t love this,” James puts up. 

__

“Well, we can’t sit here chilling, James,” Sirius snips. 

__

“Here, you want to do this?” Lily raises, nodding her head minutely toward the phone. 

__

James thinks about it for less than a beat, if that. “Yeah, here,” he says, reaching to sneak it out from between Lily’s shoulder and ear. “Hey, Elise? Yeah, she’s driving, so you get me now,” he says as Lily successfully pulls the car out onto the street and joins in the passing traffic. “Can you peek your head in back and tell me how my boy’s doing? … right, well, that was kind, but … no yeah, but when there isn’t one anymore, can you still go take a look? Literally begging you here.”

__

“Tell her to check if he’s got a boost beside him,” Sirius shoots up front. 

__

“Seat belt, Sirius,” Peter chimes in. 

__

Sirius huffs across the middle seat at him before feeling behind him for the belt, strapping in and flinging the sash behind his back so it won’t dig into him the whole way there and fuck him off any more than he already is. “Right, one more thing,” James tacks on, “when you do, can you see if he’s got one of those 5-hour energy boosts near or around him? … Not even slightly, no. Thanks, text Lily when you know.” 

__

James ends the call and holds the phone out in offering, to which Lily nods toward her lap. “Could that girl sound less enthused?” he raises, setting Lily’s phone in her lap. 

__

Lily clicks her tongue, stopping at the first of too many intersections between him and Remus. “She’s stuck up front—” 

__

“Don’t care," Sirius puts out. “James, you gotta give me something.” 

__

“She hasn’t been back since the last call, so she doesn’t know,” James relays, leaning his head back to aim it at Sirius in behind him. “Still thinks he ate something off, gave him a bucket and some water—”

__

“Oh, well, let’s all chill, then; Elise gave him some water so Remus’ll be fine,” Sirius puts up jovially. “Nevermind that while she’s up front he could be pulling clumps of his hair out as we speak—” 

__

“He does that?” James cuts in, switching to looking in his side-view mirror to meet Sirius’ eye. 

__

Sirius sighs out loud for it. “He gets bitey, so it isn’t all that strange to imagine him ripping clumps of hair out—”

__

“Bitey?” James cuts in, appalled. 

__

“He’s not going to bite you, ya dunce,” Sirius sends him. “He’ll take a chunk out of himself before he starts teething on you which is my issue; if he sends gibberish it means he can’t type properly which means it’s over a five, easy, and if it’s a ten then Remus could have flipped a table onto his skull by—”

__

“OK, no,” Lily puts out. “We’re not discussing that.” 

__

“Things are real whether you discuss them or not,” Sirius returns. “My only hope is that it’s not a fucking ten, and if it isn’t he’s still probably doing some damage, and he’s back there, alone, without anyone to stop him if he tries something, so if you could drive even at all faster, Lily, I’d bake you a fucking cake—”

__

“I’d love to if this idiot would _roll the fuck up_,” Lily rings out, flying her left hand up and toward the car in front of them. 

__

Sirius, though fucked off beyond any shadow of a doubt, feels a touch lighter just seeing the open passion in this car. “You’d better be taking the fast way,” he mentions, settling down in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. 

__

“No, I thought we’d take the scenic route,” Lily retorts. 

__

Sirius snorts despite himself and leans his head back against the headrest, eyes shut and thinking about keeping them that way until they’re there, but not even ten seconds later, he’s putting out a throaty gasp, eyelids snapping open. “Fuck,” he says, shifting to fish his phone out of his back right pocket, “fuck, fuck, fuck—” 

__

“Fuck what?” James demands, turning in his seat to stare at him expectantly. 

__

“Dora,” Sirius puts out woefully, dialing for Andromeda. “I keep postponing on her and now I’m going to have to do it again.” 

__

“Err, you postponed once,” James amends, “twice if we count today.” 

__

“_I am_,” Sirius shoots him, reaching out to flick James’ forehead, dialing for Andromeda. “He can’t be alone for anything above a six, I don’t like the way he thinks and I doubt any of you sods know what you’re getting into, so I have to cancel; I can’t be in two places at once.” 

__

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it, then,” Lily assures from up front. “Things come up, Sirius; she’ll just be twice as happy to see you next time.” 

__

Sirius slides down low in his seat, stewing as he waits for the dial tone again, and after tonight, he thinks he might need a break from long, ominous dial tones. “Hey, hey,” Andromeda greets him, third ring. 

__

“What’s up?” Sirius asks, not liking the exhaustive air to her voice. 

__

“I was just about to call you,” she says. “I hate doing this, I do, but Dora got into a fight in gym today, so she’s in detentions for two weeks, and—”

__

“What?” Sirius returns at once. “Was it Christine? She’s been asking for a sock, if you ask me.” 

__

Andromeda puts out a quick sigh. “Give me a second,” he hisses, clearly not wanting to be heard. Sirius gives her a second since he’s got too many free ones to work with and hears the echo of a door shutting in the background. “That fucking girl has been coming and pecking at Dora every chance she gets, and the moment Dora snaps and pounces, oh oh oh, all of a sudden we’re doling out detentions.” 

__

Sirius huffs, shaking his head with a smile on. “Those bitches.” 

__

“Mhm,” Andromeda returns melodically. “Her principal’s just lucky she called Ted first and he picked up or I’d be in detention, too; feel me?” 

__

“Felt,” Sirius assures. “Are you going to talk to the girl’s parents? Takes two to tango.” 

__

“Ted is handling that, seeing as I’m a kettle about to pop off,” Andromeda returns. 

__

“Good call,” Sirius forwards. “And, if that doesn’t work, you’re plan B.” 

__

“Mhm, I am,” Andromeda tacks on.

__

“And I do want you to know that I didn’t suggest she pounce,” Sirius raises. “I told her to ignore the jabs or to have a few choice responses ready to go and decimate her that way, none of them graphic or above her grade level, might I add.” 

__

Andromeda clicks her tongue. “I didn’t think you were coaching her on her right hook, Sirius, but she can’t be throwing down in class, so I’m in a bind here, OK?” she raises plainly. “She can’t make it tonight.” 

__

A ping sounds from Lily’s lap and every head in the car perks up at once, all eyes on her as she reaches down and checks it. “There’s a boost on the table,” she declares, and James lets out a whoop for Sirius, who’s a bit busy though he’s certainly breathing easier. “He’s not responding to her at all, though.” 

__

Owing to the fact that Sirius is supremely distracted, Andromeda seems to take his silence as a slight of hand. “I’ll let her practice a little later in the week once it’s blown over a little,” she offers, “but we do have to put the foot down here and this is just about the only thing she’ll actually miss.” 

__

“No no, I get it,” Sirius returns, going for Self-sacrificing Would-be Uncle, tone-wise, “you’re the rents, that’s your call.”

__

“Thanks,” Andromeda sighs. “Maybe next week, we’ll see if she hasn’t clobbered anyone else by then.” 

__

“We’ll hope it’s out of her system,” Sirius raises. “Have a good one.” 

__

Sirius presses to end the call, tosses his phone on the seat in between him and Peter, and sits up straight, patting Lily’s left shoulder for more as the car idles at a red. “She said he’s just checked out on the table in back,” she passes along. 

__

“Like, on it?” Peter checks. 

__

Lily clicks her tongue the same moment Sirius does. “No, it’s probably more like this,” she returns, leaning on the wheel and putting her head on her arms for a moment to illustrate deep and utter peril before she sits up straight again. “He won’t answer her, he hasn’t touched his water, and he’s just rocking back and forth.” 

__

“Does she still think it’s food poisoning now?” Sirius raises.

__

“She didn’t say,” Lily returns politely. 

__

“She’d know if it was a ten,” Peter puts in. “Believe me, she’d hear him.” 

__

“Well, then, good,” Lily says of it. “Point is, he can’t verbalize — so in a way that has to be a good thing, no?” 

__

“It’s at least an eight,” Sirius grins. “Good, I love cleaning up his blood droplets.” 

__

“OK, you know what,” Lily snaps. “I’m panicked enough as is, so maybe you could leave the illustrations out of it, if you please.” 

__

“Well, I’m glad to see we’re finally taking this seriously,” Sirius clapsback. 

__

“Oi,” James puts out. “Remus would not be cool with all this fighting about him, I’ll just say that.” 

__

“He’s right,” Peter whispers. “His ears are probably ringing.” 

__

“I bet they are, Pete,” Sirius chimes jovially. “I bet they are.” 

__

James swivels around in his seat. “What happened with Dora?” he asks, a clear subject change, but one Sirius can accept. 

__

He drums his feet into the floor of the car for added zest. “She clobbered a girl in her class who wouldn’t quit goading her, the legend, so she wasn’t going to be coming over anyway,” he presents. 

__

James and Peter take over for him, pounding out a drum roll in celebration, and Lily sure does shake her head with a sigh, but she can’t hide her mirth well at all. “A perfect solution,” James deems it, sitting back in his seat with his arms behind his head. 

__

Sirius clears his throat, unbuckles his seat belt, and crawls up in between James and Lily’s seats. “Excuse you,” Lily observes. 

__

Sirius huffs directly in her ear as he slaps the car radio on and fiddles with the stations. “If I don’t get something playing in here, I’m going to go apeshit on this car ride,” he maintains, switching in between stations with just white noise and songs he’d rather not hear, stops at a station mid-way through _Sweet Child of Mine_ and promptly gags and moves on, stopping when he hears the punchy bassline of _Barracuda_ and wholeheartedly agrees with the rest of the passengers urges to keep it on that. 

__

Sirius settles back into his seat, buckles in again, and lets himself have this time for himself, reminding himself of what he has. He’s fit, he’s healthy, he’s in his prime, he’s happy most days, he’s currently surrounded by his mates and directly on route to rescue his boyfriend from the clutches of a cluster with Barracuda lighting the way there, and overall, even as fucking horrified as he is without any chance to speak to Remus, there’s something lovely about all of this if he pulls himself out of it for long enough to appreciate it. 

__

James plays DJ the rest of the way there, answering to the cheers or boos from the back seat depending on what tune comes on, and Sirius is about ready to climb out of his window when the car gets within sight of the shop. 

__

He manages to wait until Lily pulls into the parking lot and then he unbuckles his seat belt at once. “Let me out here.”

__

“I’m just going to park,” Lily puts up, wheeling around the back side of the parking lot for a free spot. 

__

Sirius huffs, reaches for the door, set on rolling out if he has to, but the car door won’t budge. “Did you child lock me in here?” he asks, astounded. 

__

“I may have,” Lily returns, calm as a creek. 

__

Sirius takes to punching his car door on a steady rhythm, ignoring the cease and desist calls from up front, and finally, when he’s out of steam, Lily pulls into a free spot, parks, and pulls her keys out of the car, clicking to unlock the backseat doors. Sirius flings his open, slams it shut, and flips Lily off over the roof of the car before taking to a sprint, but he stops short when Lily shouts his name in a rather blood curdling way and a car passes in front of him. 

__

“What?” Sirius returns, swiveling around to find Lily, James, and Peter frozen in horror. “It was nowhere near me.” 

__

James shoots forward, grabbing Sirius’ by the left bicep. “You’re of no use to Remus dead,” he insists, escorting Sirius across the parking lot with Lily and Peter quickly at their heels. 

__

There’s a group of five milling about, directly in front of the shop door, and Sirius scoffs as he steps onto the sidewalk. “What do you think this is?” he puts up, waving them off. “Away, away.” 

__

They part like the Red Sea, or more they jump aside at the callout just to get away from the bloke yelling at them, but either way, Sirius’ path is cleared so his method worked and that’s all that matters. "Sirius," Lily chides under her breath, but Sirius throws the shop door, shakes James’ arm off, and bolts inside, so focused on getting to that back room that he doesn’t realize the cafe has a rather mellow atmosphere to it until he gets up behind the counter and Elise is nowhere to be seen. 

__

Sirius breathes an iota easier just knowing someone’s back there with him and takes a quick right into the back hall, and has to skid to a stop to avoid crashing into Elise, and the back and forth, the stopping and starting, it’s all too much. 

__

Elise looks around at their parade. “It’s good you brought reinforcements; I think he’s actually having a mental break,” she says decidedly. 

__

Sirius breathes in once, places his hands on Elise’s shoulders, and scoots her aside four steps. “Thanks, doctor; your skill is unparalleled,” he says, whipping down the hall.

__

“I’ll be right up, Elise,” Lily calls, just behind Sirius by the sounds of it. 

__

Sirius stops short when he sees him, indeed checked out against the tiny, circular table, dragging his forehead back and forth over the surface of it so hard that it’s making screeching noises, and he crosses the room in a flash, coming up behind Remus. 

__

“See? He’s lost it,” Elise puts up, now in here, too, apparently. 

__

“Someone get her out of here?” Sirius demands, not needing any more of that read of it. He reaches down, sneaks his arms around Remus’ front, and pulls back on him, aiming to at least get him sitting and to give his poor forehead a break. “No no no—” 

__

Remus flinches forward, attempting to fling Sirius’ arms back, and Sirius’ heart breaks a bit, seeing that, but he has to keep trying. Next try, he crouches down and slides in between the nearly non-existent space between Remus and the table, angles his weight into pushing the chair back from it, and it’s slow going at first, but Sirius pushes harder and the chair skids across the floor, scraping along the ground and causing Remus to whimper loudly, and Sirius is sorry for that, but Remus’ forehead almost connects with the table’s edge and he’s putting his attentions toward cushioning it before it hits it.

__

Sirius breathes in and out shakily, but when he speaks, he makes sure it sounds controlled. “It’s me,” he whispers, so low he’s not even sure Remus can hear it around the chaos rattling in his skull, but maybe it’s more for him than Remus. “It’s just me.” 

__

He inches his right palm out from underneath Remus’ forehead to shove the table back out of Remus’ reach, vaguely hears water spillage but that’s hardly a matter now when every other morsel of Sirius’ focus goes to Remus, sliding in just in front of his curled stature, rising to a helpful height on his knees, and reaches his arms around Remus’ back, pushing his weight forward so he’ll lean on him instead. 

__

There, he just holds him, one hand straight across Remus’ back, the other cupped at the back of his head, and Remus takes to rocking Sirius back and forth, digging his forehead into the right crook of Sirius’ neck, but flesh is better than solid wood, so Sirius just rocks with him, and for himself, leaves at least five kisses as close to Remus’ left temple as he can get his lips in quick succession, so grateful. So, so grateful it’s not a ten.

__

Remus takes a resounding breath in through his nose, it gets cut short as they tend to do in the middle of an attack, but he got some air, and whether Remus heard him or simply got a whiff of Sirius’ hair and that’s enough to immediately know it’s him, Sirius doesn’t care; he likes that he isn’t fighting him now, even if he’s pretty well being used as a weight for Remus to run the side of his skull up against, even if his hands are wrapped like a vice grip at the front of his shirt; it’s fine. At least he can be of use. 

__

Remus chokes out a sob, going at the line of Sirius’ shoulder with more intent, and Sirius looks to the others, for help, understanding — hell, he’ll even take pity right about now, but he gets caught up by the group shot in the entrance of the room, scanning through all four of them; James, oh — maybe he gets it now, if his wooden expression has says anything, and it does, it takes a lot to leave James’ visage emotionless; Peter, not quite so stony, in fact, the crease between his eyebrows is Peter perturbed in a nutshell; Lily, she’s got watery-eyes and that mother hen look about her, and Sirius can tell it’s killing her to stay put in one place; and Elise — that one’s the kicker; she’s got her gaze fixed on the floor below her, eyebrows high above her head, and her hands on her hips. 

__

For a beat, he figures it’s discomfort at the scenario itself, and then he replays the last minute or so, and one thing — five things, if they’re counting, stand out. 

__

It’s not that Sirius doesn’t know that Remus aims to keep his personal life separate from his work life; he’s figured that out, caught the clues a while back now, but it’s another thing entirely, seeing the dumbfounded expression of someone, someone who Remus spends a great deal of time with in a work week, clearly didn’t know Sirius were anything more than a standard pal. 

__

Sirius looks right, mostly to look somewhere else, feeling warm in his cheeks and not in a good way, but then he catches sight of the water glass sitting on the table, now seeming a lot closer to Remus than it did a few moments ago, and his heart rate takes to a revolting speed. He drops his right hand from the back of Remus’ head, reaches it up and out, and snatches the heavy glass off of the table in a snap, holding it up with a visible shake to his wrist. 

__

“Someone get this away from him,” he rings out, jolting every body in the room. 

__

Peter surges forward, grappling the water glass out of Sirius’ hand and walking it over to Lily’s desk, far and away from Remus’ reach. and Elise puts out an odd sort of hum. “I thought he might want some,” she puts up, bone dry from where she’s still fucking lingering, and truly, up until this very hour, Sirius rather liked the girl’s register, found it comical as much as her dry wit tended to be, but she could do with losing the monotone right about now. “He was dry heaving... so.”

__

“Yeah, nice idea and all, only I’ll ask you to put literally any of the hundred plastic cups we have right up front next time this happens,” Sirius rattles off. 

__

“Next time?” Elise returns, and oh, looks like she can emote.

__

“OK,” Lily says quickly, rubbing Elise’s right arm, “no one’s up front, are they? Go on, I’ll be right up.” 

__

Elise shoots Sirius one hell of a Look before she goes on up front, but Sirius’ is murderous in itself. “You didn’t have to yell at her,” Lily tosses at him. 

__

“If that’s what you think me yelling is, then I wish I had,” Sirius returns. 

__

“She was just trying to help, Sirius,” Lily stresses. 

__

“OK, that glass?” Sirius raises, pointing to it. “That’s like putting a loaded gun beside him, so excuse the fuck out of me if I’m pressed about it; I don’t fucking care if she meant well with it, we’re lucky he hasn’t opened his eyes enough to have fucking seen it, and while we’re at it, why the fuck is she so surprised by this? He’s had them here before.”

__

“He worked through his last one here,” Lily returns. "It wasn't anything like this and she wasn’t even on that day, Agnes was—” 

__

“Well, you’ll do well to spread the fucking word, then,” Sirius snaps. “No glass, anywhere near him, got it?” 

__

“I—” James starts, his gaze still fixed on Remus. “He’s fucking seizing, guys? Anyone want to do something about it?”

__

“Like what?” Sirius sends him.

__

“I don’t know, Cluster King,” James returns, “the hospital seems like a good route to take, mind.”

__

Sirius pushes out a laugh that isn’t one. “You know we’re not doing that.” 

__

James scoffs loudly. “OK, we get it, you hate hospitals now, but he’s not uncontrollable this time,” he says, flying a hand toward Remus attempting wholeheartedly to fuse his forehead with Sirius’ right shoulder. 

__

“They won’t even look at him until three in the morning, he’ll be gawked at in the waiting room until they deem him necessary to look at, and by then this will be over,” Sirius details. “He took the boost already, so it’s a waiting game now and I highly doubt Miss Snark Factor up there took a log of when this started so we're just going to have to get him out of here and wait it out.” 

__

Lily sighs grand. “She said she came back from her break and he went on his, and when he didn’t come back up front after he was due back, she went and checked on him and this is what she found.” 

__

“Right, food poisoning,” Sirius nods. “You know how laxed they are about breaks around here, she probably took her half, drove halfway across the city to get pho, and came back after an hour while he was likely stuck up front, unable to get back here—”

__

“At five, Sirius?” Lily raises, unconvinced. “No one here is taking their half at five, and they’re not taking hour-long breaks.” 

__

“And why in the fuck would she tell you that, hm?” Sirius raises. “Your the man, Lily; she’s not coughing the full story up to you and now we have a blank page with him; we're in here blind.” 

__

Lily takes on the heat of a thousand suns as she takes in a long breath through her nose. “If either of them are taking hour-long breaks, I will kill _the both of them_,” she manifests, circling a hand toward the front and back toward Remus. 

__

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sirius raises. “Boss Lily needs to take a fucking hike, Remus would never—” 

__

“What I don’t understand,” James cuts in loudly, “is how he’s wound up like this, the day after you fed him shrooms for this very thing.”

__

Sirius thinks he might explode here, but he feels Remus take in a gargantuan breath against him and instinctively holds him tighter. “It’s not a one and done,” Peter says, moving to stand on the other side of Remus’ chair. “We told you, it’ll take a dosing schedule before it’ll do much.”

__

“Exactly, thank you Pete,” Sirius accepts, loving that someone here fucking listens when he speaks. “It’s not a miracle fix—” he struggles to say clearly as he fights to keep a hold on Remus as he thrashes against him, “—we’re not going to know if it’s working until it does—” 

__

“Well, this is just fucking ridiculous,” James shouts, kicking a box nearby him.

__

Remus pulls himself loose from Sirius’ grasp, lifting his right leg and kicking the table backwards, crashing it into the wall across the room. “_Shut_ the _fuck_ up?” he demands, and it takes everything Sirius has not to laugh, not because this instance is funny, but only because Remus is genuinely the funniest person he’s been blessed to meet. “Fuck _all_ of you!”

__

Sirius isn’t laughing anymore, not when Remus has lumped him in with the Insane Clown Posse up in here, but it makes matters much worse when Remus jumps to his feet, his good eye barely open as he kicks back and sends his chair flying the other direction, and Sirius has to dive for him to keep him from hulking out further. “No, no,” he whispers, grabbing hold of his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, we’ll go, OK?” 

__

Remus isn’t having any of it. He wrenches out of Sirius’ immediate reach, steps back and bumps right into Peter, who grabs hold of him and then freezes, with his arms tightly crossed around Remus’ stomach. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he repeats, until Remus leans forward and poor Peter is lifted off clear off the ground, and it takes the help of James, Lily, and Sirius to get Peter back down to the ground and Remus halfway still. 

__

“Everyone whisper,” Sirius hisses, bringing Remus down to his knees with some prime effort. “We have to get him out of here, now.” 

__

“OK OK, um,” Peter prattles, doing as bid, “he can’t go back through the cafe like this.”

__

“Oh, you think?” Sirius hisses, hunkering Remus’ right side down in place. 

__

“I’ll go bring the car round back?” Lily offers, already booking it up front, and really, that's a fine plan indeed. 

__

“And then there were four,” James observes, hunkering down on Remus' left. Sirius just sighs, would really rather be anywhere else; the bottom of a lake, working a double with David, stuck in line at an ATM behind somebody doing six years worth of banking, anything. “I really just love that you thought you could get him home all your own; you’re so cute.” 

__

Sirius can’t whack James over the head if he wants to keep Remus’ right side down and that is a travesty. “Stop talking,” he orders. 

__

Lily’s quick with the car, Sirius will give her that much; he hears a try at the back door much sooner than he was even hoping for, but the door won’t give, seeing as the metal bar that locks the door in place won’t really let the door budge. Peter heads over to it and lifts the bar, leaning it against the wall beside the door, but the thing slides off the wall and clatters loudly on the floor, and Sirius grimaces at Remus’ holler. 

__

“We’re almost out, I promise,” he whispers, knowing he is in so much trouble when Remus can effectively communicate again, but he forgets about that for the meantime when Peter goes to try and righten the bar and it sends Sirius into hysterics. “Leave it, you donk.” 

__

Peter does as told, pushing the back door open, and Lily rushes in as she removes her car key from the whackload of keys on her key ring, and the heavy weight of the back door causes it to swing shut behind her, and Sirius grimaces again, swears he in some capacity can feel what Remus does, but he will likely never repeat that to Remus if he wants to keep having sex regularly.

__

“Alright, Pete,“ James whispers. “Take over for me.”

__

“Are we sure we want to do that?” Peter whispers back. 

__

“Someone has to drive, don’t they?” James hisses. 

__

Peter sees his point loud and clear and shuffles over to take James’ post as left-hand Remus guide while James takes Lily’s key off of her hands. “Drive safe,” she instills in James, leaving one look of warning before she addresses the group. "I’ll see about coverage, but at this point I think I’ll be here until the end, but I’ll come find you after.” 

__

She steps in, lifts onto the tips of her toes, and leaves a kiss on both Sirius and Remus’ foreheads, the latter she stares at a beat or two longer before she dips back up front for good. James stalks toward the back door and veritably kicks it open, jolting both Sirius and Peter. 

__

“Cool it, Rambo,” Sirius sends after him. 

__

“Oh, would you relax?” James tosses him over his shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do it and when am I going to get the chance again, hm?” 

__

Sirius sends him an agonized noise, but in all reality, it’s not that effective when he’s whispering it. Sirius pushes for the car, Remus tight in his grasp with Peter helping as much as the little guy can, but it does help having someone with him to help maneuver all ten feet of Remus into the backseat without bonking anything of his.

__

Sirius slides in one side of the car while Peter rounds the back of it and gets in on the other side. He has to curl Remus’ long legs in so that his knees are almost pressed against his chest to fit into the seat and then drapes them over his thighs, while Sirius happily takes Remus’ head in his lap, tousling Remus’ hair with his right hand since it’s there, and pressing his left fingers in a rhythmic circle at Remus’ left temple. Now, since James has started the car and they’re on their way, Sirius can think about this image from a bird’s eye view, and, if he doesn’t include Remus’ sharp breathing accompanying their every block back to his, he can find it in himself to admit Remus’ lanky body curled up in the back of Lily’s tiny Prius is divine; even it does take work to find the light, it’s worth it to try and single some of it out.

__

Getting Remus into the backseat was, all around, a weirdly easier task than getting him out of it. Sirius has to slide out first, taking care with Remus’ head so it won’t hit the seat underneath it, and then he has to wind his arms underneath Remus’ shoulders to pull his first half out of the car while Peter pushes forward on Remus’ lower half. 

__

“James,” Sirius hisses, “come hold his middle.” 

__

James heads around the front of the car, slipping in between Sirius and the car, and hovers his hands underneath Remus’ lower back with a theatrical flourish, and you know what, that’s fine with Sirius; it’s a little funny and he needs some of that.

__

Thankfully James’ ready hands weren’t only for show, for he gets a good grip of Remus’ middle, which leaves he and Sirius with the task of inching Remus further out of the car, and Peter crawls back the opposite way, jumps out onto the street, and runs around the back of it to help carry Remus’ legs, and the whole thing, even with the step up onto Remus’ front stoop, seems to be a fantastic maneuver until Sirius’ back hits the lobby door and all three of them exchange quick, open-mouthed gazes and promptly burst into guffaws, which are even more difficult to set aside when they’re all trying so hard to keep it down. 

__

James shifts one arm up Remus’ back to lay it underneath his shoulders while he leaves the other underneath Remus’ lower back, taking two for the team and relieving Sirius enough to open the lobby door. 

__

Sirius holds it open for the two to walk Remus into the lobby and slips inside behind them, setting his hands on his hips with a sigh of accomplishment. “The thing is, guys; Remus could probably shuffle himself along just fine now that we’re not hooting and hollering, but I just really liked the comradery on display here,” he whispers, causing the other two to jerk their heads back toward him right quick, and then they’re all a pile of stitches all over again. 

__

They right Remus onto his feet after some more choice maneuvering, James goes on up ahead of them and plays defense in case Remus takes a stumble (“Have to protect that face,” - James Potter) while Sirius and Peter keep hold of him from behind, helping Remus take the stairs up to his floor. 

__

The stairs are a task, Remus isn’t really looking per se, the harried speed of his breathing paired with how restlessly he moves up the stairs makes things a little slow going, but the hall is easier to shuffle him down, and getting him into his flat is the easiest task of the bunch, at least until Tango comes flouncing over and tries to leap at Remus and then that’s a whole other kerfuffle in itself. 

__

“James, take him,” Sirius requests, and James plays hype man, herding Tango toward the kitchen. 

__

“Do you want a light on?” Peter whispers, reaching for the switch in the hall. 

__

Sirius lets go of Remus with his left hand and stops Peter’s wrist before his fingers hit it. “No, no no no,” he whispers plainly. “You’d regret it.” 

__

Peter takes his word for it, it seems, for he goes right back to filing Remus further into the flat. Sirius lets him help guide Remus over to his bedroom doorway, but there, he really has got the rest of it. He sighs, braces Remus’ weight more on himself, and looks around at the two of them, and smiles tightly. 

__

“Thank you,” he whispers earnestly. “You’re all a bunch of clowns, but you’re my favourite ones.”

__

Both James and Peter perk hearing that, but they seem to realize within short seconds of each other that their work here is done for they both sink a little. “I’ve got it, guys,” he insists. “This part I’ve got memorized.” 

__

Still, the lads don’t move, and Sirius darts his gaze behind James’ head and that gives him something to offer at least. “You know what, in the freezer there’s a mask if you want to run that over here.” 

__

James does seem piqued by the job, swivels around on his feet, and goes for the freezer door, opening it and putting out a snort as he pulls out the hot pink mask. “Don’t wake the bride,” he reads, quietly psyched. 

__

“It’s such a nice touch,” Sirius offers, grinning as James walks it over to him. 

__

“Ooh, she’s got a bite to her,” James details, tossing the chilled mask back and forth in his hands. “Does he wear it during?” 

__

“Yeah, usually,” Sirius nods, and James goes ahead and lifts the mask over Remus’ head, stretching the elastic out to fit it down over Remus’ eyes. 

__

He steps back, admiring his handiwork. “Suits him.” 

__

“I thought so, too,” Sirius smiles. “Now, file out, you shitters.” 

__

The two men salute him, them really, and Sirius shuffles Remus into his room, shutting the door behind them. “Yeah, you’ve got this,” he whispers, helping Remus get around to his side of the bed, not too close to the nightstand in case of a tumble, and sets him down diagonally across the bed before stretching his left leg over him and hoisting himself up and over Remus’ body.

__

Remus, unsurprisingly these days, rolls instinctively onto his left side to pin his temple to the bed, and Sirius settles down onto the mattress, curls up by Remus’ body, and slips his right arm around Remus’ middle, sliding his left arm up underneath the curve of Remus’ neck to sneak his left hand up underneath his temple, aiming up with pressured fingers.

__

Once that’s set, nothing left for him to aid in, he presses his nose to the center of Remus’ back and breathes in, letting his eyes fall shut. 

__

He wakes with a start, hearing noises out in Remus’ hall, and shuffles around a bit on the bed, patting Remus instinctively, but the boy is out like a light. Sirius experiences five whole seconds of indescribable calm just knowing that, but the fact remains. There’s someone in Remus’ flat. 

__

Sirius uncurls himself from around Remus, shifts himself toward the end of the bed, and sets his feet down on the floor, moving to the door and peeking his head out of it to investigate, and fucking Lily Evans is in the entryway, lit up underneath the fixture above her head. 

__

“Mademoiselle,” Sirius greets, lifting his left hand out of the crack in the door and splaying it open to highlight his confusion. 

__

Lily bites back a smile, looking off to the right a little, and Sirius follows her gaze unimpressed until he locks in on James and Peter chilling on the couch. Sirius slips out of the room, shutting the door behind him. “Really, guys?” he raises. “He’s asleep.” 

__

“And?” Peter raises, his mouth full, and oh, they’ve ordered takeout; lovely. “We’re going to be here whenever he comes to.” 

__

Sirius shakes his head at warp speed. “No, no,” he insists. “I draw the line here; you riding down to the shop was enough.”

__

“Have a drumstick and maybe you’ll calm down,” James suggests.

__

Sirius lolls his head back, staring at the ceiling as he contemplates his options: there's throwing them all out forcibly one by one, but there’s no guarantee they’ll stop wandering back in, or there's not even bothering with any of that. He chooses option number two, gets distracted by the lack of sun outside, and squints over at the window above the perch for answers before he simply asks for them. 

__

“What time is it?” he asks, sinking back against the door behind him.

__

“Nearly ten,” Lily offers. “I just closed up and needed my car back, and found out same time as you that there’s a dish prepared.” 

__

“Prepared, mm,” Sirius nods. 

__

“It’s really good,” Peter insists. 

__

Lily half-curtsies in the entryway before she semi-carefully heads for the couch, and Sirius sighs and lugs himself across the flat toward the island, taking a seat on the stool closest to him. “You don’t want any?” Lily asks, helping herself. 

__

“I’m half awake,” Sirius answers, but then he thinks he does like the idea of Half Baked. He lifts off the stool, heads to the freezer to grab the pint, and yoinks a spoon out of the utensil drawer, filing back to the island and simply taking the stool closest to him now. “You’re all going to be really bored in a bit; all we’re going to do is go over everything that just happened and log it away for future use.” 

__

“Can’t wait,” James says of it. 

__

Sirius sighs, popping the lid off of the pint, and gets two wondrous bites in before Remus’ bedroom door opens and the lot of them round their heads to simply stare back at Remus blinking at them, sans mask and a frown etched on. He looks to Sirius, who tries with all his might to convey how little he had to do with this with a single expression, and Remus’ tiny output of breath might’ve been only visible to him. 

__

“There’s really no stopping this, is there?” he asks the room. 

__

James, Peter, and Lily shake their heads at different speeds, different ways entirely, but the fact of the matter remains true: Remus is stuck with ‘em, for better or for worse. 

__

Remus puts out a breath Sirius knows everyone heard, and it’s a hard one to hear when it catches like it does in the middle. Remus frowns deeper, looking over at the couch with his brows furrowed, and lifts his arms, a silent acceptance. 

__

Lily’s off the couch first, always better at reading Remus than Sirius likely gives her credit for, and she sidles on up to him, face unreadable from Sirius’ spot over on the kitchen side of the island, but Remus huffs another breath out, staring right at it, so it must have been something to have directed at you. 

__

She slips in underneath Remus’ raised arms and locks in for the hug, and James and Peter shuffle on over next, Peter heading to Remus’ right side and James crossing over to his right, and soon it’s just this huddle with Remus standing tall in the middle, the right side of his lower lip caught between his teeth as his gaze looks to be set nowhere in particular, just aimed at the center of the floor until he lifts it, meeting Sirius’ eye, and Sirius smiles quietly for him, thinking it’s one thing to theorize that you’ve got so much there in front of you, but it’s another to really see it materialized. 

__

Remus beckons Sirius with his left hand while his arm's curled around Peter’s shoulders, and Sirius drops his spoon into the pint and slips off his stool, pattering over and around Peter to come at Remus’ from the back, curling his arms around him underneath the spot where Lily’s sit and pressing the lower half of his face behind the line of Remus’ left shoulder, and smiles like a goon.

__

Remus shakes off somewhere around the minute mark, sniffing hard. “OK,” he expels, a breath more than a vocalization, slipping his hands out from the tangle of people attached to him and lifts them up high in the air, calling a truce. “I need the loo.” 

__

Lily backs off first, laughing through her nose, the other two file back soon enough, and Sirius is last to back away, only to get his right hand caught by Remus’ left as his arms come down again. “You’re coming,” he says, tugging Sirius along with him, and the glow of Sirius’ visage must have been something for Lily sniffs and leaves a little choked noise for them as Remus tugs Sirius toward the bathroom. 

__

“Pete, watch those two,” Remus says, looking over his shoulder with a nod toward the future Mr. and Mrs, “you really can’t leave them around a couch unsupervised.” 

__

Pete points to Remus righteously, Sirius slaps his left hand daintily over his cheek, purely overcome, meanwhile James only grimaces and Lily's cheeks flush over to match her hair quite well. Sirius goes even more willingly along with Remus, slides in behind him, and immediately gets pressed to the door, and yes he thinks he’s about to get something both lovely and dirty out of this bathroom meeting, but Remus curls his hands at the back of Sirius’ neck, leans in and presses his mouth to the line of Sirius’ collarbone, his gargantuan exhale tickling up to the right side of Sirius’ neck and down to his shoulder. 

__

Sirius settles in with his wrists crossed at the small of Remus' back. “Just need a few?” he asks, pressing a kiss to Remus' forehead.

__

“Mhm,” Remus affirms, ducking his head some more, nuzzling in and that’s fine; the Half Baked is probably going soft on the island, but they can take a few.

__


	17. 17.

At the seven minute mark, Sirius begins plotting out the exit plan. While embracing in Remus’ dinky bathroom until time runs out is a lovely idea, there are house guests, uninvited or not, to tend to. He begins by placing small but quick kisses on various areas of Remus’ face with no particular plan in mind; three kisses on his left cheek, four on the right, two on the forehead, another on the lips, and ditches step two altogether because Remus pushes a small laugh through his nose. 

“Alright,” Sirius says, straightening up with a sniff, “ready?” 

Remus nods once, straightening up with a decided sniff himself. “I didn’t check the nightstand,” he says. “Is there water there?” 

Sirius shakes his head, but figures he can remedy that in seconds. “No, but I’m on it,” he insists. 

“Well, I can get it, then,” Remus says, reaching for the bathroom door knob. 

“Ah ah,” Sirius says, halting Remus’ hand, “you just chill, mhm?”

Remus huffs a sigh that doesn’t really sound like much of one, taking his hand back and giving a sweeping gesture with his right arm. 

Sirius heads out on that note, with Remus slipping out of the bathroom behind him, garnering swift head turns from the peanut gallery. “Hobbies, guys,” Sirius suggests, heading for the kitchen sink with renewed purpose, “they’re out there.” 

“Remus, here,” Lily says, and Sirius glances over his shoulder as she pushes halfway out of her seat in the left corner of the couch, plate in hand.

Remus shakes his head, standing tall by the island. “You’re eating,” he says, waving the offer away. 

“Well, would you like some?” James offers, beside Lily. 

Sirius pulls a glass down from the cupboard, runs the tap a bit so it’ll be cold for Remus to drink, and purposefully leaves the stream of the tap gentle so he can hear Remus’ dulcet tones from there.

“I don’t know if I’m there yet,” he declines. 

“Plenty here,” Peter mentions, on the other end of James.

“No, I see that,” Remus says of the coffee table truly filled with takeout containers. “Maybe in a bit?” 

Sirius fills the water glass, closes the tap, and crosses over to the island, plucking the Half Baked off of the counter island with his free hand and waggling it at Remus curiously.

He gets a meager nod for it, but Remus’ smile says wonders. “That, I could probably manage,” he says, taking hold of both the glass and the pint.

“Ice cream over drumsticks?” James raises.

“Have you had this?” Remus returns, waggling the pint toward James in a similar fashion to Sirius, a detail he can’t miss while he reaches for their notebook in the middle of the island. 

He turns around with the notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, finds Remus lingering by the island seemingly — no, _hopefully_ waiting for him. He smiles at Remus quizzically, garnering a sheepish smile out of him. “Want to be my chair?” he asks, not one to boot anyone off his couch. 

“Do I,” Sirius returns, going and planting himself on the floor to the left of the coffee table and a few steps from Lily’s seat. He sticks his legs out past the side of the couch, leaves a place for Remus to sit in between them, and leaves the notebook and pen on the coffee table in exchange for free hands to rid Remus of his own plight. 

Remus hands the water over first, pint second, and Sirius sets them aside while Remus ambles his way down to the floor, budges down the floor a bit between Sirius’ legs and reaches with his hands outstretched. “Can one of you hand me my quilt?” he asks. 

Lily turns her head first, spotting the chaotically colourful quilt on the back of the couch and reaching to pull it down. She hands it over to Remus, who in turn drapes it over his legs, tucks it in around his middle, and lays back, leaning against Sirius’ chest with his head resting against Sirius’ left shoulder. 

“Good?” Sirius asks, happy to be there. 

“Very good,” Remus assures, reaching for his pint and glass. Once he’s got the glass half-drained and set beside him, he brushes his free hand over his mouth and looks up at the other three. “Sorry, Lily.” 

Lily waves him right off. “They pay me to come in when it’s necessary and today it was,” she offers.

Sirius feels Remus breathe in against him, sees his head turn toward the other two, and repeats the apology process. 

James gives a long sigh, leans forward and a little to the side, extends his left arm out to reach Remus, and promptly punches Remus’ right knee. “_Hey_,” Remus sends him, promptly reaching up and slaps James’ hand up a bunch.

_“When_ are you going to get it through your skull that we couldn’t care less?” James returns. “All of us elected to come, there was no coercion involved.”

“Some, just not for him,” Sirius corrects. 

“Well, it’s a good thing we did,” James returns, scraping a bunch of coleslaw off of his plate with his fork and eating it pointedly, like that somehow seals the deal. 

Remus lifts his hands from underneath the quilt and drags them over his face, humming prominently once his fingers reach his chin. “Elise?” he raises. “Is she ok?”

The whole gang looks round at each other before fixing their combined stares on Sirius. “Oh, she’s fine,” he insists plainly. “No sweat off her back, am I right.” 

Lily speaks there. “She’s been brought up to speed, hon; knows it was out of your control.”

Remus laughs unamused, reaching to drape the quilt over his head entirely. “Yeah, and wants to switch out of all our common shifts now, I’m sure.”

Lily frowns deeply at Remus’ colourful shield. “No, Remus, she’s—”

“I think that’d be a great solution, to be honest,” Sirius puts in, hooking his chin over Remus’ right shoulder and squeezing him. “You don’t want her on shift with you during one, believe me, so, Lily, now’s the time to rework your schedule.” 

Lily pointedly hangs her head to the side, gaze on Sirius now. “She was in over her head, Sirius.” 

“That’s not my read of it, funnily enough?” Sirius returns. “Seems to me the girl could use even a morsel of empathy toward others, but I’m beginning to think that’s impossible for her to attain—”

“Sirius, not everyone is going to react perfectly to this,” Lily stresses. “Nor are they going to react with the severity you want, and that’s fine, he’s Remus, I understand — we all understand why this is so real and close to home for you, it is for us too, but hanging Elise out to dry for not knowing the extent of it isn’t fair—” 

“I don’t give a shit what’s fair,” Sirius returns. “None of this is fair, but I don't have to like anyone, Elise or not.

“Well, I didn’t react well either, did I?” Peter raises, scratching at his left wrist idly. “In fact, I think I’m the crowned king of horrible reactions.” 

“Move over, Pete,” Sirius tells him jovially, “you’ve been dethroned.”

Peter sighs as leans over to pick a chip out of one of the styrofoam containers on the coffee table. “Doesn’t feel as good as it should.”

“Besides, you?” Sirius raises. “You perhaps cared a little too much, but you weren’t so bloody removed from the situation that you couldn’t care less what was happening to him. And on that note, we put this to bed, Pete; it’s old news.”

“You might’ve saved my life, Pete,” Remus says, quietly in his hiding spot.

Sirius sees Peters deep frown and nods his chin toward Remus’ head, squeezing him a little tighter underneath the quilt. “You heard the man,” he says. “There’s a difference here.” 

“I still said it was a madhouse,” Peter raises, mouth twisted up.

“It,” Remus puts out flatly, likely sick of discussing an old issue put to bed as much as Sirius is, “was.”

“Well, then, do we think we could cut Elise some slack here, calling it as blunt as she calls just about anything?” Lily raises. 

James, oddly enough, hums absently there. “She was a little too aloof for the situation,” he offers up and Lily eyes him sidelong, a pointed look painted on. “Well, she was? Her not knowing the whole picture, that’s one thing, but to look at Remus in that state and just act like she’s watching a mildly bemusing television program? Suggest we call the authorities, bring him down in a straight jacket—”

Lily turns her head delicately to James. “You wanted to take him to the hospital, did you not?” 

“He was sobbing,” James insists, flying a hand toward Remus still taking shelter underneath his home-made birthday present. “Who looks at their coworker sobbing in pain in the backroom and calls it a mental break?”

“She said that?” Remus puts out suddenly, barely audible, but the whole lot heard him anyway. 

“You were there?” Peter puts up.

Sirius huffs a sigh the same time Remus gives out one. “Peter, loud voices sound like gears grinding in his ears,” Sirius illustrates.

“That, and I had about five dolts yelling back and forth in there,” Remus tacks on. “I could barely make out anything.”

Sirius turns his head, positioning his mouth near Remus’ ear. “Could you hear my whispering?” he asks.

Remus turns his head in the direction of Sirius’ mouth. “A little,” he says, speaking just to him. “It sounds murky, like you’re talking under water, but I knew it was you.”

Sirius leaves a kiss on Remus’ quilt covered head and a few beats later, it seems that was just enough to bring Remus out of his hiding spot.

“So, she was both unenthused and concerned for my sanity?” he summarizes, the only indication of it being a question is the curious lilt placed at the end of it. 

“About, yeah,” Sirius affirms. “Not a combo I was interested in right about then.”

“Here’s the thing, Sirius,” Lily says, sitting forward in her seat. “And I mean this is the best way—”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Sirius goads. 

“Your fangs come out the moment someone reacts to him in it,” Lily puts down. “If they react intensely, you write them off as too-gung ho, if they don’t react enough, they’re careless and shouldn’t be allowed within feet of Remus.” 

Sirius nods once. “So, you want to take my behaviour from a near month ago and directly line it up with mine tonight?” he raises. “Pick a better hobby, Lily, ‘cause clearly my point of thought is too complex for you to wrap your head around—” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lily demands. 

“You haven’t even seen me in weeks,” Sirius returns. “You’re getting first, second, third accounts of anything to do with this, so excuse me if I’m not glowing over your read of—”

“James knows the same amount as I do,” Lily cuts in, “and you’d never say that to him.”

“You don’t know me well at all if you think that,” Sirius sends back. 

“He’d tell me that in a heartbeat,” James chimes in plainly. 

“Thanks, Jim,” Sirius accepts.

“Wasn’t a compliment,” James returns brightly.

“Guys.” Remus puts out, spooning some ice cream out of the pint sitting in his lap, “please.”

Sirius wants to listen to Remus, some part of him does, but his blood is pounding so hard in his ears that it’s difficult to ignore. “Yeah, I was fucked off at Pete, but you know what?” he keeps on. “Context matters, and you never give me the benefit of the doubt, so why should I expect you to now, hm?”

“Oh, the context, the context,” Lily retorts. 

“Lily? No,” Remus says at once. “Context does matter here.” 

Lily sits rod-still on the couch, James pulls his glasses off and idly cleans the frames with the hem of his shirt, and Peter looks rather afraid to move too suddenly. 

“Ugly Pot night was was different, Sirius just watched a security guard tackle-pin me to the ground the night before out of fear of what I’d do to the people with us in the waiting room — not even out of fear of what I’d do to himself; it was about everyone else present, like I was a disruption at best and a liability at worst, and Sirius wasn’t listened to once that night; it was hell on earth, for both of us, and to have another cluster jump me the next night was worse than hell.” 

“I know it was,” Lily says faintly, confirming Sirius' suspicions quite well. 

“Do you?” Sirius raises. “I walked into my own fucking living room to find my boyfriend on the ground and reacted, but I have sat on Remus to keep him from clawing his eye out since then, so you know what? I get to ease up and give Pete a break, but Elise? Not a chance. I don’t owe her a thing.”

“You don’t see how that’s a touch inconsistent?” Lily puts up, playing with her hands in her lap.

“It’s a scenario that never fully comes to a halt, Lily,” Remus presses. “We’ve been told we’re making this up, that I need to suck it up and get over these puny little headaches, we’ve been told good luck in finding someone to help me, and we’ve been told I’m high risk; we’ve been all over the spectrum and Sirius is allowed to feel his way through this same as I am—” 

Lily puts out a laboured breath. “I understand that.”

“Then you’ll really understand this,” Remus snips, lifting a hand to deny another interruption, and Sirius hides his face behind the lad’s head for cover, and maybe a little self-preservation. “He’s allowed to be upset about a lackluster response to me in it, especially after plenty of others and even if I get a knockout tomorrow and some bystander run in and flattens me to the ground, he’ll still be allowed to hate every bit of the sight of it even if it’s better for me; it’s bigger than consistent, inconsistent — it’s bigger than reasoning, and trust me on that one, I’ve tried, surprise surprise.”

Peter’s visage colours over before a snort flies out of him. “Water is wet.”

“Thanks, Pete,” Remus nods, taking it like a champ. “This isn’t black and white, Sirius is human, he will react and think and process and he’ll do it on his own time, and it doesn’t have to make sense to you in order for it to be real.

Sirius breathes in, out, squeezes Remus impossibly tighter, pressing his face directly to the back of Remus’ neck when his gracious smile, he feels, is truly private. 

“OK, but my point is only that we’re expecting a lot out of a girl who isn’t in the situation,” Lily puts up, like it pains her to have to even stress it anymore but her conscience won’t let up, “and I don’t think I’m getting heard here.”

“I’m not fucked off at Elise, Lily,” Remus insists. “Sirius? Doesn’t have to like her. You? You can still like your employee free of guilt, and you two—” Remus lifts his right forefinger and brings it back and forth between James and Peter, “—I really can’t be arsed either way, to be frank—” 

Remus cuts off as James raises his hand. “Yes, James.” 

“Always be frank,” James puts in.

“I really don’t know how else to be right now,” Remus insists. “Everyone clear?”

Remus waits for every head in the room to nod; Lily’s is a touch pointed, James’ is quick and easy, Peter is still likely afraid to make a move when Professor Remus is doling out orders for he barely moves his head up and down, and finally Remus looks round at Sirius, right brow raised, and Sirius nods eagerly, absolutely loving this. 

Remus faces forward again, lolling his head toward Lily. “I hate that I abandoned her up front and I’ll get her flowers even, if it makes up for all my trouble, OK?” he raises. “I don’t want any trouble—”

“Do not,” Sirius speaks there, “spend your money on her.” 

Remus huffs out a sigh around a bit of ice cream. “It’ll be ten pounds, Sirius,” he says, free hand over his mouth.

“Ten pounds she doesn’t deserve,” Sirius calls it.

Remus winds his head around to look at Sirius properly, his gaze pointed and intent. “What did I just say?” he asks outright. “You don’t have to like one of my coworkers.” 

“Well, I’m glad you made it here because believe you me, Elise doesn’t like me either,” Sirius returns, laughter bubbling in his throat.

“I can’t, for the life of me, worry about that right now,” Remus says frankly. “I don’t like David, do I?”

James takes in a throaty gasp. “You don’t?” he asks, shimmying his shoulders some. 

“He’s a bully, and I don’t like him one bit,” Remus returns, garnering a veritable drum roll of a foot stomp out of James, but Remus turns his head toward Sirius’ open gape/grin, “I don’t expect you to like everyone I interact with, but I like Elise and I want to get her something, even if it’s small, it’ll go a long way; I want to be able to sleep at night, deal?”

Sirius works his mouth around an inappropriately timed but altogether instinctive smile, pressing his lips to the top of Remus’ right cheekbone. “Deal.”

“OK, you two,” James puts in, curling a hand toward them, “are never allowed to break up and if I catch even a whiff of trouble in paradise, I will be intervening, you hear me?”

Remus snorts. “Difficult not to.” 

“Good,” James calls it. “Call me Dr Potter, because I will single-handedly talk sense into the both of you if I must.” 

Sirius ducks his head down behind Remus’ back, takes a big ol’ breath in, and basks in feeling warm from his fingers down to his toes, holding Remus to him like he’s a piece of fine china that he’s been carefully permitted to hold, and in a lot of ways, he is, isn’t he.

When Sirius has felt that he's truly basked, he lifts his head and puts out a decided breath. “Well,” he raises, slipping his right arm free from Remus and out toward the coffee table, pulling the notebook off of it. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m right sick of talking about Elise.”

“Hear hear,” James trumpets out from the circle of his right fist.

“Atta boy,” Sirius champions, setting the notebook open on Remus’ thighs. “Mind being my acting-table?”

“Not at all,” Remus permits, holding his legs a bit sturdier to provide a makeshift desk for Sirius to write on.

Sirius flips through the book to a blank page and jots June 18th down in the top right corner. “OK, length, which… is going to be rough since we’re working with a blank slate at this point,” he raises. “I pretty well conked out there for a while, I’m sorry, but you were home, safe, and I was so beat—”

Remus clicks his tongue. “You’re allowed to sleep, Sirius.”

Sirius tries not to let that interjection trip him up. “So, if we get a good picture of what happened earlier on, we could probably make some educated guesses here,” he keeps on. “I got your text just after five, so my assumption is it came on somewhere around there, good guess?”

There’s a solemn note to Remus’ nod. “I got a look at the time on the till right around the time my nose started up,” he mentions, “which was just after half four, and then it wasn’t long before the shadows started, and it was maybe five orders after that where it officially came on, so. Five? At the latest, five.”

Sirius nods, jotting it down. “And then what?” he probes.

“I,” Remus says, carefully, “had to wait five, ten more for Elise to get back, but there had been a lull around then, thankfully,” Remus says, a careful note to his tone, “so I could sneak in back for the boost, and I squinted at the monitor in time to see Elise come through the door and I found her to tell I’d be in back for mine and texted you.” 

“Was she out getting pho?” Sirius asks sweetly.

“Well, I don’t know,” Remus says. “I don’t really follow her onto her break, what with the floor being all me while she’s gone and all.” 

“Was she gone for a full hour?” Lily comes in, also quite sweet in disposition. 

Remus remains still. “No,” he answers, and it’s done with such a note of light surprise at the question at all that even Sirius cannot quite tell if Remus is covering for Elise or not.

Sirius oh so subtly scrawls a quick _u lyin?_ on the page below his pen and Remus doesn’t really even have time to confirm or deny it for Lily sits forward, squinting and very openly trying to get Remus’ walls to crack. “Lily, quit it,” Sirius puts out. “He’s not a snitch.” 

“I’d just like to know if my staff are leaving for their breaks early and then clocking out for their full half so they can have a full out chill session,” Lily puts out. “Oh, how fucking dare I, hm?” 

“Interesting,” Sirius calls it, positively glowing. “It’s almost like you’re not such a fan of Elise yourself?”

“Time fraud is what I’m not a fan of when it can get me fired along with you sods, thanks,” Lily returns. 

Remus huffs good and loud. “Can we move on from what Elise does on her breaks please?” he raises deftly, and that right there is all Sirius needs to know within his gut that Remus has been lying through his teeth. 

“Fine,” Lily expels, falling back onto James who simply wraps his right arm around her shoulders. “No more breaks at peak hours and that is an order from your boss; as my top shift lead, I’ll ask you to spread the word.” 

“How about he’ll spread the word if you make sure everyone there is up to speed on his achy little problem?” Sirius combats.

“Talk to your boyfriend, then, because it really wasn’t my place to mention it to every one of my employees,” Lily returns, holding her hands up. 

“OK, that was a bit much, Lily,” Remus sends back. “It wasn’t a topic of conversation that would have come up with any of them, save for Agnes and I didn’t go detailing all of this to her while working through one, oddly.” 

While Sirius not coming up in conversations is on a different mountain top than the topic of cluster headaches, Sirius very much still puffs a breath of air into his cheeks and holds it for a few seconds, thinking this is a bit of a trend with a rather bitter taste in his mouth, but he lets the air out, feeling a lot like hot garbage for the thought when Remus just went for Lily’s jugular for coming after Sirius not five minutes ago. 

Remus reads it for the huff it sure accidentally sounded like. “Emme, I barely see, Ian, same thing, so it really wouldn’t make sense to start telling them all about my recent medical history, Agnes knows a bit, but really she mostly thinks I get headaches from time to time,” he rattles off pointedly. “Elise has known since last fall that I get migraines but I’ve only had to leave work once with her on shift and that was ages ago; I went all of late winter and spring without so much as a tension headache, so, it actually wasn’t that difficult to avoid discussing; I don’t want them all to be discussing it when I’m not around, or tiptoeing around me when I am, or thinking I’m making these things up just to get more time off of the floor, I don’t want any of it.”

For a few beats, Sirius legitimately has a hankering that they aren't exclusively talking about cluster headaches, but the last reasoning slaps him right upside the head. “Who’s going to think that?” he challenges, enraged just from the thought of it. “Literally who?”

Remus huffs at him for the question. “Who’s not going to think I’m getting special treatment?” he raises. “This is the first knockout I’ve had there; for the most part, I can work through the tame ones and I don’t want these things making it any harder for me to keep a fucking job — the fact that I even have one is a miracle in itself.”

“It’s not a miracle, Remus,” Lily says to scold, and Sirius doesn’t mind that one bit.

“Yes, it is,” Remus stresses. “If I weren’t friends with you, tonight’s disaster would have me on the firing list.”

“Remus, I’m not allowed to fire you for a condition,” Lily stresses. “Just straight up, I can’t do that, but that’s irrelevant here since I’m not even close to considering giving you up; I’d be fucking mad to, you’re my best worker, hands down.” 

Remus snorts, laughing humorlessly. “No one there is going to think I’m worth the trouble keeping, even if they like me alright,” he raises. “They’ll hate having to pick up my slack when I’m sitting in the back being useless, and on top of that, you should let be considering tossing me out when any reasonable manager would see me as a liability and nix me before I have a fit on the floor in front of our valued patrons—” 

“Fuck our valued patrons,” Lily sends out, reading Sirius’ fucking mind. “Yeah, if you have a shit boss they can make up a reason to get rid of you or cut your hours so low that you yourself ditch out before even having to fire you for this, but again, that’s not me; call me mad all you want, but I’m keeping you until you move on and fly away and you’d just better accept it now.” 

Remus sends a rumpled breath through his nose, but he doesn’t argue, just leans further back into Sirius’ frame and leans his head back, putting his gaze on the ceiling. “The point,” Sirius puts in conversationally, “is that I think we’re past the point where your coworkers should have an idea of what could come of it; you don’t have to be detailed, you can just say ‘I’ve certified horrible migraines which render me useless, I will step off the floor for a time if one comes on here, and for the love of Jesus Cunt, do not put glass in front of me if you’re feeling like helping out.’” 

“Seriously, there needs to be a no-glass rule,” Peter says of it, plain in tone and expression.

James snorts, bringing quite a few bemused gazes to him. “Ugly Pot cries in the distance,” he puts up.

“From the dead, you mean,” Remus returns, rubbing his eyes with his right forefinger and thumb. 

James takes in a resounding breath, beaming from the couch. “There we go,” he says, nodding. “I’ve missed this side of you.”

Remus huffs a plain laugh, dropping his hand from his face. “It doesn’t matter much, really,” he says. “Elise’ll probably be letting everyone in on the contents of tonight’s shift anyway, cat’s out of the bag now.” 

“Elise,’ Lily raises, “has a cease and desist warning on that, trust me. I’ve gone over it with her, she knows it’s a delicate situation.”

“Does she?” Sirius asks skeptically.

“I’ve asked her to keep tonight’s disaster to herself, yes,” Lily assures.

“Lily,” Remus says tightly, “I mean this well, but you don’t rule with an iron fist and gossip will travel whether you’re present or not.”

“Travels exceptionally far when you’re not, though,” James tacks on. 

“Well, then, you tell me if she starts blabbing and then you’ll all see what my iron fist looks like, how about that?” Lily raises. 

Sirius snorts. “That’s cute, but Remus would never tell you that.” 

“He’s right,” Remus says next. “I’d just go to him to complain about it.”

“As sweet as that is,” Lily puts in, “how can complaining to him help with a work problem, over the boss, who can potentially do something about it?”

Remus hums mildly. “Sometimes it’s more about being heard than getting a solution up and running,” he offers, and listen, that’s another arrow sent straight to Sirius’ chest in such a short span of time that he really wouldn’t mind one bit if everyone just went home so he could love Remus down in peace; show him precisely who and what he should be freely bragging about.

Unfortunately, the notebook is open and embarrassingly bare in front of them, and they’ll have to get to the end of this post cluster meeting before loving can occur as is. “Hey, remember this?” Sirius asks, tapping the notebook to move things along. 

“We don’t know what to do with that,” Peter laughs, flying a hand toward the book. 

“OK, well, let’s move onto symptoms,” Sirius raises. “That, I think we can all help piece together, don’t you think?” 

“How do you want to do it?” James asks.

“Throw some up, I’ll jot,” Sirius offers. 

“He’s very speedy with it,” Remus says knowledgeably, and it’s funny really, when he doesn’t know the half of why Sirius is trying to get this the fuck over with. 

“Well, the sobbing was one,” James says, discomfort littered all over him. “And he was doing this—” James tries a hand at a solid mimic of Remus’ harried breathing patterns, “—and the rocking.” 

Sirius nods for all three, jotting them down. “The table thing,” Peter says, pointing to his forehead deftly.

“Mm,” Sirius hums for it, moving to the line below to add _running forehead back and forth over table top_ onto the list.

“Not my finest hour,” Remus calls it. 

“What’s it feel like when you do it?” James asks. 

Remus seems to consider it for a few beats. “Something else,” he answers finally. 

“Dark,” James calls it. 

Remus shrugs his shoulders. “Any pressure is better than what’s happening up here,” he says of his head.

“Mm, speaking of,” Sirius says, aiming it more toward Remus, “pick and/or clamp?” 

“Another lovely little mix of both,” Remus provides. 

“It’s been the two a few in a row now,” Sirius observes, jotting the details down. 

“What are we,” James puts up, dragging the last word out, but Remus comes in before James has to finish the question off.

“I get this sharp pressure/pain hybrid in my left eye that’s like an ice pick getting jammed through it, every single time, to differing degrees,” he explains. “And if I’m really lucky, the clamp comes along with it, which is just an easier way to say that there’s what feels like an iron clamp just ever closing over the side of my skull—” Remus lifts a hand to gesture at the left side of his head, “this one, in particular.” 

“Usually it’s one or the other, yeah?” Lily puts up. “For the clusters in general, I mean.” 

“Yeah, usually,” Remus says. “Though some do say they get theirs on both sides at once, which — Godbless ‘em, because one side is more than enough for me.” 

“How far did it spread this time?” Sirius checks, waiting with his pen ready to go. 

“Just the top half,” Remus offers, setting a flattened palm at the highest point of his left cheek, to which Sirius kisses when Remus moves his hand down. 

“You get the whole head sometimes?” Peter asks, eyes wide. 

“Well, the pick doesn’t tend to show up anywhere but my eye,” Remus tacks on, “but the clamp is flexible, if you will; can cover a lot of ground, if motivated.” 

“Jesus Christ,” James puts out. 

“Cunt, James,” Sirius corrects, penning the last detail down. 

Remus nods to James’ bemused expression. “He goes by ‘Cunt’ now.” 

“Noted?” James returns. 

“OK,” Sirius says, caught up now. “I’m thinking I’ll add ‘complete and utter aversion to voices above a whisper,’ since that was quite clear.” 

“Mm,” Peter hums, pointing over at them, “he kicked that table clear across the room, do you need that detail?” 

“_Need_ is really an arbitrary word here,” Sirius clarifies, going ahead and jotting that down, “but my general rule so far has been anything of note gets a mention.” 

“Then, yeah, he roundhoused it,” Peter caps it. 

“I did not,” Remus protests plainly. “You were all crowding me so I didn’t have the space to spin prior to the kick, did I?”

“No, it was more a high kick if we’re getting technical,” Sirius amends. 

“Like a praying mantis, only you didn’t have your hands up,” James illustrates, lifting his right leg and kicking it up and out for show.

Remus huffs for that. “Well, in that case, he sure high kicked that chair, too,” Peter adds. 

“Mm, thank you, Pete,” Sirius offers him. “I’d almost forgotten about the chair.” 

“Don’t know how you could, personally,” James says, half-smirking. “Though by technicality, he more kicked it back, different leg placement.” 

“Well, I’m just going to write ‘kicked a chair,’ and if the woman asks about it, I can elaborate,” Sirius reasons.

“He lifted Pete straight off the ground,” Lily offers. 

“Mhm, he did,” Sirius accepts, scrawling that down, too. 

“I was hoping,” Peter puts in pointedly, “we wouldn’t even mention that bit.” 

“It’s part of the deal,” Sirius offers. “Remus gets super-strength when he’s in it, has to be documented.” 

“I’m so sorry, Pete,” Remus puts in, riddled with guilt.

“It’s OK,” Peter insists. “I got over the shock of it right quick.”

“You’re so little, though,” Remus protests, making Sirius grin inadvertently. 

“OK, I’m not five foot,” Peter returns haughtily. “Everyone just relax, alright? I wasn’t maimed.” 

“Well, we got you down before he could body-slam you,” James puts in. 

Remus gives out a frustrated noise and lifts the edge of his quilt over his head again, going right back to hiding and sending the notebook askew. “James,” Sirius scolds. “We were just starting to have a nice time.” 

“What?” James demands, a truth seeker even in the worst of times. “I assume that’s what would’ve happened if we hadn’t gotten him down as fast as we did.” 

“That’s not really an anecdote I’ll be putting in here,” Sirius returns, choosing his words so very carefully, “so it’s irrelevant what could have happened; we’re only putting down what did.” 

“Well, then, put down that it took two strapping young men to keep him down on the ground,” James tacks on, a bit pithy about it. 

Sirius puts out a sigh, but honestly that’s also a fine point to add in. “Done,” he says. “Hey, Remus, I’d love it if you came out—”

James pounds a ba dum tss into the floor with the heel of his right foot, pulling a bright laugh out of Lily. “I’m working on it, dicks,” Remus huffs, coming up out from underneath the quilt. 

“Sorry, hon,” Lily offers candidly, crossing her right leg over her left thigh briskly. 

“Triggers?” Sirius puts out gleefully, moving right along. 

Remus makes a shoddy noise. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell,” Sirius goads. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Remus insists, put off. “I wore my sunnies to work, I took them off in back where the light is rather low compared to up front, I let myself adjust before I wandered up on the floor, I didn’t smack my head into anything, I didn’t knock a shot back in the bathroom, I didn’t do anything abnormal, so, it was just another one that was coming for me anyway.”

Sirius leaves a kiss to the juncture of Remus’ jaw and neck, penning it down in an open spot at the top of the page and leaving it be for Remus had called it; Sirius hates that detail more than just about any of this. 

“Anything else of note?” he asks, looking around at the other three. “Toss it right out.” 

“He was a lot harder to get into the car than out,” Peter says, and for a moment Sirius blinks up at him for them having an identical thought, but Peter adds a few more points to consider. “I don’t know if that’s because we had a better handle on it or if it had something to do with him, but he was really calm on the stairs, if I’m honest; he just sort of shuffled along with us.” 

Sirius points at him with his free hand. “That,” he says, “is a very good point.” He looks to Remus more, budging him a bit. “You were much more pliable while getting you up here and you were not so easy to move on the way to the car; had it dropped off sometimes in between there, do you think?” 

Remus nods for it. “I’d say it to a four at least,” he answers. “The boost might’ve kicked in on the way back.”

Sirius nods, holding that thought. “And what would you rate it prior to the drop off?” Remus pushes a breath out. “Lup Scale it, I’ll match it to Kip’s after.”

“Eight?” Remus places it. “It wasn’t a ten, but I don’t typically hulk out during anything lower than an eight.” 

Sirius nods decidedly, jotting the pair of numbers down in chronological order, then adds the details in afterward. He hums as he finishes the rating blurb off, casting his gaze over the collection of words on the page in front of them, and gets paused at the time frame once again. 

“So, in this case,” he raises, “you had it come on fully just before five, we bounced around in the entryway getting shoes and our scrambled brains together for probably five minutes, I hate to say it, and then it’d have taken us thirty to forty-five minutes to get there what with no stopping along the way but traffic to keep in mind, then we spent, mm, ten, fifteen in total in that back room? It was hard to gauge.” 

“That seems a fair read,” Lily puts in, nodding for it. 

Sirius accepts the agreement as law, nods, and keeps on, “and then, what, five minutes at most to drive back here, then let’s call it another five getting him up the stairs and into his room, and from there it’s sort of a blank, isn’t it.” 

Remus hums there, scratching at the right side of his collarbone. “I wasn’t conscious for long,” he gives him. “Add another ten, fifteen at the most.” 

“OK,” Sirius accepts, and looks around for his phone before realizing it’s not on him and likely somewhere on Remus’ bed. “Someone pull a calculator up.” 

Peter gets his phone and the app pulled up first and Sirius dictates the times out to him. “Ninety minutes, give or take,” he relays. 

Sirius nods, putting it down. “That’s right about the time it tends to be with a good boost,” he says, slapping the notebook shut and depositing it on the coffee table.

“How long is it without?” James asks. 

“Hours and hours,” Remus gives him, plain as all hell. 

“So, we’re better off with than without,” Sirius tacks on, so they’ll know this feat but Remus will hear it one more time. 

“And hey,” Peter comes in, eyes on Remus, “the shrooms could take a little while to fully do their job, but today doesn’t mean that they won’t.” 

Sirius sends Peter a smile commanding enough to tame a wildcat. “He’s right,” he says, gentler near Remus’ right ear. “We just have to keep at it.” 

“And if they don’t do a thing and you just tripped every Sunday for the next month and a half,” James puts in, “the appointment’s on its way and you had some good times in the kitchen along the way.” 

Remus studies James for a single beat before he slowly turns his head to a politely grinning Sirius. “You didn’t,” he insists flatly. 

“I had to,” Sirius insists plainly. “You were so cute and he needed to see it.” 

“Unbelievably cute,” James echoes. 

“You and the spoon,” Lily expels in an overcome voice, mimicking Remus delicately bringing the multiple spoonfuls of grinds to and from the Press and the bag of grinds.

“You both watched it?” Remus puts out, tomato red at the back of his neck. 

“Oi,” Peter puts up. “What am I, a wall?” 

“Ohh, hold your horse,” James sends him, fishing for his phone. 

“No,” Remus drags out, but there’s no stopping James from sliding his phone over in front of Peter and playing the video for him. 

Remus crosses his arms over his stomach while Peter takes quite the face journey. “Your hair was somethin’ else that day,” he observes. 

“That was all him,” Remus puts in, nodding his head back toward Sirius beaming bright behind him. “He kept floofing it out.” 

“I love his fringe,” Sirius offers unapologetically. 

“Boy oh boy do we all know that,” James returns. 

Remus on video puts out a pointed, ‘Oi,’ like he’d done the evening prior that pulls a bunch of hooting out of the audience members and the video ends swiftly after that, garnering Sirius to stretch long and put out a rather forced yawn. “Listen, all,” he says. “I’m beat, so is he, and we’ve all got work to get to tomorrow.” 

James squints in his direction. “You could just say you’re trying to get laid.” 

Sirius opens his mouth, a coy smile on, but Remus speaks first. “Then, yeah, that’d be the main objective,” he affirms, and Sirius takes in a substantially heightened breath at the confirmation.

Lily’s off the couch first, understanding point blank that the time has come for them to head off, and Remus reaches up with his hands and gets help from her in lifting off the ground. From there, James and Peter pull themselves off of the couch, the former stopping to sweep a glance over the coffee table at the leftover takeout. 

“The rest is yours, men,” he details, sweeping a generous hand over the coffee table. 

Sirius lifts off of the ground to gather up the containers, feeds Tango a chip because he’s a free man, and brings the rest into the kitchen, setting them on the counter high and away from Tango’s reach. Remus follows him into the kitchen, sticking the Half Baked back in the freezer and downing the rest of his water in one go. The guests have filed over to the entryway by the time the hosts make their way over there, and one by one they come in to give Remus either a hug (Lilith), a resounding clap on the arm (Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater), and one righteous noogie is administered by James Fucking Potter. 

“Oi, watch the head,” Remus says, flinching out of James’ reach. “If you bring another onto me tonight, you’re not making it to tomorrow unscathed.” 

Sirius steps up to linger by the small partition in the entryway as James presses his palms together in apology. “Also sorry for,” he says, tilting his head back and forth, “well, you know.” 

“Yeah,” Remus offers, shuffling on his feet, “same here.”

“_Ohh_ no, I can’t,” Lily expels, opening the front door and promptly running out of it. 

James beams for that little anecdote and pops both Remus and Sirius on the arm before heading out behind her, with Peter following them out. With the door shutting and Remus promptly locking it tight, Sirius gets a full kiss and a soft exhale placed against his lips, and Sirius breathes a relieved breath of his own into their kiss, right hand going straight up into Remus’ curls, his left skirting around behind Remus’ back, wanting so badly it fucking hurts when Remus pulls back.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he says, reaching up to run his thumb over Sirius’ kiss-soaked lower lip so tenderly that Sirius has to bite down on it once Remus’ thumb is gone.

Sirius nods, pressing their foreheads together. “I’d have beamed myself there if I could have.” 

“I know you would have,” Remus says, rubbing the tip of his nose in a controlled motion back and forth against Sirius’.

“Thank you for sticking your neck out for me,” Sirius offers in quiet kind. “And to Lily, at that.”

“She was standing on yours,” Remus says of it, and then he’s got a pair of enthusiastic lips and urgent hands guiding him back toward the room.

Sirius manages to steer Remus down onto the bed without any trip ups, and he’s a little surprised to find Remus is moving swiftly, but he reasons with himself on that one; it wasn’t a ten, Remus didn’t pitch himself head-first onto his own neck, and quite frankly, there were no injuries to report.

Even with all his quiet reasoning, Sirius pulls back a mere inch or two from Remus’ lips. “You sure you’re good to go?” he checks, tousling the curls at Remus’ fringe. 

Remus leans his head back, his neck stretching long as he aims a huff toward the ceiling, and it takes Sirius everything he has to resist licking a line up the length of Remus’ neck. “I’m fine,” he insists. “I don’t know that I can do anything terribly fancy right about now, but—”

He trails off at Sirius’ snort. “I wasn’t thinking you’d be doing the splits on me, oddly?” Sirius raises. 

Remus pushes out a breathy laugh. “I’m saying it might be a bit boring.” 

Sirius ducks his head down and indulges in licking a line straight up Remus’ neck, over his Adam’s apple, and stops at Remus’ chin, tipping Remus’ head back down so he can swoop back in. “Yeah, that’s not possible,” he says just before catching Remus’ lips.

Remus takes in a resounding breath, reaches his hands up into Sirius’ hair and locks Sirius in place over him, licking up into Sirius’ mouth and drinking him in. 

Sirius can’t stop kissing him. It’s as simple as that, really. He says as much, once he’s got Remus out of his clothes and spread out underneath him, says it with his lips parted against the flutters of Remus’ navel underneath them, huffing the words with what little air he’s got to work with down here, “I can’t stop kissing you.”

“I was rather hoping you wouldn’t,” Remus says, huffing a present laugh from above.

With expressed permission to keep doing what he’s doing, Sirius dips right back in, letting rote memory handle the prepping part of the deal, but in reality, he could likely do all that with his eyes closed, might as well give it a go while he drags kisses all over Remus’ legs, purposefully leaving missing Remus’ cock at each surge back up toward his navel just to get him huffy about it, and he could really do this part all night and watch Remus unravel at the injustice of it all. 

Remus is putting out two different huffs soon enough, one born of frustration at not getting his cock sucked like he’d very clearly like, the other firing out of him every time Sirius crooks his fingers at just the right angle, and Sirius finds the likes the latter huff a few notches more, finds himself driving his fingers up on an interval just to keep hearing it, and eventually Remus puts out a third huff, deep and low. 

Sirius pauses still as Remus places his heels on either side of Sirius’ body with a decided two-thunk sound accompanying the movement, and Sirius would have to be a neanderthal not to notice he’s spread his legs rather purposefully apart, and one look up at Remus’ pointed face cements it, drives Sirius right up the bed to lift Remus’ hips up and in, placing his right hand flat on Remus’ navel while Remus reaches down and inserts himself into the process, directing Sirius in and leaving Sirius with the job of holding Remus’ hips in place. 

Sirius fights a laugh at the urgency to Remus’ hands, curls his back and hovers his mouth directly over Remus’ as he starts to roll his hips, times a kiss right in time for Remus’ first hitch of breath, and kisses Remus with all he’s got, bracing his free hand on the bed for balance. Remus sets his feet behind Sirius and braces them still, plants his hands behind him on the bed, and propels himself up into it that way, his breathing picking up, catching, stopping and starting again all with their mouths on lock, and Sirius really, truly doesn’t understand how Remus doesn’t even discuss this on his own time; how in-sync they can be, in or out of bed, how aware they are of each other just being in the same damn room, how Sirius can sometimes read Remus’ mind, how Remus can sometimes take a talking point of Sirius’ and run a mile with it to the right conclusion, how fucking good they are for each other. How does it go under the radar? How does he not slip-up now and again? Is it easy, is it hard, is it—

Remus whimpers against Sirius’ mouth as Sirius ramps up the pace, reaches up after a few well placed thrusts on Sirius’ part, and sets his right hand splayed against Sirius’ navel, halting his hips with a speedy urgency to his touch. 

Sirius stops still, waiting for Remus to re-coordinate himself, and watches with keen interest as Remus shifts himself onto his left side, bracing the bed underneath him with his left arm and hitching his right leg up higher than his left. He taps it twice, signaling quite plainly that Sirius is expected to hold that one up, and Sirius obliges in supreme kind. 

“Thought you said you couldn’t do any tricks?” he mentions, because he just has to, setting his right hand underneath Remus’ thigh and pressing the top of it against Remus’ chest. 

“Yeah, well, you’re inspiring,” Remus returns breathlessly, “what can I say.” 

Sirius’ stomach surges as shifts forward on his own knees, coming at Remus a little from behind and a little from below, and there he lets his own hips do the rest of the work, snapping them at a speed that Remus certainly sounds rather approving of, and while Sirius can’t realistically kiss him from up here, Remus doesn’t seem to mind that when he appears rather busy with all the new angle brings for him, and Sirius can’t help but grin all while his breathing stutters, can’t help but let his eyes fall shut and feel his way through it, every thrust causing a chain reaction, sending Remus further into a tizzy, which in turn sends shock waves back toward Sirius, who then takes those waves and directs them back into the snapping of his hips, and Sirius would be the first to say he loses himself in it as he blindly seeks the friction promised to him with every thrust, and for a little while there he’s genuinely so wrapped up in how good it feels for him, that it takes him a few thrusts after Remus starts squirming underneath him to realize they’re apparently switching things up again. 

No matter there, Remus scrambles with his hands, grappling them against the bed underneath him, and inches himself off of Sirius’ cock with one, staggered hand pushing on Sirius’ right hip, and within a flash, he’s ahead of Sirius on the bed, bracing himself on all fours as he fluffs out the pillow straight ahead of him and places it pointedly in between him and the wall behind the bed. 

Sirius can’t help his trickster mind freely scanning the scene before him, waits for that sweet spot between Remus finding the pillow’s placement acceptable for continuing on and just before Remus has braced himself, reaches up and grabs Remus by the hips and thrusts back in, and truly, Remus has never let out a holler quite this loud before, and Sirius, human in all senses of the word, feels a thrum of electricity course through him as Remus struggles to brace the bed, feels the charge drum up several notches as he places his hands at the center of the small of Remus’ back and pushes his hips down tight against the bed, his knees spreading apart as Sirius wrangles his legs up and over the backs of Remus’ thighs, braces himself directly over him on his knees, and holds him down and drives into him, seeking that wanton holler again. 

He gets what he wants, three times to be exact, and then Remus veritably shoves his face down against the mattress, choosing to holler against it rather than out into the air, which really only has Sirius fucking him harder to make the stifling that much more difficult to achieve, and Remus is still fucking back on him and for a beat Sirius toys with making that part extra difficult just to see what kind of flustered tizzy that could amount to, but he shifts his hands further up Remus’ back, giving him just enough room to fuck back on him like he clearly wants to, and there, it’s like paradise, feeling Remus’ body ratchet tighter and tighter, hearing Remus stuttering underneath him, hearing what he thinks may just be his name, but stifled isn’t quite enough for him just now. 

Sirius leans in, leaves his right hand splayed at Remus’ back to drive him back on his thrusts like a metronome gone haywire, reaches his left hand up and over Remus’ right shoulder, wrapping his arm across Remus’ chest and pulling him up off of the mattress in one tug. 

“Sorry?” he asks, grinning as he keeps Remus’ stomach pinned down by his free hand. “Didn’t hear you.” 

Remus expels one amazing huff at the wall ahead of him. “Mm mm,” Sirius denies. “_That’s_ not what you said.” 

“Sirius,” Remus pushes out, as under his breath as he can manage it with Sirius drilling into him. 

“Hm?” Sirius hums, driving his thrusts in deep. 

Remus pushes out a harried noise, pounding his fists on the bed as he straight up fucks the mattress underneath him, tossing out Sirius’ name three times, which is precisely two more than even Sirius was aiming for, and Sirius pulls right arm from around Remus’ shoulders, setting both hands at the small of Remus’ back and drives him back on his cock and forward onto the bed at each interval, and Remus reaches his hands up and over the safety pillow, pulling it down and biting at it as his whole body stiffens, and Sirius’ eyes bug right out, his gape/grin fully on display though Remus can’t see an inch of it, feels the clench around his cock and he's there, too, head back as he rolls his hips, hands jerky on Remus’ skin as he shudders through his release. 

He sags down, perched on Remus' arched hips and braced on his knees as he reaches a hand up through his hair and comes back to earth, but the moment he lands, the moment he registers Remus wiping erratically at his eyes, is the precise moment Sirius is sure he fucked up big time. 

He pulls right out of Remus, wrangles himself up the bed, and settles down by Remus’ left side, trying to get a good look at his face, but it’s a little difficult what with Remus’ hands in the way and the darkness in the room. Sirius reaches up, tapping Remus’ left shoulder rapidly while his mouth is pressed into a firm line, and Remus shifts his hands a mere inch or two, peeking through his fingers and putting out a harried breath. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he rushes out. 

“You are crying,” Sirius sounds out. 

“Well, I don’t know why I’m doing it,” Remus expels. “I don’t have legs anymore, and my ears are ringing too, you know, I’m not just boohooing over here; my brain's split in half.” 

“Well, that’s pretty fair, honestly,” Sirius agrees, smiling a bit there. “I was hoping if I angled you down like that, the bed would sort of do half the work for you, and I’m glad to see I was right.” 

Remus pushes out a harried breath in reply, wipes at each eye in turn, looking sideways at Sirius with his left eye as he works on his right one, and huffs grand. “Stop looking at me,” he asserts, all ruffled up. “I’m having a moment, OK?” 

Sirius huffs out a laugh, absolutely loving the sight of a bemusedly euphoric. “You really don’t have to feel weird about this,” he insists, reaching to whisk his right hand through Remus’ fringe. “You’ve made me burst from dick too, you know; you’re not special and I mean that in the best way.” 

“I have not,” Remus expels, dropping his right hand pointedly. 

“Umm, excuse you?” Sirius says, tossing his right thumb over his shoulder. “The other day, on the couch? Spiritual experience; you rearranged my insides and my eyes welled up like a dam threatening to break—"

"Oh, they did not," Remus sends him.

"Well, you wouldn’t have known seeing as you were behind me, now would you?” Sirius counters.

Remus looks as if he’s had his world caved in on him, his eyes glossing over. “Mhm, bask in it,” Sirius goads. “It happens; just a mark of a jolly good time, I like to think. It happened the first time you topped me, too, but thankfully we were in the shower so I could discreetly hobble over there and disguise it under the stream while you were still loose as a noodle and hanging onto the wall for support.” 

Remus takes in a rather chuffed breath, and Sirius knows he’s half in the room with him, half astral projected back into Sirius’ bathroom on Boxing Day morning. “You did?” he says. 

“Uhm, more like _you did_,” Sirius corrects. “Listen, I don’t bottom for just anyone, thank you, and you saw me afterward; I traipsed about the flat afterwards with the sort of skip you tend to take on after a righteous fuck, honestly, were you even there?” 

Remus puts out a chuffed laugh. “That was my first time trying it, so I find it a bit boggling that I managed to get you quite so there,” he says, his mouth twisting into a smile.

Remus puts out a sheepish snicker, but Sirius’ brain is a little busy short circuiting. “I’m flatlining.” 

“Ohh, come on; you could tell,” Remus returns, plainly amused. “Had it been in a bed I might've been better at it; I was sure I was about to drop you because I’d never held anyone up before and then you started slipping, but maybe I made up for it with eagerness?”

Sirius puts out a flat noise for objection. “I absolutely could not tell,” he says, and Remus sends him a plain smile. “Boy, you fucked back into place, are you kidding me right now?” 

Remus lifts his shoulders once. “You're inspiring?" he answers for it, getting a sputter out of Sirius for it. "Well, I never got the chance to before, I was always on the receiving end but I very wanted to — clearly, what with the—”

Remus smirks a laugh as he mimes thrusting Sirius back up the shower wall and into place, and Sirius places his hands on his warm cheeks, gape/grinning all over again at simply thinking it was all part of the show at the time. “You seriously will never stop blowing my fucking mind,” he says, leaning in to leave a kiss on Remus’ lips. 

“I hope I don’t,” Remus says after it, smiling at him. The smile, however, peters off as Remus replaces it with a grimace. “I came all over the sheet.” 

Sirius has absolutely no control over the rolling laugh that comes out of him, but he wouldn't have sought control if he could have. “Oh no,” he says gravely. “Whatever shall we do—” 

Remus pushes out a snort, laughing at himself. “I’m too tired to change it now.” 

“OK, how about this,” Sirius raises. “You go, start the shower, get a head start on that, and _I’ll_ change it and meet you in there, deal?” 

Remus smiles, leans in to leave a peck on Sirius’ lips, and nods for it, shifting back on the bed. 

“Boy, you really did, didn’t you?” Sirius says, examining the sheet. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Remus sends him, already scooting back toward the end of the bed on all fours. 

Sirius waits there until Remus is up and limping a little toward the door, but at least balanced. “Sorry for the limp,” he calls after him. 

“I’m not,” Remus sends back, and that is just enough of a lovely thought to give Sirius a burst of energy to see to the sheets. 

He dumps the stained ones in the hamper, goes to Remus’ dinky little closet to get a new set, and begins the process of spidering up the bed on all fours, trying to fit the corners around the edges of the mattress. It’s tough work when Sirius is nothing but a noodle with legs, but he’s nothing if not determined, so he works it out eventually. He sees little point in tucking the top sheet in when they’re likely to fall into bed post-shower and mess it all up again, so he leaves that one be and heads for the bathroom, keeping his footfalls quiet on the bathroom tiles before barreling in past the shower curtain and making Remus jump into the air out of sudden fright. 

“Do you get a kick out of that?” Remus huffs, rinsing his hair out. 

“You know I do,” Sirius says, sliding the curtain shut behind him. 

Remus finishes up with his hair and soaps up the red loofah rather than his green one, gestures for Sirius to turn around, and Sirius does as bid, shutting his eyes contentedly as Remus rubs it over Sirius’ back and brings it around over his front, pressing little kisses over Sirius’ shoulders and back while he does it. 

Remus has them switch places, backs Sirius closer to the shower’s stream, and begins washing him off, and Sirius simply goes with every guiding hand Remus gives him, feeling the most curious combination of loved and lost at once. Remus takes his hands back to locate Sirius’ bottle of shampoo, squeezes a glob into his left hand, leaves the bottle aside, and spreads the glob out between his hands before lifting them up toward Sirius’ hair. 

“I think I’d do well with a shower hanger,” Remus mentions. 

“Elise knows,” Sirius says, sounding off to even himself.

Remus stops with his hands up in the air, blinking at him. “Right,” he says, a curious lilt on the end of the word.

Sirius shakes his head out, realizing he’s not being very clear at all. “No, I don’t mean about the clusters,” he amends. “Us.”

Remus slowly lowers his hands, though they’re still covered in shampoo suds so he can’t do much with them now aside from continuing to spread the suds out, his gaze still on Sirius. “How?” he asks.

“Well, I was going mad in the car waiting to get to you, so I kissed you once I did,” Sirius explains, and to Remus’ blink n’ reel combo, he tilts his head to the side pointedly. “I kissed your forehead, Remus; I didn’t snog the life out of you. I have some resolve.”

Remus settles a little. “Are you sure she saw?” he asks, careful in tone, careful in movement. 

“Oh, definitely,” Sirius nods. “It was like, five kisses in one; it’d be hard to miss.”

Remus’ mouth peters into a frown as he reaches his right hand out, and only seems to remember it’s covered in shampoo an inch before Sirius’ neck, and in truth Sirius rather wishes he hadn’t remembered; what does he care about a shampoo smear when he’s got a flustered Remus in front of him. 

“I just thought it might be better for you to know now, rather than find tomorrow and with no warning,” Sirius adds on, a half-frown on. 

“Well, that’s—” Remus starts, cuts off, breathes in. “What did she do?”

Sirius hums a note while working out how to word it, and then figures it’ll be easier just to show him. He sits his hands on his hips, fingers curled away from his skin, and sets the exact gaze he remembers her sending the floor.

“Oh,” Remus says deeply, and Sirius lifts his gaze while holding the pose and sees he’s got one captive audience in front of him. “Just like that?”

“I’m doing what she did,” Sirius insists, looking down at the floor of the tub for the full experience once more before letting his hands fall. “Seemed more of an ‘oops, I wandered into the wrong room,’ and yet, funnily enough, she didn’t leave the room despite looking like she knew she ought to turn around and do just that.”

“Lots going on in that room, I suppose,” Remus supplies.

“I mean, it may be fine,” Sirius offers. “I’m of the opinion that she’s a rather crass human being, but you know her better than I, so I’m willing to pass the final answer onto you here — would she really care much?” 

“Care isn’t really my worry,” Remus says, fiddling with his right thumbnail. “It’s more, how quickly can this spread out; she does gab a lot, usually I just catch little things, but it stands to reason that I could easily be a topic, especially if it’s something like this; it’s a conversation starter, for sure.”

“Right,” Sirius says, throat tight. “So, like, her going and telling the rest of them, ‘hey, that bloke with the hair who comes and visits him sometimes? The boyfriend,’ sort of thing?”

“Well, yeah,” Remus says. “Among other things.” 

“Right, but Ian’s uh,” Sirius stops, “well, he gayer than a picnic basket.” 

“Right, and he’d be the first to say it,” Remus accepts. “Only I’ve seen the way they ‘other’ him, sometimes. I don’t think anyone there will be horrible to me about it, but—” Remus tugs at his lower lip with his teeth, shrugging his shoulders once, “—it’s none of their business what I do in my free time.” 

“You’re right, it isn’t,” Sirius says. “And the thing is, I’ve rather felt that the people who find that particular quality a huge topic of conversation are probably very boring? If that’s really all they have to discuss. There’s more to me than who I make cry in bed.”

Remus pushes a semi-laugh through his nose. “I know that,” he says. “You’re way better at just leaving it until it comes up, or a pronoun has to come along for the story, but I’ve never — I’ve always just omitted pronouns altogether, especially at work.” 

Sirius tugs on his own lip now, too. “Isn’t it,” he starts, letting out a quiet breath. “I don’t know, difficult not to sometimes, though?” 

“Not to what?” Remus asks. 

“Talk about it?” Sirius raises. “It, me, what we did over the weekend? I’m with you so much.”

“Sometimes it is,” Remus says, his eyes a fine set of dinner plates and boring right into Sirius’ soul laid out for him. “Only a lot of times it isn’t; I’m pretty well versed in keeping that part of my life separate, I don’t trip up very often; you and Lily were the exceptions, in almost a decade now? Which should tell you how much I value you two because I kept that so close.”

And there, like a magic set of words that suddenly slap context up into the mix and completely crush something like a wounded pride, Sirius flinches. “No, and I know that,” he says, more to himself than to Remus. “It took you how long to even tell me you were even into blokes? I know it’s not personal, it doesn’t have anything to do with me, and I still can’t help feeling like it might.”

“It’s not,” Remus comes in, laying it down flat. “I mean, it is. Personal, to me, but it’s got nothing to do with you — and I mean that _kindly_. I’m just not used to wearing it at work.” 

Sirius breathes in through his nose, thinking it stems out further than just the workplace, but Remus lifts his hands up into Sirius’ hair, lathering it up with every bit of expertise of a potter in front of his wheel. Sirius catches his eyes before they fall shut completely, peering at Remus through mere slits. 

“This is coercion,” he mentions dryly.

Remus’ gaze flickers down from Sirius’ locks to meet Sirius’. “_Not_ coercion; I just got sick of having shampoo hands,” he amends. “And, if this just so happens to make you soft as clay, more power to me, don’t you think?”

Sirius huffs long, both loving and hating that this man can read his mind like this. “Remus, I fucking love you,” he says. “I’m done for; over the moon, flustered breathing, wake up happy just know you’re next to me, and if you’re not you’re probably putzing around somewhere; the gross, puke-inducing stuff—”

Remus snorts. “That’s an impeccable collection of words—”

“They’re real, Remus,” Sirius insists, now knowing precisely how Remus must feel when Sirius laughs at him during a particularly important observation all because Remus worded it humorously. “This is real for me and if that’s not what it’s like for you—”

“It _is_ like that for me,” Remus cuts in, pushing out a laborious breath through a smile. “I don’t know what to do with myself half the time because I wake up, see you, and want to burst into specks, I’ve never been like this before.”

“I doubt it,” Sirius insists, though he and Remus both know he’s fishing for compliments.

“It’s true,” Remus says, humouring him like the fair and reasonable man he is. “I wake up a pile of goo and stare at you like a goon.”

“You do not,” Sirius insists. 

“Well, you wouldn’t know, would you?” Remus raises, styling Sirius’ hair up into a twisty bun at the top of his head with a lopsided smile on as he observes his artwork. “You’re usually fast asleep when it happens, but you have absolutely caught me staring at you like you’re my last meal, and I’m not saying it in a dirty sort of way but you can absolutely call it a double entendre if it helps; in fact, I encourage you to—”

Sirius sends out an agonized noise and pushes his face forward into the crook of Remus’ neck, causing Remus to pause short. “No no, you keep going.”

“My coworkers not knowing that I’m one lovesick man doesn’t negate any of that,” Remus keeps on like he’d never paused at all and like he doesn’t mind one bit that Sirius just smushed a ton of shampoo onto him. “I’m one absolute madlad over you and I don’t need people I work with to know it, you should see me talk about you with Elise or Lily once I get going; I’m nothing but a schmooze and me talking to them about any of it is huge for me, even if it looks small.”

Sirius gives a throaty noise against Remus' neck. “So, next time this happens, and I’m afraid you’re with a bit of a creature of habit so there will likely be a next time,” Remus passes along, a bit of a whisper now, “remember that you just made me come untouched and expel tears, and that, truly, has never occurred in all my years where it could have been achieved, and it is going to be ridiculously difficult not to brag about it.” 

Sirius sniffs, lifts his head, puts his back straight, his head held high, and takes a resounding breath in. “_I’ve paid my dues_—”

“Oh, into this now,” Remus nods frankly. 

“—_Time after time,_” Sirius grins, “_I’ve done my sentence, but committed no crime._”

Remus sets his hands on Sirius’ shoulders. “OK, do that, but step back while you do,” be says, guide him back toward the stream of the shower

Sirius moves as bid, shutting his eyes as Remus leans his head back toward the stream, thankfully keeping Sirius’ face/mouth situation as dry as can be. “_And bad mistakes_,” he croons, pointing up at Remus.

“_I’ve made a few,_” he adds after a beat.

Sirius opens his eyes in a snap, a gape/grin on display, “_I’ve had my share_—” he beats the side of his left fist into the shower wall, “_of sand kicked_—” a kick to the shallow layer of water at their feet in the tub, “_in my face_—”

“You are going to get me evicted,” Remus cuts in, not unkindly. 

Sirius leans his head back, throat open, happy as a clam, “—_But I’ve come throuuugh_.”

The beat goes on (_and on, and on, and on_). 

\--

When Sirius pulls into the parking lot of Remus’ old workplace on Wednesday afternoon, there’s a sense of glee running through his veins. Remus stopping in and visiting Sirius at work had been a trademark over the course of Remus’ winter/spring term, typically bringing homework along with him to work on, but Remus’ curly head was there, usually a fan of the bar seating for obvious reasons, and Sirius has sorely missed Remus’ presence in his shop as of late.

He feels another wave of anticipation as he parks Priscilla in an open spot in the lot and spots James out front with a tray of samples. He pulls into park, snorts as he lifts his helmet off his head, and looks over his head at Remus takes his own off, a helmet that Sirius may or may not have replaced with a slightly larger one so that Remus could fit sunglasses on underneath them and not have them stab him in the face in the process. 

“I asked for him to roll out a red carpet for your arrival, but this will do.” 

Remus clicks his tongue, pushing his sunglasses up his nose a bit. “I hate that there’s a fifty percent chance either way that you’re even kidding about that,” he says, swinging his right leg down from the bike. 

“Hate, love,” Sirius recites, following suit, “fine line.” 

“The finest,” Remus assures, falling into step with Sirius across the parking lot. “Finally put you to work, did they?” 

James balances the tray on his right hand and flourishes his left around the collection of small sample cups arranged far too artfully on it for just a bunch of drink samples. “What do we have here?” Sirius asks. 

“Peach tea,” James provides. Sirius gives a rather pithy face to that, thanks but no thanks, but Remus goes ahead and trills a bit, taking two off of the tray. “There’s scones on that one.” 

Sirius looks right and sees a terrace table has been dragged over on James’ left to carry said tray of scone samples, and that he doesn’t mind one bit. “How’s the day?” he asks, plucking two sample cups off of the tray. 

“You wanna know what he did?” James asks, tossing his head back toward the shop, his once bright smile now nowhere to be found. 

Sirius smirks as he lobs a chunk of scone into his mouth. “You know I do.”

“He’s purposefully fucking with me now, I’m sure of it,” James details. “I’m bar bitch, he’s supposedly on till, and we’ve got a huge line going while Charlotte’s getting ready to come on the floor; he puts someone’s travel mug down on the bar and when I finally get to it, there’s no note on it, no nothing, so I think it’s probably nothing major if it apparently doesn’t even warrant a single instruction, so I go, ‘what’s this, then,’ and he’s all, ‘oh, it’s just an extra hot, no foam, half-sweet white mocha with a half of pump of peppermint.’”

James caps off the tale with a near-deranged grin, sending Sirius curling forward with a hybrid of a cough and a laugh. “Stop, I’ll choke,” he pleads, swallowing down his mouthful and straightening up with a sniff. “I’d have fucking killed him.” 

“I wasn’t far off,” James says to that. 

Remus’ brow is rather furrowed as he sips his first sample delicately. “How long has he been with the company?” 

“What, three years?” James gives, looking at Sirius for clarification. 

“Something like that,” Sirius puts out flatly, fishing in his first sample cup for another bit of scone. 

“Then I don’t know what would possess him to do that?” Remus raises, a half-frown on. “If he didn’t know to put the sticker on an unmarked cup, that’d be one thing, but he should know by now that doing that just makes things difficult for everyone involved, so he’s definitely fucking with you, sorry James.” 

Sirius lifts his hands airily. “He’s hellspawn.” 

“I’m about ready to whoop his arse right here in the parking lot—” James starts to manifest, but he cuts off right quick as a woman trots on up to the shop door only to get halted by him before she could reach for the handle. 

“So sorry, but we’re in a bit of a bind at the moment,” he says, his overall tune changed to a bright, pleasant air. “There’s maintenance being done in the building up top, water’s been shut off, and we can’t allow customers inside for the moment.” 

The woman takes her hand back from the door. “Why not?” 

“Well, there isn’t running water, and it’d be a breach of health and safety protocol and we can’t have that,” James provides. 

“Well, this is quite inconvenient,” the woman says. 

“Out of my hands, I’m afraid,” James supplies, lifting his tray in between them. “Have a tea for the trouble, and there’s another shop identical to this one just a few blocks over that way.” 

“I know where it is and I’ll just go there,” the woman says, already on her way. 

“Be my fucking guest, then,” James sends under his breath. “It’s like people think I personally wrote the health and safety handbook, it’s ridiculous—” 

“There’s no water in there?” Sirius cuts in with a laugh, pointing behind James’ head. 

“It’s been shut off for two hours almost,” James supplies. “Will’s about to go postal in there.” 

“Is that why they made you sample boy?” Remus asks, beaming about it. 

“Someone has to stand out here and deter traffic,” James insists. “They kept walking in, and if I’m honest, I volunteered to be this traffic cone; anything to get away from David is a treat and a half—” 

Remus has to step back fully to avoid getting barrelled into as an apron-clad Will comes hurdling out of the shop. “This is fucking _ludicrous_,” he sends out. 

“Oh, he’s postal already, good,” Sirius nods. 

“I’m going to see what’s taking them so fucking long,” Will manifests. 

“Need an extra set of fists?” Sirius offers, brandishing his right. 

“We’ll fucking see, won’t we,” Will returns.

“Take a sample along, maybe that’ll speed things up,” James suggests, holding the tray out to him. 

Will puts out a humourless laugh. “Fat chance I’ll bring them anything,” he returns, and then blinks at Remus like he’s just realized he’s even there, and to that, Sirius can’t relate. “Sorry, Remus; bit of a shit show round here.” 

Remus waves him off. “Sounds it,” he says. “Luck and such.” 

Will stalks off down the mall strip and Sirius lets out a contented sigh. “I’m so glad we came by today—” 

A truly deafening shriek sends all three of them jolting to attention before Remus is effectively levelled from the back by Sophie, who rather disappears behind Remus’ height before her arms come up around his middle and give him a squeeze. Remus recovers soon after that, though it’s sort of funny how alarmed he is at the manhandling until Sophie speaks and the lock likely clicks in his head. 

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” she puts out. 

Remus swivels around and stoops a little to hug her properly. “Lower your whip, I was going to stop in there,” he insists. 

“You’d better have,” Sophie returns, stepping back to reach for the shop door. “I only have a few minutes, but come say hi—” 

James stuffs the tray in his hands between Sophie and the door. “Don’t go in there, it’s chaos,” he says. “Water, down, mayhem, ensuing. Run while you can.” 

Sophie’s eyes come alive with pure bemusion before she glances sidelong at Remus. “Sorry, Steph,” Sirius says, teeth gritted. “No customers allowed in there while the water’s shut off,”

Both Sophie and Remus look at him now, though their expressions are decidedly different. “Seriously, though, you can’t go in ‘til it’s up and running again,” James tacks on. 

Sophie gasps, realization clouding over. “I didn’t even realize how badly that’d effect you guys,” she says. “We can’t do any demonstrations until it’s back up, but we can at least let them indoors.”

“We’ll get dunked on real good if the suits find out we’re letting them in,” James explains, moving the tray back and forth enticingly. “Take a tea on the house for the meantime.” 

Sophie splays her hand around the array of sample cups, carefully thinking over her choice. “Yeah, they’re all the same,” Sirius says, and Remus lifts his right hand and promptly takes to pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. 

“I’ll check back later, then,” Sophie says, sample in hand as she budges Remus. “I mean it, come visit this time.”

“How long are you on for?” Remus asks. 

“‘Til six,” she provides, pointing to him as she heads back toward the soap shop where she belongs. 

Remus waves, smiling tightly, and turns his head toward Sirius repeatedly prodding his tongue against the inside of his right cheek. “You are five,” he retorts.

“Just lay the pipe in her already,” James says, sipping on his own sample of tea. 

Sirius’ snort echoes off of the roof of the front terrace. “No,” Remus asserts, lifting his left finger for quiet. “I get it enough from him, thank you.” 

“Makes sense, she’s salivating over there,” James puts up, grinning behind his sample cup. 

“She’s seeing somebody,” Remus insists. 

“It doesn’t really matter if she is; she’s still going to be calling out ‘Remus,’ no matter who she’s sitting on,” Sirius raises, garnering James to send a resounding ‘oooh,’ at Remus while bouncing on his heels. 

Remus reels for a second, his right brow raising, and oh no, Sirius is done for. “What, like you did?” 

James sends out a choking noise. “He wins,” he stresses, but Sirius didn’t really need the scoring to be vocalized when he’s already chasing Remus down, but unfortunately for him, Remus is much speedier than he looks and quickly gets himself inside the shop, holding it closed as Sirius tries to yank it open to no avail. 

“Give it up,” James tells him, smiling away behind Sirius. “He’s way stronger than you.” 

“Not that much,” Sirius manifests, tugging the door open a little only to get it pulled shut by Remus. 

“That door isn’t budging.” 

“It just did, Specs,” Sirius sends over his shoulder, trying it again. 

This time, the whole door pulls open when Sirius yanks on it, taking him back two or three steps, and at first he thinks it was pure sabotage, but then he looks through the window in the door and sees Remus standing to attention just inside the door, and is sure he just met David’s wrath. 

Sirius slips in behind Remus, peering around him and spotting not David, but Charlotte over behind the pastry case with her hands over her mouth, staring at the door in horror, and it takes two glances in between her and Remus for Sirius to make the connection. 

He looks to Charlotte with a supremely satisfied smile. “Call me a liar again,” he challenges, right brow raised. 

“Never again, never again,” she repeats, behind her hands. 

“Are you short-circuiting over there?” Sirius raises, beaming. 

Charlotte lowers her hands from over her mouth and promptly sticks them in her apron pocket, procuring her phone rather shakily. “Can I—” she starts, pointing to it and then to Remus. “Look, this is probably the closest I’ll get to him any time soon, if ever, and I’d like to prank my mate.” 

“He gets it,” Sirius waves her off. 

Remus gives him a plain side-glance, but relents in the next breath, never one to disappoint someone if he can help it. He steps up behind the counter, moves behind the pastry case, and leans in for a picture. 

“OK, and one more, but only smile with half of your mouth,” Charlotte requests determinedly, and Remus’ mouth twitches with frank amusement before he pulls it together, giving the lass what she wants for the next one. 

Charlotte pulls her phone in to look over them. “Oh, the sunglasses really pull the whole thing together,” she says, thumbs going haywire over her screen. 

“Don’t they?” Sirius agrees. 

“Enough out of you,” Remus sends him. 

Charlotte pauses middle of typing to take in a throaty gasp, trilling. “He’s Welsh, too,” she puts out, stamping her feet on the raised flooring behind the counter. “_Call 911_.” 

“Get it together, Charlotte,” Sirius sends her, enjoying every second of this show. “You knew this was coming on some level, you’ve had time to prepare.” 

“Oh, but no time would have prepared me enough,” Charlotte says, finally settling down to finish sending the pics wherever they’re meant to go, and once that’s done, she slips her phone back into her apron pocket and smiles at Remus. “Hi, I’ve heard lots about you, all good.” 

Remus shuffles on his feet, likely dying inside, but listen, he looks so good doing it. “Same for you,” he says, tipping his head to her. 

Sirius sighs happily, heading up behind the counter with a spring to his step, glancing around and finding a one loaf of banana bread on the cutting board and one halfway cut into pieces, likely prior to Remus’ sudden entrance as the pastry knife is laying rather askew beside them. 

“Is there any cold brew left or has James already given that away to appease the locals?” he asks, strolling past the two of them.

“About half a jug, last I saw,” Charlotte relays, picking up the pastry knife and resuming her apparent task at replenishing James’ supply of samples. “There was more of the tea than there was cold brew, so he went with that instead.” 

Sirius brightens even more at that. “Is there any tea left?” he asks, heading for cold bar. 

“Should be,” Charlotte trills, slicing the rest of her loaf into small squares. 

“I don’t need one,” Remus says, waving him off. 

Sirius opens the fridge down below the counter and has himself a gander inside even so, but all that’s left is their herbal one. “Just passion that’s left, but it’s something, hm?” 

“I’m really fine,” Remus insists, clearly not knowing what to do with his hands or himself while he’s up behind the counter where he usually doesn’t tend to place himself. 

Sirius heads for the stacks of cups and primly takes two large cold cups ones off of the stack of them. “Would you like to pick a spot out there?” he raises. “Prime pickings.” 

Remus pushes a sigh through his nose, fishes his wallet out, and leaves a few coins on the till counter, waving Charlotte down, which is hilarious when Charlotte’s been peeking at him oh, the entire time they’ve been inside. “That should cover what he makes,” he says, leaving a Look for Sirius in his wake before he heads back around to the other side of the counter, and there, Sirius can see Remus relax, back to his regular role as a humble patron. 

Charlotte looks over at Sirius, pauses her slicing, and promptly drops the knife, flying over to him to leave a series of jovial punches to Sirius’ left arm. “You lucky shit,” she hisses.

Sirius snorts, ducking away from her as he bats her away. “You need to settle down.” 

“Me?” Charlotte hisses. “He’s a _dream_.” 

“What, you don’t think I know that?” Sirius returns. “Get back to work ma’am, you’re on the clock.” 

Charlotte leaves him with one, final sock before she heads back to the pastry case. Sirius focuses on their drinks, makes Remus’ first and works on his own lovely disaster of a drink second, glancing over midway through to find Remus has settled himself in the booth seating in the far corner of the cafe, his chin resting in his right hand, and though Sirius can’t completely confirm if he’s looking or not, there’s a small smile on his lips that sort of tell him Remus is without needing to see his eyes. 

Sirius is just finishing up dolling out ice cubes into both drinks when David stalks up from the backroom, stops at the sight of Sirius, and puts out a miserable noise. “Why are you always here?” he raises. 

“To see you too, cupcake,” Sirius offers sweetly, popping a lid on both drinks. 

David blocks that with a dramatic lift of his hand, heads left and out onto the floor, and fucking locks in on Remus like he’s got sensors in his brain. “No no, don’t even,” Sirius denies. 

“We’re closed, bud,” David sends him anyway. 

“I’m aware, bud,” Remus returns, his work-voice on display. 

Sirius trills excitedly, bobbing his shoulders as he reaches for two straws. “He’s just sitting there, leave him be.”

David whirls back around to face Sirius. “Who is he even?” 

Sirius clicks his tongue. “Take a wild guess.” 

David sends out a royal scoff, face shriveled up. “No one needs you parading your boyfriend around in here while the shop is closed,” he returns. 

“Relax, sweetie, your tips are safe,” Sirius says, carrying their drinks out onto the floor. 

“It’s not the tips I’m worried about and you’d better have paid for those,” David stresses. 

“Get fucked,” Sirius returns with an equal amount of stressing. “Once even, and you might actually be bearable to be near.” 

“_Burn David,_” Charlotte trills in her best _Alexis Rose_ from over behind the pastry case. 

Sirius traipses over to Remus with an air of completion, sets Remus’ tea down in front of him before sliding into the booth across from him, and flinches as a chair scrapes across the floor. He turns his head in a snap, instinctively checking his surroundings to see if he’ll need to dive to the side to avoid a flying object, but David’s merely shifting chairs around in the cafe, scraping them along the floor for no good reason as far as Sirius can see other than to make loitering as unappealing as possible. 

“Now, I know what you think you’re doing is incredibly important, but could you literally do anything else?” 

“You could always leave?” David suggests politely, and it’s so Reg, Sirius needs a second to breathe. 

Sirius faces forward, sends a smile to Remus’ pointed frown. “Why don’t we go sit outside?” Remus suggests. “Hang out with James?” 

Just there the door opens and Sirius glances over his shoulder again, finding James has re-entered the shop with two empty trays in hand, heading up behind the counter for his replenishment. “Well, we could still go out there,” Remus tacks on, what with James’ presence sort of flattening his suggestion, “point is, we could be out there and not in here.” 

“Then he wins, Remus,” Sirius says, crossing his legs underneath him, getting right comfortable. 

Remus promptly sticks his straw in his drink, sitting back in the booth with a stoney expression on and Sirius pops the paper off his straw and indulges in a long first sip, compartmentalizing the sounds of chairs scraping the floor behind him. 

The door to the cafe opens yet again, only this time it slams off the wall beside it, garners every head in the shop to turn toward it, and brings a seething Will in through it. 

“Piece of fucking shit,” he barks, the acoustics inside the near-empty cafe echoing the exclamation to all four corners of it. 

“Umm,” Sirius chimes, “his name is David?” 

James’ face comes alive with new and wondrous affection, Charlotte drops so low down behind the pastry case that she’s no longer visible at all, and David scoffs grand before whipping toward the backroom, and good, hurry it up.

Sirius watches him go, looks straight ahead at Remus, who is just sitting with his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking profusely, and that, right there, is all Sirius really needs; the rest is just welcomed noise. 

“What’d they say, Bossman?” James asks brightly. 

Will whips his apron off and promptly pitches it at the floor, “Could be an hour, could be six,” he snaps, garnering whoops from James and Charlotte behind the counter. “No — no _whooping_ I want this place ready to go the second the water’s back on; James, get back out there and play some defense before someone waddles on in here, Charlotte, finishes those up and get the case switched over, I’ll get the coffee all ground up and in place so all we have to do is press start, and somebody fucking find David and get him on rotation.”

Charlotte and James immediately try to opt out of the last job, but James is quicker at signaling Not It and Charlotte flips him off before heading for the back room. Sirius sighs brightly, facing Remus again. 

“OK, even I can admit that would have been a horrible series of events to miss out on,” Remus says, splaying his hands evenly on the table in front of him, “but I think we’re encroaching on unwelcome visitor status, and maybe our presence is a bit, err, rude?” 

Sirius sighs at him. “Come on, no one cares if we’re just in the corner, having a cup,” he says before taking another solid quarter out of his drink in a single sip. 

“We came, we visited,” Remus lists off, “it’s just not the day to be hovering around, clearly.” 

“I’m definitely not leaving now,” Sirius insists. “You can’t pay for this kind of entertainment.”

Remus breathes in, pushes the same breath out his nose. “OK, then I’ll go visit Sophie, while you sit here just to prove a point to a bloke you couldn’t care less about.” 

Sirius takes his mouth off of his straw. “What is with you?” Sirius asks, his brow furrowing. 

“What do you mean?” Remus asks. “I don’t want to overstay.” 

“This is the first time you’ve been by in weeks,” Sirius points out, “and the first thing you want to do is leave.”

Remus swallows before breathing in, lifting his right hand to scratch idly at his forehead. “I didn’t realize how many people know who I am just by my presence near you,” he says. “I mean, I knew meeting Charlotte was going to be a lot and I was prepared for that, but—” 

Sirius lifts his hands to halt the thought train before it leaves the station. “She couldn’t be more cool than she is about it,” he stresses. “She’s a bit peeved you’re unavailable, but a good kind; you passed with flying colours without even trying.” 

“I didn’t know he knew about me, too,” Remus says, hushed down as he nods curtly toward the bar where Sirius has a feeling David is now occupying. "You could have warned me.“

“Warned you about what?” Sirius raises.

Remus huffs lowly. "That he'd get all—" He cuts off, doing an impression of David's vapid face, and it needs some work, but he's only just met the guy; there's time to perfect it, but the sentiment lands either way. 

"He's just bothered by my presence on an off day," Sirius explains. “And he would’ve been just as if I’d dragged Peter in here, too, so you know; it really isn't you.” 

“Well, no, he probably wouldn’t have scoffed so forcefully, and he’d have called him your mate,” Remus counters. “You said, ‘who do you think it is,’ meaning he already knew who I was and just hadn’t put it together; so, why does he know?” 

Sirius sits back in his seat, but really, he more got pushed there. “I can’t help that he’s a mosquito,” he puts down, lifting a hand to count on his fingers. “I’ve got James, I’ve got Mary, I’ve got Charlotte who all know and ask about you all the time, so, what, am I to police myself and pretend I don’t know who Remus is when they ask and David just happens to be hovering? I’m not quieting down for him, I’m not, he can block his ears if he doesn’t want to hear it.”

Remus breathes in, out, holds his hands together like he’s about to teach Sirius a concept. “Alright, but don’t you see that when you invite outside people into us, you’re also giving them ammunition to use at some point?” 

Sirius drapes himself over top of his side of the table, giving out a laborious sigh. “Remus, if I got sore over every single person who makes a stank face at me over who I choose to sleep with, I’d never get anywhere,” he puts it plainly. 

“Right, but we weren’t even near each other and he called it parading,” Remus says, talking with his hands so Sirius knows he’s rumpled to hell and back. “It’s quite clear that he doesn’t think much of us simply sitting and existing near him, so maybe we should be more careful and rethink the places we’re open about this.” 

Sirius’ throat hurts. “If the act of just existing puts people like him off, then why wouldn’t we keep doing what we’re doing?” he raises. “Fuck people like him, Remus; they’re a disease and not much else.” 

“I don’t want our existence to be an act of defiance at all,” Remus sends him, doing his best to keep his voice down. “Everything we do ends up being a statement and I didn’t ask for that job, I didn’t asked to get cooed at in the street for moving a strand of hair of yours out of your eyes like I did it for a display, I didn’t ask to be accosted after laying too close to you at the square, I don’t want to have any of it; I just want to be with you and leave everyone outside of it right where they are.” 

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Remus,” Sirius insists, feeling oddly sick to his stomach. “That shit gets to me, too, I’m not a robot, but there’s a better way to come at this stuff than to just say you won’t participate in any of it. The fact of the matter is, when we do that sort of thing, we are lit up on display, no matter what the reaction is, so I don’t have the answer to this, I just have mine and I think not giving a shit what Piece-of-Shit David and people like him or nothing like him think is a start?”

Remus pushes his hands up underneath his sunglasses to rub at his eyes. “You always make these things sound like they’re the easiest mantras to adopt in the world,” he says tightly, “and you’re saying it to someone whose—”

“You know,” Sirius cuts in, right peeved, “some people, and I’m not saying me, but some might think you’ve been sending mixed signals.” 

“Sirius,” Remus says, baffled surely. 

“No,” Sirius shakes his head, “I said, not me. Now, if say, you weren’t all over me when we’re alone or with our mates, I myself might have a harder time with the way you are in public with me, but again, since you treat me like a king the instant we’re alone, I’ve counted those moments, I’ve clung to those instances, I’ve held onto the way you look at me, but even with all of those, you don’t yearn the same way I do.” 

Remus reels back a bit, a plain face on. “Pretty sure you know exactly how much I yearn,” he returns. 

“You don’t tell anyone about me,” Sirius stresses. 

“We talked about this,” Remus stresses in reply. “Our friends know, why isn’t that enough?” 

“Never from your mouth,” Sirius puts out. “Not since we started, so that tells me it’s actually less about you and more about who you’re with; your work friends didn’t know—” 

"—They sure fucking do now—” 

“—Your school mates don’t know, Sophie sure as hell doesn’t, the way she hangs off you—”

“—Oh, you have _got_ to stop hounding her. That’s never been funny, and it doesn’t matter whether I tell her or not, we’re not that close, Sirius; I don’t know why our mates knowing isn’t enough—” 

“Our friends finding out was incidental, and let’s not pretend you didn’t even spend a full day enjoying this before you suggested we wait to tell them,” Sirius clarifies.

“Well, we didn’t, did we?” Remus puts in. 

“Not for lack of trying on your part,” Sirius returns pointedly. “And you and I both know Dorcas wouldn’t have found out if she didn’t wander out onto the terrace when she did, so she really shouldn’t count as broadening the circle.”

Remus huffs grand. “You don’t have to make it seem like she walked in on us with our pants down,” he retorts. “It was a snog and we were days into this; I was still reeling over it happening at all and it was weeks after she and I had a rather confusing situation, so maybe you could try to understand why that particular instance was tricky, if you remember.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Sirius nods. “Just another situation I’ve been unbelievably cool about, considering.” 

“Why are you doing this?” Remus demands. “There’s nothing there, nothing; we’re solid mates, she loves you, we couldn’t have asked for a better result when there was a lot more riding on that than you’re even considering.” 

Sirius points toward him with the straw in his drink. “That’s it, Remus; thank you,” he chimes. “I’ve been more patient with you than I’ve been about anything, I’ve thought and thought and rethought about all the reasons you wouldn’t meet me halfway, and I didn’t push you—”

“Yeah, you did,” Remus returns. 

Sirius sours right quick. “I asked you to move in because we were happy and I wanted you cared for, but you’re right, I suppose,” he says tightly. “Nearly six months in, what was I thinking?” 

“We were happy the way we were,” Remus stresses. “I thought we were happy now.” 

Sirius nearly chucks his coffee at the window near them, but no — no, that’s Walburga’s style and that’s not welcome here. “You spent plenty of time thinking and worrying about how not to insult Dorcas with the news of us, but you haven’t thought once about how avoiding the subject of me like the plague straight on into _June_ was going to feel like to me, but fuck me, right?” he shoots at him. “Shit just rolls off my back.” 

“I do think about that,” Remus clarifies; cordially, of course, since they’re out in fucking public. 

“Then you may want to try doing something about that, because the behaviour doesn’t really track,” Sirius sends him, pitching himself back against the cushion of his seat and crossing his arms. 

“I thought I had?” Remus raises. “Unless my mum and dad don’t mean more than the lass at the soap shop next door.” 

Sirius leans his head back, puts out a gigantic huff, and uncrosses his arms to rub his hands over his face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know I’m being a lot, but I can’t fucking stop thinking that this is you telling me without actually telling me that you’re only halfway in, and I've tried telling myself I know better but the question just keeps coming back; what have you _done_ to me, making me think and feel this much for someone, I—” 

Remus smirks a little, making Sirius falter. “Made you feel like shit, I’m seeing,” he says, taking his hands off of the table to curl them in his lap, no doubt. “I didn’t realize you wanted so much of all that — the hand-holding, the kisses in the farmer’s market, the whole thing.” 

“I didn’t,” Sirius insists, lifting his shoulders. “Hell, I was stunted before you; I thought I couldn’t feel like this about anybody, and I tried a few times to see if I could, but nothing was clicking for me, no one clicked for me until you, and now — yeah, _yeah_; maybe I wouldn’t mind a kiss on the way somewhere, or an arm around me while we’re walking the dog — I’m a simple man, OK?”

Remus shoots a much more pressurized smirk through his nose. “No, no you’re not,” he says, laughing a bit. “I’ve told you why I don’t just tell anyone, but I’ve omitted Dorcas from my vocabulary with them, when I talk to them I try to bring you up specifically so they get used to your name being as constant in my life as it is, and I don’t know that it’ll soften the news any, if they’ll connect the dots and realize I’ve been talking about you for weeks on end but I have to hope it will, even if I keep hanging up with them and knowing that it’s still not landing properly—” 

“This was supposed to be a team effort, you know," Sirius puts in. "I can’t know if all of this is just tornadoing around in your head if you don’t tell me.” 

“I don’t like telling you it, because I don’t want to hurt you—” Remus puts out a breathy, humourless laugh, “—I don’t want to hurt you and I still end up doing it.”

Sirius’ stomach jerks as Remus pushes out of his booth seat, immediately figuring he’s off to somewhere walled off and quiet to shut him right out of the very dynamic Sirius leapt after at the thought of losing even a morsel of it, but Remus just stands by Sirius’ cushion, waiting for him to move over and make room for him, and Sirius is nothing but a petty bitch, so he will do no such thing; Remus is going to have to sit right by him, thigh to thigh, if he wants in. 

Remus pushes a breath out of his cheeks, takes a seat right beside Sirius, and goes twice as far as Sirius would have dreamed of and drapes his right leg over Sirius’ knees, more to fit his tree branch limbs into the small amount of space he has to work with, but Sirius’ skin tingles all the same. 

“See, you don’t even know it, but my skin sings when you do anything like this,” Sirius tries. “I’m not asking for you to trot along hand in hand with me everywhere we go, that’s not me, is it?” 

“No,” Remus grants. “It doesn’t sound like you.” 

“Exactly,” Sirius says. “Small, lingering touches in the grocery? A little wrist brush when we're out on the town? Magnifique, truly, and in some ways you just brushing by me is enough, but sometimes I want more than that.” 

“Shh,” Remus puts out, fishing in his trouser pockets and pulling out his keys — oddly.

“Don’t shush me,” Sirius huffs. “I’m reciting poetry over here.” 

Remus lifts his head to aim a quiet huff at him, flicking through his keys, and Sirius squints at him, then his eyes round off extensively as Remus pulls his house key off of the ring, and Sirius — no, he’ll _die_ if Remus does what he thinks he's about to do. 

He does. Remus holds his house key up between the two of them, half-smiling, half frowning. “I thought about giving you it on Monday, but I talked myself out of it, because I’m who I am,” he says, sheepish, “but the truth is, you should have had this months ago and I don’t think I really thought about what not giving you it must have felt like to you, and the other truth of it, is there’s never going to be a right time to give it to you if it’s already well-past that point.” 

Sirius takes hold of the key a beat or two later, his throat tight as he inspects it like it were made of glass. “What about you?” he asks. 

“What about me?” Remus checks. 

“How are you going to get back into yours?” Sirius reiterates, smiling a bit. 

“Well, I do have the mat key,” Remus reasons, “and I suppose if I were to lose that, I’ll just come get you to let me in.”

Sirius bites his lower lip, running his thumb over the face of the key, and breathes in, giving Remus a bright, toothy grin. 

Remus sighs. “You forgot your keys, didn’t you.” 

“Mhm, I did,” Sirius supplies. “I’ve nowhere to put this key to your heart.” 

“Ohh, here,” Remus says, plucking it out of Sirius’ hand. “I’ll keep it for now, and you can take it back when you’ve got a ring to put it on.” 

“Oi,” Sirius says, reaching for it, “I wasn’t done with it yet.” 

“You’ll lose it,” Remus chides, closing his fingers around it. 

“I will not,” Sirius returns, making a single grabby motion with his right hand and Remus sighs himself, dropping the key into his hand for Sirius to continue petting. 

“You’re really very odd,” Remus mentions, sitting easier beside him. 

“And yet, you are so into me?” Sirius raises, smiling brightly. 

Remus smirks, watches him for a few beats, and he is truly unreadable until he reaches up and tucks a lock of Sirius’ free flowing hair behind his right ear, right here, _en publique_. Sirius curls his hands around Remus’ right thigh, keeping the key locked tight in his right fist as he does it. It can't be all that easy for Remus given the other people in the room, and 'course, Sirius would love a kiss, but this is nice; enough. 

“I’m not changing my mind on you,” Remus says, speaking close, and maybe that’s the right way to do it if they're words meant just for Sirius. “I’ll work on this, OK? I didn’t know you felt we were missing all that, but I need you to know I’m all in. I’ve never not been all in, that’s me.”

Sirius wants to kiss him so, so badly. 

"I'll try more, and I’m sorry I scoffed at your progress," Remus adds, like the words are coming out like a fountain. "You’re a figure of monumental bravery, only you chose to see someone who's spent a long, long time trying to blend in, and that’s a lot harder to rewrite after so long, but I promise, you are the sole reason I’m evening telling them.” 

“That can’t be all true, Remus,” Sirius says, quiet like him. 

“I went, what, eight years leaving everybody out of it?” Remus raises. “I could do longer, but I don’t want to with you in the picture and I need this to go well as much for you as it is for me; I want you to have a win this time.” 

Sirius breathes in and his throat is so tight he might actually suffocate in here. “We need to go.” 

Remus reels back a mere inch. “Now?” 

“Yes, now,” Sirius insists, letting go of Remus’ leg so he can tell him to vamoose with his hands, too. “I can’t kiss you here and I want to, and besides, we’re just getting in the way at this point.” 

Remus takes his lower lip between his teeth, huffing through his nose like a bearded dragon might. “For that last bit, I should really hold out on you.” 

A loud thud on the table knocks the two of them out of their stupor and they look toward it in identical turns of their heads, finding a carton of soy milk laying shipwrecked on the table and David looming over the end of it by Remus’ only exit strategy; looking them over like they’re shit stains on his shoes. 

“Oh, no no no,” Remus says, shaking his head.

Sirius’ stomach goes for a nice, little tizzy at Remus' tone, while David simply ignores that and uncaps a sharpie, popping the cap onto the back of the marker. “See, this here is soy milk, the word milk being just as important in that it will expire eventually, so when we open one of these, they’re actually meant to be dated for the following week, and that means when you open this, you’re expected to write the date we'll need to use it by, literally anywhere on the face of it, even on the back would be fine, but something to let all of us know whether we should be serving this to paying customers,” he instructs politely, holding the sharpie out to Sirius specifically. “Do you want to give it a shot right now?”

Remus looks to Sirius, Sirius looks to him, and even without Remus’ eyes on display, his mouth and brow placement are pristine comedy, and the two of them are rolling in the booth a mere beat or two later. 

David scoffs a good thirty seconds into their guffaw. “OK, really?” he puts out, flying his hands toward the two of them holding onto each other for support. “There’s nothing funny about this.” 

Remus wipes gingerly at his eyes underneath his shades. “Oh, no, it really is,” he says, laughter alive in his voice as he gestures for David to back up and let him leave the damn booth. “All you’ve done now is make it absolutely certain that he’ll never date a single thing since he knows it bothers you.” 

Sirius hoots another round, pocketing Remus’ flat key and following Remus out of the booth. “Oh, now you leave?” David raises.

“Mmhm, babey,” Sirius sends him, heading toward the door at a quick clip, trying to keep up with Remus’ long, long legs while being utterly loopy after being deprived of air for a full minute. 

Remus waves goodbye to Charlotte behind the bar, who in turn waves royally similar to the way the Queen might, and Remus pushes through the cafe door with Sirius hot on his heels, giving a quick parting wave to Charlotte before heading through the door behind him. 

“We’ll meet you back at yours, cool?” Remus details. 

James, holding a tray of loaves, looks utterly betrayed. “I’m done in half an hour,” he puts up. “Wait for me.” 

“Nope,” Sirius returns, brightly. “That means we’ve only got half an hour and we’ve got to hurry.” 

“You little trollops,” James sends after them. 

“Walk around the block a few?” Sirius raises. 

James sends him a long _bahhh_ for the trouble, but the man owes Sirius one anyway. They get to the end of the mall strip, Remus a true step ahead of Sirius with Sirius' hands tapping excitedly on the small of his back, so for that Sirius stops short of ramming into Remus when he stops still on the sidewalk.

"Sophie."

"Fuck it, you're already gone," Sirius insists, prodding Remus' lower back.

\--

Early the following week, Remus reaches out to each member of the group detailing a plan for a wee celebration for Dorcas’ birthday. The day itself isn’t until the twenty-seventh which falls on a Saturday this calendar year and would be a rather well-placed day to pick if their group was made up of people who know what a free weekend looks like. He sets a tentative date for Thursday, corroborates with Dorcas on the date and finds out she wants brunch and nothing else, and once that’s cemented, Remus double checks which time would work for all six members of the group and the vote is cast for the early afternoon time block, and Remus sends out a final message stating that the gang will meet for brunch at a little spot he and Sirius found near Remus’ place, a spot that they both assure they’ll all write home about it. 

Sirius has to admit watching Remus message back and forth and iron out the details with the sort of precision and drive he typically reserves for schooling and work is a fine sight to see in and of itself, make no mistake about that, but there is something greater to witnessing Remus opt to coordinate an event with six people not all that long after opting to go under near-house arrest for over a fortnight. 

When the brunch date arrives, Sirius is personally feeling rather good, and he thinks he has lots of reasons for that. For instance, Sirius is an advocate for brunch forever and ever, amen, and for that, he’s got himself a whole slew of bacon on his plate after ordering the triple meat special and subbing out every option for more bacon. Another, Remus called ahead and booked a table for six early that morning and listened to Sirius’ insistence that the weather would hold up for a spot out on the front terrace, and it’s a good thing Remus did take the plunge and request an outdoor table when it’s easy, breezy, beautiful out here. 

Yet another, Sirius is surrounded by his favourite collection of clowns, with Remus on his right, James and Lily across from them, and Peter and Dorcas on either ends of the table, and overall, Sirius is likely at his best when he doesn’t have to look too far to find any of them. For another even, Remus passed Sirius his mimosa, waving it off and sticking to water himself, so Sirius has had two glasses and is therefore feeling rather warm in the cheeks, but thankfully Dorcas is also looking rather rouge in the cheeks herself. And finally, but most importantly, Remus, with a full terrace around him, has taken to tracing little shapes against the inside of Sirius’ upper right arm with the tip of his left forefinger within the rather minuscule distance between the two of them — a decision and placement of their chairs that was all Remus’ doing, and Sirius would be a liar if he pretended he wasn’t feeling rather tender about that development. 

Wrap all that together and stick a bow on it, and Sirius is feeling incandescent. So much so, that when Dorcas, over on Remus’ right at the end spot on the table, plucks a modest ring off her right ring finger, sets it on the table between her and Remus’ plates, and takes to rubbing at the skin underneath where the ring lay on her right ring finger, all Sirius really does all but stare pointedly at it.

For a brief beat, he wonders if Remus and Dorcas quietly planned this moment together, but Remus moves suddenly, wicked fast at that, and reaches for it with his right hand while his left is gripping Sirius’ right bicep like a vice-grip, so that alone tells Sirius there had been zero cahoots and chance has intervened here.

Remus plucks the ring off of the table, bringing the conversation to a screeching halt and a light laugh out of Dorcas who simply stares bemusedly at him, and Remus glances around the table in the span of a true second and promptly lets go of Sirius’ arm to slip the ring on his finger, turning his right hand and flashing the ring around. 

“What do we think?” Remus raises, tucking his hand daintily underneath his chin with the ring pointed outward and on supreme display, taking one for the entire team. “Is it me?” 

Sirius feels like writing his own set of vows for this beautiful team sport, James pushes an entire breath of air into his cheeks while his chest heaves, Peter snorts amidst the piece of toast he’s working on, and Lily and Dorcas succumb to similar fits of giggles. 

“Oh, I don’t know, I’d rather see what a honkin' man-ring looks on you first,” Sirius insists. 

“Yes,” Lily says lively, pointing across the table at them, “one that takes up half his hand.”

“Something that truly pops,” James offers. 

“I’m not even going to sit here and pretend that I’m not a little miffed at how easily that thing fits,” Dorcas mentions. “Nice, clear reminder that I’ve got gigantic hands.”

“It only just went on it,” Remus clarifies, generous of spirit for forever and always, and then he makes to demonstrate that but finds the ring isn’t budging and then the whole table gets a treat in that they’re permitted to watch Remus panic in real time and try to wrestle the ring off his finger while telling the rest of the group, now in stitches, to simmer down. 

“I don’t want to die with this on,” Remus manifests, giving a full tug on it and pulling the ring free, and the table is still hooting when their waitress turns up with a whole new tray of mimosas. 

Remus waits until the waitress has finished gathering up all the empty flutes and has headed off before he slides the mimosa she set in front of him over toward Sirius, who presses a quick kiss to Remus’ left shoulder as he works on a new strip of bacon. 

“Here,” James says, passing his mimosa over the table, and Sirius gasps, right piqued. “They pack a wallop and I still have to drive us back.” 

Sirius bobs lightly, loving that he hasn’t got a car so the designated driver role could never fall to him, and accepts the gift in kind. “You don’t wear rings, do you,” Remus puts up.

Sirius to glances sidelong at him, finds he’s still holding onto the ring with his head tilted and facing Lily in the seat across from him, and some of it is the sunglasses making his eyes unreadable, but it’s done with such ease and simple curiosity that Sirius takes to playing with Remus’ left hand underneath the table just to have something to do while he’s so bloody impressed. 

Lily shakes her head while taking a sip from her brand new mimosa. “Not that it says much, but I’ve never got my ears done, either,” she offers, shrugging her shoulders once. 

Dorcas, who herself is sitting back in her chair and partaking in her own mimosa, turns her head comically slow toward Lily with her face riddled with confusion. “How did I not notice that?” she asks, reaching out with her free hand to lift the veil of Lily’s hair enough to see her left, unpoked ear. “Why not?” 

Lily pushes half a breath out the side of her mouth, her forehead creasing over her sunglasses. “I had the option when all the other girls in my first communion class were asking to get them done, and my mum was all for it, but I wasn’t at all interested at the time,” she says, “and then I just, went through school not all that driven to get them done later, and Sirius put me right off of the idea when I had to watch him pierce his own ears.” 

Sirius swallows a sip of mimosa and leans into the table a little. “I wanted to see if I could, Lilith.” 

“You made me do it for you,” Peter complains.

“And did you not do it well, Pete?” Sirius sends back.

“It bled a fuckload,” James puts in. 

“Well, they’re ears, what did you expect?” Sirius returns. 

“I would have killed you,” Remus puts out lively. 

“It was before your time, have some bacon,” Sirius offers, plucking a strip off of his plate and passing it onto Remus, who stews as he munches on it. 

“That wasn’t me,” Dorcas says, showcasing a whole slew of studs and rings on either ear, “I got one done at a parlor on a school trip and the dam opened right up.” 

“I like them on you,” Lily offers. “If I could get over the sight of Sirius’ blood trickling down his neck which might take a decade or two, then maybe I’d get them done, but I’m not opposed to jewelry as a whole.”

Lily lifts her left wrist and jingles the bracelet on it for show. “Oh,” Dorcas says, charmed as she catches Lily’s wrist to have a look at it. 

“From my mum; grad present,” she says, bobbing her shoulders. 

“Looks a lot like this,” Remus says, holding up the ring he’s still fucking got, and in truth, it really does match the bracelet. 

Lily takes in a light breath, reaching out for it, and Remus hands it over the table quite calmly while if that had been Sirius, he’d have chucked the thing at her just to make this happen quicker, but there’s a reason Remus has been tasked with this venture. 

Sirius flickers his gaze to James as Lily takes hold of the room, controls his mouth so he won’t smile at all while the man studies his scrambled eggs with a curious prod of his fork and incredible focus, and looks back at Lily just in time to watch the ring slide easily onto her ring finger, and both he and Remus squeeze each other’s hand tightly. 

“Well, that’s that,” Dorcas says. “Keep it; it was meant to be.” 

Lily hits panic mode. “Oh, I couldn’t.” 

“Can, and you will,” Dorcas raises it, cheersing Lily with her glass. 

“It’s your birthday,” Lily sends her, all ruffled up. 

“Not yet,” Dorcas chimes. 

Peter promptly reaches for the plate of jam near the center of the table and huffs. “I hate strawberry,” he muses, moving the conversation along on purpose, easily, but Sirius isn’t a fan at all of the method. 

“Go to hell?” he sends him. 

“I will with my peanut butter,” Peter trumpets at him, flapping the tiny packet of it at him with his right hand while the other is cupped around his mouth. 

Now, to someone well versed and therefore used to the dynamic at this table, like Sirius perhaps, would have considered this rather typical, but given that Dorcas flitters in and out of the group now and again, the amount of chortling going on at her end of the table at this exchange is no surprise to Sirius either, though he has a feeling the mimosas may have helped in her thinking they’re a veritable theatre troupe on wheels. 

“I missed this,” she says, sitting easy in her chair. 

“You should come around more,” Lily bids. “It couldn’t be helped while you were away, but you’ve been back for weeks.” 

“Well, I’d have come around if someone invited me,” Dorcas returns, pointedly turning her head to Remus, who went and took a mouthful just before the resounding callout and frowns for it, looking around at the rest of them for support. 

“Wasn’t personal, he ditched us for a while there, too,” Peter offers. 

Sirius and Remus put out similar huffs. “Mhm,” James concurs, nodding his head toward Sirius, “only that one was permitted inside the forcefield he put up.” 

“Can we not?” Remus requests, right hand covering his mouth. 

“Can you not see him here, right now?” Sirius checks. “He’s not an illusion, you know.”

The topic doesn’t blow over as quick as Remus or even Sirius would like it, too, but their plates get finished, Sirius makes it to his final mimosa and is feeling both lovely and rather warm in equal measures, and their waitress comes by soon after that and sparks a wildfire in the form of a thunderous debate. First, Dorcas utterly refuses to get her meal paid for, a line in the sand that Remus then comes in and kicks away, stressing that this was the deal, and from there, Sirius goes ahead and tells the waitress it’s all on one bill and it’ll be on credit mostly so the poor lass can leave the table before the fallout takes her out, too, but then he’s got to deal with Remus’ heat directed a him, more of an unsurprising turn of events than Dorcas’ objections for Remus definitely had stressed that he’d be covering Dorcas’ meal prior to their arriving, but c’mon now, in what world was Sirius going to go along with that plan? Not this one. 

The debate carries on after their waitress flees the scene, only now it’s five against one for the rest of them just pile on behind Remus over Sirius’ offer to get the whole thing, and Sirius has to loudly exclaim that he’s got it and they can all deal with it or send him their share if they so choose to later, and sits back in his seat with his mimosa in hand, blocking out the hums and haws coming at him left and right. Eventually their waitress does return totting the interac machine in one hand and the bill in the other, and James sure does try to flag her down for, but Sirius is hotter and quicker about it so he wins her attention sooner than James does. 

Sirius is just handing the machine back to her when Lily pushes out of her seat, citing a need for the loo while having little knowledge of where it’s located. “I’ll show you,” their waitress says, tearing the merchant receipt off of the machine the moment it prints off. “Need yours?” 

Sirius, having just put a sip of mimosa in his mouth, simply shakes his head, waving it off, and the girl bids them all a fine day and Lily follows her in, the two of them heading through the terrace and in through the door, and the moment Lily’s out of sight, Remus, Sirius, and James lean toward Dorcas, causing her to reel back at once.

“What’s your ring size?” Remus asks, quick and swift. 

“I—” Dorcas starts; fearful, definitely, “—I don’t know?” 

“What?” James puts out. “How is this possible?” 

“I tried a bunch of them on in the store and went with the one that fit?” Dorcas puts up, looking between James and the other two warily, though her gaze certainly fixes on James — understandable when he’s huffing and puffing in his seat. “What’s happening right now?” 

“He’s proposing in a few months and hasn’t got her ring size determined yet,” Peter offers her. 

Dorcas takes in a resounding breath, looking back at James with a bright gape/grin hybrid that could rival Sirius’, he’ll admit it. “I’d better get an invite,” she says. “I’m great at weddings.” 

“You’ll be on the list, trust,” James insists. 

Dorcas sits back in her chair, appearing quite satisfied with that answer, and finishes off her mimosa with a quick swig, sniffing once. “You know you can get them resized, yeah?” she checks, eyes on James again. 

“That’s what I said,” Sirius puts out.

“What’s happened to you people while I wasn’t looking, hm?” James puts up. “Where’s the romance, the intrigue, the surprise of it all gone? I want it to be a stellar night, and that can’t happen if I give her a ring and then take it back immediately because I never found out her size.”

“I get it, James,” Peter puts in. 

James sends him a smooch noise before looking diagonally across the table at Remus. “And you,” he says, nodding to him, “deserve a full snog for how you managed to turn that around so easily, so you listen here; I’m at your service, you feel me?” 

“I sure do, but I’m OK,” Remus says with a smoothing gesture of his hands. “You may want to tackle the next step, mind; we still don’t have a size.” 

“Well, I could knick it when she takes it off next, but I saw the way she looked at it once it was on and I think she’ll notice it missing,” James insists, looking around at them all with a grimace. 

Sirius finishes his mimosa off in a quick swig and plonks it down on the table, bringing all gazes onto him as he clears his throat. “Here’s what you do,” he says astutely, gesturing toward him, “you knick it to trace the diameter onto a clean sheet of paper, swiftly put the ring back where you found it, and bring the paper to the shopkeep; easy peasy lemon squeezy.” 

James levels Sirius’ double OK symbols with a deadpan stare. “You’re not funny.” 

“I’m a little funny,” Sirius mentions, tossing his right thumb toward Remus and his rather shaky shoulders. “He thinks so, too.” 

Remus wipes the smile off his lips. “I’m not getting into this one,” he denies, lifting his hands and sitting back in his seat for show. 

“Well,” Peter raises, gaze on Dorcas across the length of the table from him. “Could you take a few minutes in the shop you found that one in and try a few on, see which size fits you, report back your findings.” 

Dorcas’ eyes flicker to life before she nods profusely, and Sirius drums his empty glass on the table while James gives out a round of seal claps in favour. “Brilliant,” Remus calls it. 

“I sometimes am,” Peter says. 

“Like a blue moon coming up over the clouds,” Sirius recites sagely. 

“Fuck you,” Peter tosses at him. 

“Come with?” Dorcas asks Remus before taking in a sharp breath through her teeth. “You work all weekend, fuck; I knew that.” 

“Not Sunday,” Remus raises. 

“I’m on Sunday,” Dorcas frowns, holding it for two or three beats before looking to Sirius with a bright smile. “You down? The family’s got me booked up all of Saturday — barf, but I can do tomorrow?” 

Sirius places both hands over his heart. “I close, but I’m double down if we make it before two.”

Dorcas’ face clouds over immediately. “I work a mid tomorrow,” she professes, looking down the table at Peter. “You free after four?” 

“Yeah,” Peter puts out, loudly definitely, but a lass did just ask him to go to a destination with him, the details of why are rather irrelevant surely. 

“Oh, thank God,” Dorcas expels. “I didn’t want to just walk into the place alone and start trying on rings without meaning to buy a single one without reinforcements.” 

“It’s also not needed until the fall,” James mentions. “Like, October, so it really doesn’t have to be tomorrow; I’m just antsy.” 

“Hadn’t noticed, James,” Sirius says politely. 

James sends him one powerful kick to his right shoe underneath the table. “Get off my dick.” 

“Well, it’s already been decided,” Dorcas says of it. “Can’t turn back now.” 

“Exactly,” Peter offers. “And come Friday, say, six? You’ll be feeling yards better finally having an idea of it.” 

James looks to Peter with determination lining his features. “Don’t you spoil it, Pete.” 

“I won’t spoil it,” Peter returns indignantly. 

Sirius snorts. “You will come bouncing over to ours with the information, see Lily in the room, and start speaking in code instead of waiting until she isn’t there,” he predicts. 

“I won’t,” Peter insists, kicking Sirius’ left shoe. 

“Enough with the kicking,” Sirius requests haughtily. 

“You’re lucky there’s a table here,” James tosses him. 

Sirius pulls his legs up and sits crossed-legged in his chair to see right to that, but his right knee lays over Remus’ left thigh if he commits to it. “That OK?” he asks, quietly between them. 

Remus answers him by placing his left hand over Sirius’ knee, holding it in place, and Sirius, well, he may as well be sitting on a cloud. “I think I’ve already retired from my position as an agent, so there’s an opening for the job as is, Pete,” he raises.

“Excuse?” James puts in. 

Remus raises his free hand at him, looking over the table bemusedly. “Were you asleep for the last minute?” he checks. “The torch has already been passed along; it’s in their hands now and I for one am giving Peter a fine letter of recommendation.” 

“Remus,” Peter says, all rumpled up over the voucher. 

“Do not,” Remus says, pointing at him with a deft hand, “speak in code around her.” 

Sirius snorts grand while Peter huffs to rival Remus even. “You guys are so much,” Dorcas says, grinning all the while on her end of the table before she drops it completely. “Stop talking.” 

“Shh shh shh,” James puts out and then, it makes all the more sense when Lily comes traipsing out of the restaurant looking like she’s a tad loopy from the mimosas as well. 

“Hoo, shit,” Lily says, plopping down in her seat and beaming. “Some bright light in there, boys.”

Dorcas snorts. “I’ve been called worse.” 

“Are they all mixing together?” Sirius asks of the light fixtures. 

“They are,” Lily insists. “I’d wait to go somewhere else if I were you.” 

“Here, have this,” James offers, placing his halfway full glass of water in front of her. 

Sirius looks right at Remus, eyeing his water glass before Remus catches him at it and sighs, handing it over. “Only you would drink five mimosas at brunch,” he mentions. 

“Ummmm,” Sirius trills. “Who drank an entire gin slushie with me, hm?”

James raises his hand like an eager 6th grader. “He did,” he answers. 

“No one called on you?” Remus sends him. 

“Ohh, you can have an entire pinner to yourself when we get back and you’ll catch right up to me,” Sirius says of it. 

“You going back to Remus’?” James asks, openly not loving that option already. 

“Relax, princess,” Sirius stresses. “He’s coming back to ours.” 

“Are you coming, too?” Lily asks, turning a glossy eyed grin on Dorcas, who smiles for it and sort of shifts in her chair. 

“I’m sort of meeting someone in a bit,” she says, “but otherwise, fuck yeah?” 

Lily immediately forgets about the pout she’d just had on. “Hot date?” 

“You could call it that,” Dorcas allows. “I knew I wouldn’t get any action on my actual birthday with my parents and brother bumbling about, so today worked out well on two counts.” 

“Coming to Pride, though?” Sirius checks, staring severely over at her.

“Oh, I booked it off, trust me,” Dorcas returns.

“Want a lift back to yours?” James offers. “Wouldn’t be on to make the birthday girl walk home.”

“There are six of us,” Remus observes slowly. 

“Peter can lay across the three of you, easy,” James says, waving that off. 

“I’m OK with that,” Peter says.

“I mean, I’d definitely take it,” Dorcas says. “I put aside this gigantic poster at Reckless last week that I’m meaning to get for my mum if you want to come along while I get it; beats having to carry the thing back to mine on the tube.” 

Sirius and Remus give rather identical shoulder bobs at the idea of a field trip down to Reckless, and mum and dad across the table are a little too blinded by their utter appreciation for the display to decline on that proposal. “Let’s get the fuck out,” James puts out in a tune, pushing out of his seat. 

The rest of them spiritedly follow suit, but Sirius hangs back to down the lasts of the water Remus valiantly gave over to him and places it down on the table with a thunk, looking up from the table and piquing at finding Remus hanging back by the terrace exit, waiting on him. 

“Oop, sorry,” Sirius offers, speeding up as he rounds the side of the table. 

Remus shakes his head as a pardon, smiling as he waits for Sirius to get to him, and Sirius pauses short on Remus’ left as he reaches and links their arms together. It shouldn’t be that big, in and of itself. It’s not the first time Remus has reached for him en publique since their parleying, but each time it’s happened, without Sirius in crisis-mode and Remus attempting to quell that best he can by anchoring him down, it’s as if a hand has closed around Sirius’ esophagus. 

This time, Sirius packed down five mimosas and half a glass of water and has been tasked with walking, so he ends up taking a wee stumble along with the tight pull in his chest. “You’ve got this,” Remus says of it, while strengthening his hold on Sirius to see to it personally. 

“I’ve totally got this,” Sirius assures. 

“Pick up the pace, ya dinks,” James calls back to them. 

They don’t. They do, however, follow the pack at about a half block’s distance and trade a warm, gooey look or two as they walk along. “You know,” Sirius puts in, tapping Remus’ arm with his free hand, “I know how much thought you’re putting into doing these things and I know it’s not easy, but you do make it look so natural.” 

Remus budges Sirius with a quiet smile on. “It’s not as hard as I thought it'd be,” he says. “I’m trying to look at it two ways, d’you want to hear them?” 

“Psh,” Sirius puts out. “No, hate when you talk.” 

Remus smirks out a laugh, scratching at his left brow over his sunglasses. “Well, one, I try to remember it’ll make you happy, and that part isn’t so difficult to remember,” he mentions, “the other is, when you get down to it, I want to reach out to you multiple times in a given day and I don’t or I pick my moments carefully, and instead I’m trying to stop saying no to myself as often as I did.” 

Sirius pushes a weighted breath out. “Why are you so fucking cool?” he raises, swaying the two of them back and forth on complete purpose. “You could have just said, ‘yeah, thanks,’ but no, you give me analysis and I love you for it.” 

“Thank Cunt you do,” Remus puts up. 

Sirius ducks his head amidst a heavy bout of snickers. “We have to be careful who we say that around, I bet.” 

“And I am,” Remus assures, sending his own round of snickers out through his nose. 

Sirius looks up as they’re a few steps from Reckless’ door and finds the other three have ditched them for the interior of the shop while Dorcas is lingering with the front door open, aiming a twist of a smile at them. Remus takes the door off her hands, nods for Sirius to traipse on through the threshold, and Sirius heads in, finding James, Lily, and Peter have scattered themselves around the place, perusing. 

“What’s the poster of?” Remus asks, letting the door shut behind him. 

“Massive fuckin’ _Van Morrison_ poster,” Dorcas returns. “It’s got his signature on it so my mum can tell people she first meets that she totally got it signed by him, which she definitely will, but her birthday’s next month, so, works out.” 

Remus smiles for that. “My mum’s a big fan, too.” 

“Is she,” Dorcas asks, perking up. “He’s my mum’s one and only cheat, for some reason.” 

“Well, I don’t know if it’s quite that for my mum,” Remus mentions, smirking, “but my dad arranged for _Crazy Love_ to be their first dance at their wedding because she likes that one so much, which I quite like, as a thought.” 

Dorcas looks completely overcome. “Oh, I want to tell my mum that, but she’ll just get peeved at my dad for not coming up with that himself.” 

“The tale is yours to keep,” Remus insists, smiling. 

“Or, don’t keep it, and just sit back and watch the show,” Sirius offers, heading down the first aisle to have a peruse. 

“Depends how fucked off I get by them,” Dorcas decides, heading for the counter to speak to the shopkeep. 

“A girl after my own heart,” Sirius calls to her. 

Remus finds his way over to the aisle Lily’s in, picks a crate across the aisle from her, and begins flipping through records, just having a look, while Sirius flips through a bunch of them himself. He doubts he’ll have time to really comb through to see for some gems since they’re really just here for Dorcas, and just as he’s thinking it, he comes across a copy of _Transatlanticism_ and Lily comes down his aisle and has a look in the very same crate as him, pausing Sirius’ meandering.

“Oh, that makes me feel sixteen again,” she says, flicking the record. 

“And high as a kite?” Sirius raises. 

“I was going to say whimsy and youthful, but there was some of that,” Lily allows, sticking her face against Sirius’ left shoulder. 

“Not that this isn’t nice,” Sirius mentions, “but I’m curious where this affection’s coming from.” 

“Mimosas,” Lily answers simply. 

“Ah,” Sirius returns knowingly. 

“That and I’m supposed to keep you far and away from Remus for the next minute and a half,” she tacks on. 

Sirius looks up and around, investigating his surroundings and locking in on Remus over at the till, making a purchase. “What’s he playing at?”

“It’s a gift,” Lily instills. “He’s so excited, let him have this.” 

Sirius puts out a wistful sigh. “His gifts are so on point,” he raises, “that I’m not even going to stop him from getting it.” 

“That’s growth,” Lily determines. 

“You’re growth,” he returns, tucking the album between his right arm and side. 

Lily takes in a quaint gasp. “You’re getting it?” 

“You thought I wouldn’t?” Sirius raises. 

Lily gives him a one armed hug, has a look over her shoulder, and smiles bright. “OK, he’s coming,” she says. “You might want to hold onto something.” 

Sirius turns on his heel to face the front of the store and goes ahead and uses Lily as a wall. “Something not me,” she tacks on. 

“Too late, enjoy it,” Sirius returns. 

Remus saunters up the aisle with his new purchase behind his back and a trickster smile on, and Sirius can hardly fucking wait. “I feel like your collection is electric and grand as is,” he mentions, “but I couldn’t help but think it’s missing a certain something.” 

Sirius takes to shimmying in place, bringing a bright laugh out of Lily before Remus displays _A Night Conway Twitty_ with a flourish to rival James’ theatrics, and Sirius doesn’t actually know which detail was more important to witness live, but he got both and so he’s flatlining. 

Sirius straightens up, covering his face with his hands, his own record tucked tight between his left elbow and chest. “You’re right,” he says outright. “You’re so right? This is what it was missing all along.” 

The gag ends there with a near-explosive laugh from Remus that causes Sirius to drop his hands immediately. “I’m glad I could help,” he offers, a bright beam on. 

Sirius can’t help stepping in close. “Quick one?” he asks. Remus nods once, his smile staying on, and Sirius leans in, leaving a solid smooch on his lips before pressing his hands together. “I think this calls for display somewhere.” 

“Where do you think it would best go?” Remus inquires. 

“Directly across from the front door would be my first thought,” Sirius answers. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Remus ponders. “You can’t go giving your guests a slap of perfection moment one; best to lead them into that, no?” 

“Right again,” Sirius insists. “Just above Ludwig, do you think?” 

Remus’ eyes widen with pure panic before a breathy laugh takes him over. “No, you know what,” he says, “it should go right above him, then we can see Conway from the couch.” 

“And we want that,” Sirius nods. 

Lily takes in a breath there. “You two are exactly the right fit,” she declares. 

“Oi, one of you get the door,” James puts out. 

Sirius looks past Remus to find both James and Peter carrying a massive poster, framed and all. “Jesus Cunt,” he puts out while Remus heads for the door. 

“Told you it was big,” Dorcas sends, taking her receipt from the clerk. 

Sirius heads up to the counter to pay for his own find and meanders out of the shop once that’s done, and he follows Remus and the girls along behind James and Peter as they haul the thing back to the former’s car. Once there, there really isn’t more they can do but stand around and watch while James frets over his keys. 

“They’re in my trousers,” he says finally, and Lily goes and fishes them out before popping the trunk open. 

“Will it fit?” Dorcas asks, teeth gritted. 

“Not with that attitude,” Sirius sends her, heading round behind the car to help James and Peter maneuver it in, but there’s something in the back right hand corner of the trunk that’s making it a lot more difficult to fit the frame in. “Well, I don’t know, James; think we can put the coolant in the fucking backseat instead of leaving it in here?” 

“How about I dump it all over you?” James returns. 

“Or I’ll just hold it,” Remus offers plainly. 

“The poster?” James raises, glancing over at Remus bemusedly. 

“The coolant, you knob,” Remus clarifies. 

“Fine,” James says, fishing the jug out of the back of the trunk and holding it out. “She’s yours.” 

Remus steps around the side of the car to reach for it while the other three slide the frame in a lot easier without the jug taking up valuable real estate. From there, mum and dad get in front while the rest of them work out the backseat arrangement, coming to an agreement that Sirius will just take one for the team and sit in the middle, Remus will get the left side with Dorcas on the right, and Peter crawls in on Remus’ side to avoid having to go round and try to crawl in from the road and lays on his back overtop three sets of thighs, and hey, if Peter tucks his knees in just a bit he fits just fine. 

“Sorry Remus,” Peter says for the man who got Peter’s feet in the arrangement.

Remus waves him off as the tucks the coolant jug underneath Lily's chair. “Just don’t kick me and we’re good,” Remus says, curling Peter’s feet forward so they’re curved down between Remus’ seat and the car door. “That hurt any?” 

“No, that’s better than before even,” Peter says of it. 

“Right,” James says, looking between the two front seats at the four of them. “Dorcas, whereabouts?” 

Dorcas cups a hand around her mouth and trumpets her address out, cementing her place in this car and ragtag group of clowns as far as Sirius is concerned, and James nods spiritedly, turning the key and sparking the car to life.

“Everyone grab a section of Pete and hold him down,” he calls back, one hand on the wheel, the other scrolling through his phone. 

Remus reaches for Peter’s legs, Sirius avoids Peter’s crotch by just draping an arm over his stomach, and Dorcas waves her hands around in search of what to do with them before pinning Peter down by his shoulders, and it’s a go. 

“Put something good on,” Sirius bids from the back. 

“I’m going to,” James insists. “In fact, we’re all going to need you for this one.” 

Piqued already, Sirius waits the four, five seconds it takes for James to leave his phone in the cup holder, and near-immediately _Chris De Burgh’s_ voice comes out over the speakers, and Sirius is a thousand percent ready to perform _Patricia the Stripper_ with the energy it deserves, but he’s going to need help from the crowd. 

“You all have to come in where necessary,” he conditions, as if he wouldn’t just do it all himself anyway. 

Lily answers for him with a scoff. “We’d never not.” 

Sirius launches in after that vote of confidence and it isn’t long before he’s getting the echoes necessary to perfect this performance; mum and dad up front, Remus beside him, Peter bobbing around horizontally even with his human shackles in place, and Dorcas, well, poor thing just looks happy to be in the car watching this happen, all things considered. 

They cycle through three more car tunes before James pulls up to Dorcas’ building, turns the dial and brings the volume down, and trills out his best Jeeves voice. “Your abode, ma’am.” 

“Thank you so much, guys,” Dorcas puts out, fiddling with her belt buckle. 

“Nonsense,” Peter says, lifting up to relieve Dorcas of her duties and give her freedom. 

“We should be thanking you for entertaining us, really,” Sirius raises it, placing his left hand at Peter’s back to help brace him.

Dorcas pushes out a laugh, smiling for it, and then simply sits there. “Careful getting out,” Remus just has to say surely.

“No, I’ll run straight into traffic,” she sends him. 

Remus sends a deft two finger salute to her. “Always a pleasure.” 

“I can pull the car around?” James offers.

“There’s no one coming,” Dorcas insists. “Who wants to help me bring that up?” 

“Me,” Remus says, unbuckling. 

“Yeah, no, that’d be great,” Dorcas says, nodding absently. 

“You strokin’ out, hon?” Sirius checks. 

Dorcas blinks twice at him and shakes her head, a small laugh leaving her. “No, I just—” she starts, pushing a breath of air out the side of her mouth. “I really don’t want to go anymore, I’ve got to say.” 

Sirius grins. “We got ‘er.” 

“I mean,” Dorcas says, “I don’t have to leave, do I?” 

“Certainly don’t,” Remus assures.

“Wait,” James says, turning in his seat. “Are you giving up a surefire lay for us dunderheads?” 

“God help me, I think I am,” Dorcas returns, hands covering her sheepish smile. “We can just bring that up real quick?” 

James whoops before ceremoniously popping the trunk. “I’ll help,” Lily offers, opening her door and slipping out of it. 

Dorcas and Remus get out on their respective sides of the car and round it to the trunk, and Lily adds a third hand into the mix, helping to maneuver the frame out of the trunk. Peter, perched on his lap, turns to him. “Want me to move?” 

“No point, really,” Sirius says, nonplussed. “They’ll be back in five and you’ll be right back here anyway.”

Once Remus and Dorcas have a decent hold on the frame, Lily pops the lid down, heads up the path ahead of them, and holds the lobby door open, heading in behind them to, theoretically, continue helping with Dorcas’ front door, wherever that is. 

James settles back in his seat, sticks his hands behind his head, and sighs easily. “We got ‘er.”


	18. 18.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gonna link this one more time seeing as it’s rather in theme:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28Co8b6KaRQk9GiVHQfpW1?si=iQJRb1d6RGC69yEIhzAj4A

Sirius’ breathing shallows as he rocks his hips up to meet Remus’ own, relishing in the only movement he’s being permitted to do with Remus crouched over him; he hasn’t been letting Sirius touch his hips, keeps batting his away every time Sirius tries grasping at them, which is both a travesty and a gift all jumbled into one, and given his sparse amount of freedom, Sirius sure does let his hips run wild. 

‘Course, that doesn’t mean he won’t try it again. He does, splays his fingers outstretched and free from the sheet that’s been curled up in them, reaches his hands up toward Remus while his eyes are shut with concentration as he snaps his hips back on Sirius’ cock, and that’s really the best turn of events Sirius has going for him, for Remus doesn’t see Sirius’ hands coming until they’re already grasping at hips, tugging them down and back on him at n pleading pace and grip. 

Remus snaps his eyes open at once, lifts his hands to attach them to Sirius’ wrists, and pulls up on them with a lopsided smile on and his right brow cocked as if to say, ‘did I say you could do that?’ without having to say a word, and Sirius tips his head back against the mattress under it, half-grinning as he forfeits this newest attempt. Remus, by a blessing, takes Sirius’ pleaded urging to heart despite denying Sirius of some grade A groping and ramps up the speed of his thrusts, bringing Sirius’ breathing to little more than short, clipped patterns as he gets rode straight toward oblivion; he doesn’t quite manage to quell the moan at the back of his throat in time though he tries, but now he’s even more thankful for the telly playing in the living room and doing him a solid in drowning that out. 

A sharp series of raps on the front door have Remus stalling his hips altogether and, for a few, bleak moments, Sirius simply lays there speechless, having been rather lost to the world only to be fiercely brought back to it by something as bothersome as a pointed knocks — at ten in the goddamn morning, no less. 

“Sorry,” Remus mouths, a sheepish grimace on his face as if a neighbour pounding on their door middle of sex is all his doing somehow. 

Sirius waves him off for it, begins rocking up against him as a gesture to just keep on a-fucking, but second series of knocks sound out, louder than the last round of them, and Remus looks over his shoulder warily before he looks back down at Sirius laying sprawled out under him, and there he adopts a rather amused look, flapping his hands down at their rather nude and compromising position. 

“Pete?” Sirius puts out, throwing his voice. 

The telly either gets put on mute or gets switched off completely, but Sirius can’t be arsed either way if it gives him a clearer space to speak through. “What?” 

“Someone’s at the door.”

“And?”

“Mind getting it?” 

“You’re so much closer.” 

“Little busy here, Pete.” 

Remus sticks his hands over his face, peeking at Sirius through his fingers as Peter puts out a huff. “What else is new?” he raises.

“Tell them to fuck off, that’s all I’m asking,” Sirius defends. 

He reaches up and taps on Remus’ hands, seeking permission to get a decent view of his undoubtedly sheepish frown and giving it a bright, prideful smile in return Peter tosses the remote on the coffee table by the sounds of it. And then, since Remus is a tad occupied by embarrassment, Sirius takes this short window to feel him up a little, dragging his hands up and over the tops of Remus’ thighs on either side of his body, skirts them up to his hips, and since he’s there he gives a hearty, indulgent squeeze of Remus’ arse, and surprisingly doesn’t get batted at for it, instead Remus starts to move again, breath hitching as he braces his palms on Sirius’ knees to lift himself off of Sirius’ cock and push him back down on it again, over and over, excruciatingly slow while his trickster grin stays firmly in place. 

Sirius takes his right hand back from Remus’ hip and bites down on the heel of his palm, willing himself to keep quiet as Peter takes his sweet time trudging up the hall. The closer Peter gets to his bedroom door, the harder it is to keep things quiet, and soon Sirius is beckoning Remus forward and lifting off of his back, and thankfully Remus pushes forward to meet him in the middle before they keep right on with it, hushing each other up via a tight lip lock as Peter makes it to the front door.

Sirius braces himself back on his palms while Remus takes the reigns yet again, breathing short, harsh breaths against Sirius’ lips as he rides Sirius so close to oblivion that when Remus stalls his hips still _again_ it takes him four to five seconds at least to realize the next set of knocks were much closer than the front door. 

“What?” Sirius barks.

“You might want to come here,” Peter says hurriedly. 

Sirius puts out a thwarted breath as Remus eases right off of his cock. “If it’s fucking _Hank_,” he puts out, “you tell him he has no right to complain about a little noise or I’ll take him for everything he’s got.” 

“Yeah, it’s not him,” Peter returns at once.

Remus settles down beside Sirius, who quickly scoots himself to the edge of the bed and projects himself off of it, striding to the back of his door to pull his housecoat off of the hook it’s on. 

“Oi, hold on,” Remus puts up quickly. 

Sirius looks over his shoulder as he pushes his arms through the sleeves, finding Remus wrestling with Sirius’ bed sheet as a means of covering up. Sirius holds up a beat or two, tying the sash around his waist as Remus effectively covers himself from the waist down, and yanks the door open to find Peter wringing his hands out in the doorway. 

“There’s a curt man asking for you,” he whispers. 

Sirius scoffs grand. “I’ll show him curt,” he professes. 

“Do not,” Remus puts in, “show him curt.” 

“Yeah, you might not want to do that,” Peter insists. “He’s big, and he looks like a spy so he probably knows how to drop all three of us at once.”

Sirius sends out a profound _pfft_ to that. “Let me at him,” he bids, gesturing for Peter to move out of his way. 

“Oh, you just hold on,” Remus says, lifting off of the bed and ambling over to them with Sirius’ sheet clenched around his middle. “Pete, look somewhere else?” 

Peter chooses the floor between his feet to stare at. “You’re coming with?” Sirius asks, happy to see it. 

“I’d rather you not make an enemy before noon,” Remus returns, reaching for his own housecoat and pulling it off of the hook. 

He tries his hand at putting it on around back of him while attempting to hold the bedsheet to his front with the points of his elbows, and while it certainly is a lovely sight to see, Sirius rises above the urge to watch the show go on and reaches to hold the sheet up like a partition. 

Remus shoots him a smile as he pulls his arms through the sleeves of it, leaning in to give Sirius a quick thank-you kiss on his lips and garnering a prompt retching noise from Peter. 

Both he and Remus turn their pointed looks to him at a similar speed, which gets Peter fidgeting again. “James isn’t here, so I felt I should take on his spirit.”

“Where’d he go?” Sirius asks, right bemused. 

“He didn’t say,” Peter says. “He was bustling about the kitchen one moment and then zoomed out the door the next.” 

“Odd,” Remus calls it, tying the sash of his housecoat around his waist.

Another, much much more pronounced knock sounds on the already ajar front door, sending it further open, but all Sirius can see from here is a black sleeve. “This bitch,” he expels, lobbing his bed sheet over at the bed without much care if it lands there or not.

Sirius moves past Peter into the hall, but he and Remus are fast at his heels, Peter taking post on his left while Remus gets round to Sirius’ right as Sirius yanks the front door fully open, blinking up at a seemingly six foot five man in the doorway dressed to the nines with a pair of straight-framed black sunglasses to match the rest of his attire to boot. 

“Yeah?” Sirius asks, blinking twice more for literally anything. 

The man taps a clipboard in his hands. “Sirius Black?” he asks; curt, as advertised. 

“You’re talking to him, yeah,” Sirius replies. 

The man pulls a pen out of his lapel. “Sign at the bottom,” the man says, holding both the clipboard and pen out to him. 

“I’m not signing anything,” Sirius denies, and Remus’ left hand comes up to wrap around his right elbow in a cautionary move. 

“My orders are to get your signature and I can’t leave until I get it,” the man says plainly. 

“Would help if you explained why you need it,” Remus puts in, a fair bit more patient than Sirius can even attempt to be after getting interrupted halfway to Poundtown for a fucking signature. 

The man merely steps aside, bringing Sirius’ long lost and truthfully nearly forgotten steamer trunk into view that, last he saw, was sitting at the foot of his bed while he packed his bags and subsequently bolted four years ago — no, five. It’s been five years.

“I don’t want that,” Sirius says, lifting his shoulders wrong. 

“The form says it’s yours,” the man returns, not seemingly into playing around. “I don’t much care what happens to it once I leave, but I’ve a lot of stops left to make still, so if you’ll sign at the bottom, I’ll be able to move onto those.” 

Sirius briefly thinks about denying the man yet again, but he looks like he could crush Sirius’ skull with one tire-sized hand alone, and if he’s honest, he’s too spooked to keep refusing. He signs at the bottom with a focused flick of his wrist, hands the clipboard back to the man, and steps back and to the right, putting himself behind Remus’ left shoulder. 

“Pen,” the man says, holding a gargantuan hand out to Sirius. 

Sirius only then realizes he’s still got it and passes it back to him, and with that, the man heads back to the staircase and descends without much else. 

Peter is the first to speak through the silence, though he chooses to do that through another whisper. “What’s happening?” he puts up, speaking it out of the right side of his mouth. 

“Why are you whispering when it’s just us?” Sirius whispers back.

“What if he comes back?” Peter raises. 

“I don’t sense him doing that somehow,” Remus puts in. 

“You said you got written out,” Peter says. 

“What the fuck do I know anymore?” Sirius puts up. “She told me they did, and I’d have thought they’d chuck it the second I dipped or gave it to the good kid, but clearly—”

“Well, he had his own, didn’t he,” Peter raises. “Wouldn’t make much sense to give him a second one with your name on it.” 

Sirius lifts a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, well, the point,” he puts out clearly, “is I’d have expected her to have done literally anything else with it other than keep it in mint condition, and yet, here it is, pristine at my feet.”

“Well, the estate would have to be distributed eventually,” Remus says, his arms crossed over his stomach. “It’s possible that whoever got put in charge of all that has a general grasp of reading comprehension.” 

He lifts a deft hand and sweeps it toward the emblem brightly boasting Sirius’ name, and thank Cunt for that because Sirius can’t not find that funny. “Again, you give them too much credit,” he says, bumping Remus’ left hip with his right one. 

“Well, either you did get written out and this is somebody’s mistake, or you were told you were and she changed her mind,” Remus reasons. 

“What do we do with it?” Peter asks. 

Sirius takes in a sizable breath through his nose, puts a pondering breath out as he studies the rounded top of the black and gold plated trunk thoughtfully. “I could surf it down the stairs and right on into the bin?” he puts up, looking at the two of them in turn. 

“You will not do that,” Remus puts it frankly. 

“Seriously, don’t,” Peter insists, flying a hand at the chest. “Have you any idea how many people would jump at the chance to have this?” 

Sirius puts out a faux-thoughtful hum. “Zero?” he raises. 

“Not zero,” Remus denies. “We had quite a few of these sorts come through the antique mall after estate sales and whatnot; there’s definitely a niche market for them.”

“No, don’t sell it,” Peter puts out. 

“Why not?” Sirius raises, grinning. “We could blow the earnings on something intrinsically gay and she could very well end up rolling in her grave because of it.”

“Well, wait a bit at least,” Peter pleads. “My mum for one would love it.” 

Sirius blinks once, slowly turns his head to the left, eyeing Peter through a squint. “Your mum would love a chest with the name _Sirius_ on the front?” he inquires, pulling a quick, one-note laugh from Remus for it. 

“Sorry,” he says, hanging his head a bit, but this is what is all about, babey. 

“Don’t be,” Sirius says circumstantially. 

“We could pry that off easily enough, don’t you think?” Peter raises, crouching down to have a better look at the gold emblem. “Yeah, all we’d need is a good set of pliers and a righteous pull.” 

Sirius lifts his hands disparagingly, pushing out a bemused laugh. “You’re failing to explain why your mum would want to be within a foot of this thing.” 

“Um, have you been to hers, ever?” Peter returns. “Nearly everything in there is an antique, and on that note, she wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t at least run it by her first before you walk it down to the pawn shop.” 

Sirius sucks it a mighty breath, torn between making Ms. Pettigrew’s week versus the glorious sight it would be just seeing that thing in the window of a dingy pawn shop. “You’re yanking fucking chain, Pete,” he says through gritted teeth. 

Peter quickly looks past Sirius to Remus for aid, the fucking stooge. “I vote Pete’s mum gets it, too,” Remus says for it. 

“In a crashing reveal, Remus cozies up to the professor,” Sirius recites, crossing his arms now, too. 

“You’re rich as is,” Remus returns, bumping Sirius’ right hip. 

The lobby door opens down below and a series of foot clomps that undoubtedly belong to James’ heavy footing echo up the stairwell, and soon his disaster hair comes into view from the first landing. “Where’d you go?” Sirius asks. 

“I wanted juice,” James puts up, lifting a carton of premium jus du orange high above his head and waggling it, at least until he makes it up the steps and spots the eyesore at their collective feet, and then he promptly lowers the carton. “What the fuck, I was gone five minutes.” 

“More like fifteen,” Peter puts up. 

“‘Lot can happen,” Sirius tacks on.

James blocks that with an egregious scoff from the top step. “What’s it doing here?” he demands. 

“Search me,” Sirius returns. “Some moody turd dropped it off.” 

“She knocked you off the will,” James reaccounts. “I read those words, I know I read those words.” 

“Yeah, well, we’re not having a mass hallucination here so it appears she might’ve been bluffing,” Sirius offers. “That, or it’s a clerical error and I was never meant to have it, but it’s a little suspect; she up and bites it and this thing shows up a month and some change later?” 

James takes one long look at the trunk on the floor and takes one sniff. “Yeah, this reeks of The Burg,” he says, circling his free hand above it. “A nice lil’ ‘_look what you missed out on,_’ the rotting peach.”

“I still say we can bring it in, see what we make from it, and stuff our earnings down a bear’s tighty-whities,” Sirius puts up. “She’ll love what I’ve done with it.” 

“What,” Peter puts in, “did we just agree to?”

Sirius turns his head and presses a huff directly into Peter’s right ear. “Can you just let me be a cunt when it’s deserved?” he raises. 

“Cunt away, I just know my mum’s going to want it,” Peter insists. “What do you think’s in it?” 

“This and that,” Sirius offers. “‘Course, I’d just shove things in there as time went on, but that was ages ago; no telling what’s in there now.” 

Peter turns his head slowly toward him. “What if it’s cursed?” 

“Oh, it’s one-hundred percent cursed,” Sirius returns. “You sure you want your mum taking it? The omens attached to it alone aren’t to be ignored.” 

James moves forward, getting himself a decent look at the front of the chest before reaching down and flicking up on a large padlock hanging from the middle latch. “Don’t remember this being there,” he says, lifting his gaze to give Sirius a pointed look. 

Sirius doesn’t remember a lock being on it either which really only points to somebody tampering with it, and there’s only one option from there. “My money’s on a portrait of a pile of sticks on fire,” he raises, looking around at the lot of them. “What say you?” 

Remus takes in a quick breath. “Sirius,” he exhales woundedly. 

“Nah, that’s her in a nutshell,” James puts it plainly. 

Remus shifts from one foot to the other, averting his gaze to the floor, and Sirius fucking hates seeing it; it doesn’t matter that this is the only defense mechanism he has, he knows he sounds brash even if there are entire silos filled with grains of truth to his jesting, Remus isn’t going to like it either way, not if it’s about Sirius. 

Sirius drops his right hand closer to Remus’ left, clasping it between the two of them as Peter moves in toward the chest a little more. “Do we think it could be booby-trapped?” he asks, a captive audience all his own as he stares the glorified storage container down. 

Sirius takes in a sharp breath. “You mean there could be boobs in there?” he asks, gape/grinning. “Well, now we have to have a look.” 

James sends a round of breathy laughs through his nose as he steps around the chest and Peter to get at the door. “I’ll get the bolt cutters, but we’re keeping a wide berth,” he conditions, heading in between Remus and the right-hand side of the doorway. 

He holds his carton of juice out to Remus on his way by, and Remus looks bemusedly down at the thing in his hand before letting go of Sirius’ hands and assuming the role of juice holder with a sigh, though he quickly looks up again as James taps him lightly on the right side of his neck. 

“Lovely mark you’ve got there, dear.” 

Remus puts out a steamed breath, turning as James heads up the hall and makes a left into the art/storage/literally-anything room just off of Sirius’ area. “Why do you have a pair of bolt cutters just laying around?” he sends after him. 

“You don’t want to know,” Peter says simply. 

“Right,” Remus nods, pushing out a tight laugh. “Haven’t got a bandage to spare round here, but there are bolt cutters on the off-chance they’ll come in handy.” 

Sirius scoffs at the nature of the callout, turning his head pointedly toward him. “I got you a forty-pack of them, madame,” he puts up haughtily. 

“It took a cluster resurgence for it to even dawn on you that a forty pack could be useful around here—” Remus starts in, holding the carton of juice in his right hand while he’s got his left hip jutted out, and to that Sirius can’t even be that fussed about getting read for filth anymore when Remus just looks so fucking good doing it, “—I swear this place exists in its own realm, there’s no other explanation for—” 

“Where did we put them last?” James puts up, frustratedly bumbling about the room at the top of the hall. 

“Check the top of the closet,” Sirius suggests, his gaze still fixed on Remus. 

A bit more fumbling occurs before James lets out a championed “Aha, there you are,” which is followed by a series of clatters and swears that come floating back up the hall, pulling similarly amused noises out of Sirius and Peter, and a long-suffering sigh out of Remus. 

“I need a tea,” he says, opting out of the situation by heading up the hall the other direction. 

“Mind putting the juice in the fridge while you’re there?” James calls out. 

“No, I was going to set it out back,” Remus tosses over his shoulder, and in that moment catches Sirius red-handed as he watches Remus walk away with keen interest. 

Sirius lifts his shoulders once. “Sorry, you look good,” he says, not really sorry at all. 

Remus reworks his mouth around a smile. “No, you’re not.” 

“He’s not,” Peter says, simply because he’s there too, perhaps. 

Remus nods his head toward the front door. “You might think about bringing that in from the lobby before you unleash whatever demonic entity’s living inside of it,” he suggests before heading on through the living room. 

“That’s more like it,” Sirius sends him jovially, glad to see he’s somewhat joined in on the fun. 

Sirius hears footsteps thunder from behind him and turns in time to find James torpedoing up the hall. “Let’s do this shit,” he hypes up, snapping the black and red bolt cutters like a long, gargantuan pair of scissors. 

Sprung to life, Sirius and Peter move out into the lobby, the former taking hold of the right side while the latter takes up the left before they lift the much heavier than anticipated trunk. “Jesus Cunt,” Peter puts out, backing into the flat and on down the hall toward the living room, “what’s in here, a body?” 

“Probably,” James offers, shutting the front door behind them. 

Peter backs further into the living room before he loses some of his grip on his end and the two of them wrestle the trunk down to the ground, leaving it sitting vertically compared to the rest of the more horizontally arranged furniture in the room. The three of them gather round the front of it, Peter on Sirius’ left, James on his right, and Remus comes back up the hall from the kitchen and stops short under the archway above that entrance to the living room, startled by the lot of them gathered there before settling his gaze on James brandishing the bolt cutters like they’re a weapon.

“I was kidding about the demons,” he mentions. 

“Still could be rigged,” Peter points out. 

“To explode?” Remus raises, a half-smile budding on his lips. 

“There’s a bad energy in here that wasn’t ten minutes ago,” James returns with the air of putting up a blinding checkmate. 

Sirius can almost see Remus’ full-body sigh from here. “Would you like me to do the honours?” he offers, moving forward and past Peter’s front to reach for the bolt cutters. 

“Oi,” Sirius puts out, grabbing the bolt cutters just as James makes to hand them off to Remus. “Absolutely fucking not, have you gone spare?” 

“He offered,” James defends, crossing his arms over his chest pointedly. 

“And if he loses an arm in the blast there goes my sleeping schedule,” Sirius returns. 

Remus huffs another sigh as Sirius tugs him in between him and Peter. “This is all a bit much, even for you three,” he says, falling into line with them. 

“Everybody back up,” Sirius instills. 

Both James and Peter take a full step back while Remus simply stays put beside Sirius, taking a breath into his cheeks and puffing it out slowly as Sirius lines the cutters up with the neck of the padlock. 

“Wait,” James cuts in, reaching to halt Sirius’ right arm. “Remember that whatever’s in here, you’re still a hunk of a bitch who takes names and has the world at his feet, yes?” 

“Yes,” Sirius puts out, bumping James for the reminder. 

Sirius rearranges his grip on the cutters, has the lock snapped after fifteen to twenty seconds of brute strength and the added benefit of James’ chanting ‘yes, yes, yes,’ along with it. He leaves the cutters behind him, bends forward to lift the middle latch so he can then lift the rounded lid, keeping his movements rather delicate. He lets go of the top, mostly expecting it to hang open, but the whole of it slams against the back of the trunk with a profound thud that has each of them jolting, and more importantly has Remus yanking Sirius back.

Sirius wavers in his balance as he looks round at Remus, who simply stands beside him on his knees, one hand around Sirius’ left bicep, the other draped over his chest. “Don’t make fun,” he asserts. 

“Wasn’t gonna,” Sirius replies, rather charmed by this development overall.

The dual-sound of the kettle chiming and whirring it’s completion float down the hall from the kitchen, and Remus goes still as each head in the room turns toward him quizzically. “I’ll get it in a bit,” he says quietly, almost as if the chest is going to spring alive and start chomping on the lot of them if he speaks too loud. 

James moves in first, Sirius not far behind him, and Remus and Peter follow them down to their knees in front of the chest, peering into the mismatched clutter inside. 

“Looks like a pile of junk,” Peter professes. 

Sirius’ feels his mouth curl at a crooked angle as his eyes and spine tingle. “Is that what you call _these_ bad babies?” he returns, ceremoniously lifting his decade-worn and weathered combats by the knot holding the laces together. 

“I take it back,” Peter amends. 

Sirius beams as he takes a good, long look at the frayed footwear, twirling them around and around idly. “Try ‘em on,” James goads on Sirius’ right. 

Sirius snorts. “Have you met these feet?” he raises, planting himself back on his arse to lift his right leg. “There’s no chance they’re fitting anymore.”

Remus smirks on Sirius’ immediate left, reaching over Sirius’ shoulder to flick the drastically loosened heel on the right boot. “Seems they got their share of wear as is.” 

“Never went anywhere without them,” Sirius echoes, hanging the boots from his neck like a war-torn inspired necklace. “I grew out of them eventually, but I couldn’t just part with them; they’re an ancient relic.”

“We should display them somewhere,” James offers. 

Sirius puts out a thoroughly psyched noise. “We could give them to Ludwig,” he raises, holding his right hand splayed toward their ever-present member of the household, currently sporting a vibrant Hawaiian shirt underneath Sirius’ leather jacket. 

And with that, James plucks up the boots by the knot in the laces and lifts them off of Sirius’ neck, scooting along the floor and settling the boots just underneath Ludwig’s mount to the right of his bedroom door. “I like it,” he tacks on. “Distinguished.” 

Sirius chokes on a laugh as he reaches into the chest again to have a wee sift through it, pulling out his frayed, primitive edition of the _King James Bible_ he remembers having to pour over all too well, though along with those rather bleak memories come the certified lovely memories of scrawling his various hot takes along the margins throughout the book whenever he felt pressed to weigh in on a tale, and namely, he remembers using a fuschia coloured sharpie to draw a dick on the front flyleaf when he was about fifteen, if he’s remembering it right. 

Sirius flips the cover open and indeed finds the veiny, rather realistic appendage in all its glory, an amused noise getting caught in his throat for it. James and Remus react at the same instant but with rather unique qualities; the former giving out a grand hoot while the latter puts out a truly gutted noise. 

“Sirius, no,” Remus says, completely overcome by both the sounds and looks of it. “_Why_?”

“OK, listen?” Sirius raises, hoping the bibliophile might throw him a bone here. “A demon had this thing written and I just felt I should respond to it in the only way I know how.” 

“Commissioned by a demon or not, Zaya would have killed to have this in her shop, but not with that dick in there,” Remus returns pointedly. 

Sirius hums circumstantially, flipping through the pages to showcase his various scrawling over the years. “I wrote a bunch of rebuttals in the margins too, so I doubt she’ll have any interest in this, but we don’t ever have to tell her I even had this.” 

Remus wipes the overcome look off of his face on a dime, leaning in to have a further look at Sirius’ youthful etchings. “Well, I—” he starts, turning and pressing his reluctant smile against Sirius’ left shoulder. “I would happily read your teenage responses to Leviticus, I'll just say that.”

“Then it’s yours,” Sirius chimes, passing the Bible off to him. 

Remus smirks, setting the book in his lap, and quickly takes in a harrowing gasp as Sirius lifts another book out of the chest. “Sirius,” he puts out seemingly in shock, reaching to tug on Sirius’ left wrist to get the book closer to him. Sirius pushes an amused breath through his nose and hands off his once-gifted copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ so his man can thoroughly inspect it. “What edition is this?” 

“Second, bitch,” Sirius rings out, shimmying his shoulders. “Another gift from Alphard; helps having friends in high places in this case — why, did you want it?” 

Sirius can’t not take immense pleasure in getting to watch Remus’ eyes go from quite intrigued to dinner plate status on account of anything to do with him. “I— oh, I couldn’t,” he starts, faltering as he lifts the open book in his hands and has himself a short whiff of the pages with a twist of a smile on. “It smells like second edition.” 

“Yikeserooney,” James puts out brightly. 

“That’s a yes, then,” Peter puts it.

“It smells like heaven,” Remus defends, pulling the book in for a protective hug, and Sirius feels warm from his fingers down to his toes. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?” 

Sirius shakes his head, pushing a few wayward strands of his hair aside. “Nah, what am I to do with it,” he says, waving it off. “Say thanks, Ol’ Alphie.” 

“Thanks ol’ Alphie,” Remus echoes, flipping through the book with a delicate hand, nestled cozily into bookish heaven. 

Sirius exchanges a quick, elated smile with James as he reaches into the chest once more, curious what else he’ll find now, and immediately yelps and draws his right hand back, showcasing a trail of blood running down his thumb. 

“It is rigged,” Peter puts out on the other side of Remus, scooting back on the floor. 

“Relax, it’s a tchotchke,” Sirius says, sticking his thumb in his mouth. 

James reaches into the chest and lifts the cracked, blown glass ornament out of it. “What is it?” Remus asks, squinting at it. 

“Gargoyle?” James guesses, studying it himself. 

Sirius nods, taking his thumb out of his mouth. “Mhm,” he confirms. “Ninth birthday gift from Auntie Fuckin’ Dru.”

Remus blinks. “Charming,” he says faintly. 

“Yes, well, she’s Bella’s mum, so you know you can imagine what she might’ve been like,” Sirius relays, and Remus, while only having had the pleasure of even seeing Bella once, takes on a soured expression that Sirius feels is rather fitting for the situation. Sirius tips his head to his expression, reaching into the chest to continue sifting through it. “And Marlene got moon shoes that year, so I wasn’t exactly pumped to unwrap that monstrosity, if you can believe it.” 

He looks over his shoulder, catches Remus exchanging a glance with James behind his back, and looks to James immediately, who drops the bright smile he has on right quick. “Don’t you dare,” Sirius says, not meaning it one bit. 

“Well, would you like moon shoes this year?” Remus asks, a smile audible on his own lips. 

“We’ll find ‘em,” James tacks on, while Peter drums his fists excitedly into the bit of floor in front of him. 

“I would die,” Sirius extends gravely. 

“That’s that, then,” James grants. 

Sirius faces forward again with a renewed sense of love coursing through his veins, spots an item that truly takes the feeling and runs away with it. “_Oho_,” he hoots, pulling out a brightly coloured rolly-toy by the pole.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” James chants beside him. 

“I’m sorry, but were you a child in the twenties?” Remus asks, a dusting of colour over his cheeks as he watches Sirius roll it back and forth on the floor between them and the chest. 

“Looks that way, doesn’t it,” Sirius allows, smirking. 

He leaves the toy aside, reaching into the chest again, and his smile peters off as he lifts a picture frame out of it. He remembers it well, the words House of Black etched into the bottom center of the wooden frame look the same as they did the last time he saw it; remembers chucking it into the chest years back just to not have to see it all the bloody time, but he must’ve put a lot of oomph into that toss for it split the glass, causing a crack diagonally across the face of it. 

He smirks there, turning it to James. “Gotta love when a metaphor just falls into your lap.” 

James mimes sticking a finger down his throat in a showcase of his disgust and soon Remus reaches over Sirius’ front and tips the frame more his way so he can have a look, too, and while to him it can’t look all that much more than what it looks like on the tin; just a cluster of thirty-odd fancily dressed folks of all ages gathered picturesque on a grand staircase and directly under an objectively arrestingly intricate chandelier, but Remus is Remus and wouldn’t miss the etchings at the bottom of the frame. 

He furrows his brow, reaching over Sirius’ left arm to run his right forefinger over the face of one family member, where a large black X covers their features. “It’s half a family portrait and half a handy-dandy ostracised list,” Sirius offers, gesturing to the crossed out face Remus is pointing at. “There was a large tapestry of our family tree downstairs already, but The Burg put this portrait upstairs between mine and Reg’s bedrooms so we’d have to stare at it upstairs as well, and I got so sick of having to look at it day after day, year after year, that I took it off the wall and dumped it in here — didn’t matter, she simply gave me shit, replaced it with a more recent photo, and crossed the traitors out again, but it felt good at the time, disposing of it.” 

Remus’ calculated expression remains while he nods for the added clarity, examining the photo with an attention to detail that he puts into just about anything, Sirius is learning. “So, great aunt Isla ran off with a bloke and shirked the family name well before I was born, so she was never in family photos, but her name was crossed off the tapestry and we’d heard plenty about her treachery when we were young, but this is Cindrella—” Sirius says, pointing to her X’d out visage and pausing at Remus’ snort, “—no, I mean it, _Cindrella,_ and _she_ had an affair with her boss, who wasn’t white, and I shit you not, that was the sole problem — infidelity? Please, plenty of them were out getting their rocks off on the side, but she was the one who was made an example of what not to do and I find that _interesting_.” 

“Jesus Cunt,” Remus expels, looking weathered already. 

“Mhm, and right here is Alphard,” Sirius says, tapping his uncle’s still body on the other side of the collection of people.

“Oh,” Remus smiles, sounding rather charmed. “He looks like he had a big laugh.” 

“A right boomer,” Sirius affirms, smirking for it. “Especially if I was acting out; loved it.” 

Remus turns his head to the right, pressing his smile to Sirius’ left shoulder. “I’d have loved to meet him,” he offers. 

“He’d have picked your brain like no tomorrow,” Sirius returns. “See, he’s not X’d out yet here, though I’ll bet you she crossed him off of the tapestry once he left me the moolah, but Andromeda’s gone—” he taps the large X blocking her visage, “—and that’s because she dipped a year after this photo was taken, while over here we have Bella, unmarked forever and ever and held up as a prime example of the sort of dutiful lady they’re all expected to be and emulate, despite her being a marvel in the genetic mutation between woman and cow.” 

Peter pushes out a snort so violent it sounds like it hurt. “You good, Pete?” Sirius asks, smirking. 

“You just really know how to wrap up a sentence,” Peter offers. 

Sirius bobs his shoulders a bit, but Remus leans in there, his chin hooked over Sirius’ left shoulder as he squints at it some more, and then he gasps lightly, reaching to tap the portrait. “Found you,” he says, flickering his gaze up to Sirius with a bright smile on before looking down at the mini version of Sirius again. “How old were you there?” 

“Think I was ten when they took that one,” Sirius says, swaying Remus a tad. “I turned eleven a month before Andromeda split, so yeah; must’ve been ten.” 

Remus nods for it while he continues looking, his gaze lifting before his smile peters off, and Sirius has to assume he spotted The Burg very nearby Sirius’ mini self, but he passes on pointing her out, instead tapping on Sirius’ father’s body just beside her and looming over Sirius, rather apt positioning back then as much as it sure feels it now. 

“Oh, wow,” Remus expresses, looking up at Sirius again. “You’re almost all mum, no dad.” 

“OK, thank you?” Sirius puts up. “Unfortunately the DNA checks out, but for years I went back and forth on whether I was the byproduct of a torrid love affair that just never got spoken of, but it didn’t really check out as a theory when those two were thick as thieves, and I don’t imagine now that The Burg would’ve strayed for even a night; but in any case, Reg looked more like him.” 

Sirius taps the little tyke just to his right in the portrait and Remus follows Sirius’ forefinger there and fixes his gaze there, the corners of his mouth curling down as his brow furrows. 

“I know,” Sirius says airily. “Twins, they called us, but I got the better nose out of the draw.” 

James reaches over and claps Sirius’ cheekbones in one, swift move. “A better sculpting job happened all around, I’d say,” he provides. 

Sirius bats James’ hand away, snorting for it all the same, and looks back at Remus still studying the same spot on the portrait. “Are there any recent photos of him around?” he asks. 

“Spoiler,” Sirius mentions, “you landed the hot one.” 

Remus sighs through his nose, titling his head to the right. “I just want to see,” he insists.

“I didn’t take any with me,” Sirius returns, lifting his hands to illustrate this abode’s empty status.

“Well, there’s that print from the article, no?” Peter raises.

James and Sirius put out strikingly similar groans. “That toothy grin,” he says, pulling his mobile out. “I’d never seen anything so smarmy.” 

“There’s something to that,” Sirius allows. “If someone had told me ahead of time that it were actually an ad for a dental clinic, I’d simply have believed it to be true.”

“Right?” James says, thumbs moving swiftly over his screen as he searches it up. “‘_You, too, can have this smile with only one direct payment of your entire savings; don’t even think about it, just call now._’”

“What was it really?” Remus asks. 

“A puffed out piece about up and coming moguls,” Sirius puts out blandly. “The interview was fucking brutal, just made him sound like even more a tool than he already was.” 

Remus gives a slight hum. “It was very dry,” Peter extends. “Think I yawned twice through it.” 

“When was it written?” Remus asks. 

“Last summer,” Sirius forwards. 

“Aha, here we are,” James says, passing the phone past Sirius to reach Remus, who takes it rather quickly and has a look at it, eyes go to dinner plate status, and to be fair, there’s a lot to take in; his haughty smile, his clean cut hair, his dapper suit jacket tossed faux-casually over his right shoulder, just your regular man’s up and coming businessman.

“Well, that’s that; I definitely served him,” Remus says, cut and clear with a decided nod. “Just after I transferred, we had the grand opening and he came in quite a bit, I remember because I thought he looked like your doppelganger, but warped like he was the left-handed version of you.” 

Sirius nods, just wanting him to keep on talking, and it takes a few seconds for it to sink in on Remus’ end, glancing around at all three of them before he tenses up. “Well, I hadn’t seen you since I transferred out, so when he walked in I genuinely thought you’d just popped in to say hello, but then I got a better look and he had the wrong nose, the rounder face, and the body language was all wrong.” 

“He never did get the hang of a good strut,” Sirius offers circumstantially.

“No, he definitely wasn’t doing that,” Remus forwards. “Came in quite a bit the first few weeks after we opened the doors and—”

Remus presses his lips into a firm line, looking left and right nervously. “Oh, was he a bitch to you?” Sirius raises testily. 

Remus shakes his head quickly. “No, I just — I never thought about where he’d gone,” he says, frowning deeply. “He literally up and disappeared, and I didn’t even think about it? That’s fucked up, isn’t it.” 

Sirius gazes at Remus through a squint, finds Peter frowning bemusedly in the backdrop, and finally looks right to find that James is doing a very similar thing, and looks back at Remus again. “Well, I mean,” he starts, pushing out a tentative puff of breath and gesturing his left hand toward him, “bit unrealistic to expect you to keep tabs on one, sole person out of the various hundred you see in any given week.”

“Exactly,” James takes it on. “You saw him, what, a handful of times?”. 

“Two handfuls?” Remus calls it after a beat or two of consideration. “Ten at most.” 

“Well, for all you knew, he moved,” Peter offers up. 

“No, but I didn’t— I didn’t even—” Remus tries, putting out a genuinely horrid sigh, “I didn’t even wonder.” 

Sirius blinks, not seeing any reason to string him up for it. “Remus, take the sword out of your side please,” he instructs, his voice gentle so Remus won’t read it anything other than what it is. “I bet he didn’t even tip, so.”

“He did,” Remus says, talking out the left side of his mouth. “I mean, I didn’t go counting it, but he dropped something into the jar.” 

James gives a fanciful wave of his right wrist. “Have a pence, barista filth,” he recites with a thick roll on the R. 

Sirius puts out an easy snort, tossing the picture frame back into the chest and moving right along from there, but not so much for Remus. “It really wasn’t like that,” he says, curling his hands around the two books in his lap. “He was nice enough, didn’t stick his nose up at me or anything and I can sort of tell pretty well when someone is.” 

“What was his order, though?” James inquires, having a look through the chest himself. 

Remus makes a pained face, his brow furrowed. “Oh, now you have to say it,” Sirius instills. 

“He was an extra hot, no foam sort,” Remus confesses. 

“What a piece of shit,” Sirius rings out. 

“No, but he was really nice?” Remus insists. “Wore a lot of fancy suits for sure, but he never stood at the bar watching me do it like most of the suits do; he would just chat about whatever it was that came up.” 

“Well,” Sirius puts up, lifting his shoulders once, his throat rather dry when he really doesn’t much know what to do with it other than cling to a little bit of hope, “maybe he came back down to Earth a little, before the end.” 

James pauses his sifting through the chest to aim a bland expression at Sirius. “What?” Sirius raises, but James puts up his hands, looking around for the source of the problem when he clearly doesn’t think he’s it. “It’d have done him some good if he stopped turning his nose up at everyone and everything he deems ‘unsuitable—”

“I agree,” James cuts in, louder to be heard, “only Mr. Nice Guy over there wouldn’t tell you if it was a shit experience either way; would you, Remus?”

Remus, who’d just started to ease up beside Sirius, wrings his hands out at getting the spotlight so soon again. “Ease off of him, yeah?” Sirius raises, sending a pointed look to James. 

“I’m fine,” Remus says at once, and Sirius turns his head and pointedly stares at Remus’ hands, causing him to quit playing with them in an instant. “It’s automatic, Sirius.”

“You have to stop acting like he can’t handle himself,” James sends Sirius. “He’s the toughest bloke in this room, so maybe just respect him enough not to treat him any differently than the rest of us when he clearly doesn’t even _want_ that—”

“I will throw you out that fucking window,” Sirius manifests, pointing beyond James to the alcove in the far corner of the room.

“Then do it; won’t change that I’m right,” James returns, shoving a bunch of odds and ends aside with his hands. “You coddle him way too much.”

“OK,” Remus says, professor-voice on lock as he presses a soothing hand to Sirius’ back. “Let’s calm down, roll this back a bit, maybe remember there’s broken glass in there, James, careful please.”

“Thanks, hon,” James offers, fishing around a bit lighter inside of the chest.

“You coddle me plenty, so, simmer down,” Remus retorts, his thoughtfulness having apparently left the room as quick as it came.

James sends out a wild scoff. “I do not.”

“You do and this really isn’t the point,” Remus returns, rubbing his hand up and down Sirius’ back rhythmically, and that is doing a lot for Sirius’ breathing. “I was telling the truth, but I suppose you’re right; I probably wouldn’t say if Reg had been a bother so it’s a good thing he wasn’t one because I didn’t even have to lie about it.”

James drops his gaze and nods stiffly, likely doesn’t love that answer when it doesn’t fit his narrative. Instead he takes in a piqued breath, reaching into the chest, and lifts a flimsy sheet of oddly shaped paper, smiling down at it. 

“What’s that?” Sirius asks, still a bit begrudging through his curiosity. 

“It’s us,” James chimes.

He turns it around and showcasing the photo of them that was put in their yearbook, the two of them smiling with their arms draped over each other, Sirius on the right smiling with his eyes as he got real into _Top Model_ that year, and while that’s certainly a talking point in itself, Sirius is rather more preoccupied by the fact that the photo was quite clearly cut from the yearbook he never even thought to grab before he left for one, and it certainly wasn’t cut out by him, for two. 

“Why do you photograph so well?” Remus put up, prodding Sirius’ back pointedly. “Every time — there isn’t a single bad photo of you on this earth.” 

“Blessings,” James answers for him, which is good when Sirius is a bit preoccupied.

“Never one to hold onto a picture of me, am I right,” Peter raises. 

“You took the photo, Pete,” James chides. “You took all the photos in there.” 

“I also did not put that in there,” Sirius declares. The entire room goes still as Remus, James, and Peter give the chest a once-over and look to each other before ultimately to Sirius for aid.

The room and the people in it with him are rather silent after that, and really that just gives Sirius the floor to talk it out. “I mean, I can still see her writing this into her will just for the theatrics,” he considers, “but she wasn’t much into scrapbooking, nor would she cut me out of my own yearbook and not simply burn the whole thing entirely, so this wasn’t tampered with by her and that really just leaves one other person.” 

“Do you think he thought she’d get rid of it and he grabbed it before she could?” Peter theorizes, following Sirius’ thread quite well. 

To that point, Sirius conjures up a vivid image of Reg dragging the thing out of his room and sticking somewhere for keeps; the back of his own closet, underneath a load of other things so they wouldn’t find it perhaps, opening it up now and again just to have some things to remember him by, but even as he pictures it, the whole image looks warped.

“Why would he want it?” Sirius raises, countering his own point with a gesture at the chest. 

“Well, it’s you,” Peter says, waving a hand toward it himself. “That’s you in a nutshell.” 

And there, Sirius can’t stop himself from picturing Reg standing at his bedroom door as Sirius hurriedly packed his things, the vitriol in his expression as Sirius insisted he go pack, too, and the words, they play like they’re in the room there with him, ‘_you brought this on yourself,_’ clear as day.

“It is me; it’s all me” Sirius nods, right baffled. “It doesn’t track; you don’t say the shit he said as I went out the door just to turn around and keep an entire time capsule of me; wouldn’t just remind him all the time of everything I was that he couldn’t stand?”

“The cutout doesn’t make any sense if it _wasn’t_ him,” Peter tacks on. "It really doesn't." 

“I’ve said things in a heated moment and have terribly regretted them afterward,” Remus puts up, and it’s bittersweet, hearing him try to put a positive spin on an extremely negative individual, and none of this makes sense to him; he _wants_ to believe it, believe Remus on it, wants to cling to the idea that Reg wasn’t just kind to sweet, barista Remus and actually spread it over to Sirius in some way, but he can’t get himself there when all he can hear is Reg’s provoking voice rattling in his head, pecking at him and pecking at him, and it’s like he’s the one so who’s got a clamp closing around his skull this time around. 

Sirius’ chest feeling much tighter as he looks to James, who’s kept right out of this one unsurprisingly, but finds him studying the back of the cutout. “What?” 

James sniffs once, sitting to attention and blinking innocently, but when Sirius moves James makes to hold it away from his reach, and that’s suspicious enough to warrant Sirius practically climbing on top of him to get at the crumpled, once-glossy paper trapped in his right fist.

“_Stop it_,” James chides, squeezing his fist tighter around it.

“_Give it_,” Sirius returns, prying each of James’ fingers up one by one to get a hold of it.

“Just don’t even fucking read it, Sirius,” James sighs out, but that just takes Sirius’ curiosity and ratchets it up tenfold; there’s something to _read?_

Sirius backs up and away from James’ grabby hands, falling back into place beside Remus, and unfolds the paper, turning the picture around and squinting down at the back of it; the backdrop is a bunch of their classmates’ footy team lined up for a photo with their very own Lilith in the dead center of the troupe, making the too-familiar scrawling a bit difficult to read without a good squint. 

_By now you’re likely swallowing pole at Manbar and while you indulge in whatever downward spiral you’re on, I do hope you pause long enough to ask yourself if it’s even worth it_

“_Smoking pole?_” Sirius shoots out. “Who the fuck taught him to say that?”

Both Remus and Peter’s hands turn up at Sirius’ left wrist to budge it enough to get a decent look at the etchings. “We’re sure that was him?” Peter asks, while Remus keeps a tight hold of Sirius’ wrist even after he’s likely finished reading the small blurb.

“It’s his handwriting,” Sirius confirms, his gaze set on the far wall above his record setup, but he’s not seeing it too clearly. “Why’d he cut a fucking photo of me out of the yearbook just to write a fucking callout on the back of it? He’s so fucking extra, I’m—”

Sirius cuts off, out of words for what it feels like to him. “Personally,” James puts in, “I find it rather touching that he thinks you’d be caught dead in Manbar.” 

Peter pushes out a snort. “Takes some of the intended venom out of it, that’s for sure.” 

“Right,” James puts up. “If he wanted to drag you on something he didn’t think you’d see, he could’ve at least done it properly.”

“I’ll give it a crisp C, and that’s my final offer,” Remus tacks on, tracing his right thumb back and forth over Sirius’ wrist. 

Sirius pushes out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if he could manage one, dropping the crumpled picture for the freedom to drag his hands up and over his face, breathing in long. He sits there with all of it; the silence around him paired with the hot fury rising up in him, sick and tired of all the ways Reg can still fucking get to him, and soon he’s lifting his right leg and sending the trunk skidding back on the floor in one, brutal kick and then he’s up and off the floor, needing to get the fuck out of there and away from the three sets of tentative eyes glued to his back. 

He gets to the hall, turns on his heel, and focuses on Peter’s gaze specifically. “If your mum wants that she can have it, but I don’t even want to fucking _see it_ until she takes it, got it?” he snaps, looking around at the lot of them now. “Get rid of it.”

The three of them move instantly, clambering all the odds and ends they’ve picked out of the trunk and scooting forward to dump them back into it, and that’s all Sirius needs to fucking see in order to know he can leave the rest to them. He turns around again, strides down the hall, and heads through the kitchen, heading up the steps to slap the screen door open and moving for his cigarette pack laying on the table out back. 

He knocks his right hip into one of the chairs on the way to it and kicks that, skidding halfway across the porch, and that that feels incredibly satisfying, so quick as a snap, he’s picking up and tossing another plastic deck chair across the terrace, and picks up another when he’s nowhere near finished yet, and then there’s Remus in front of him and that’s not OK at all, so Sirius backs the fuck up and away from him, and _then_ there’s fucking Hank The Bagpiper, torpedoing out of his own back door up on the balcony above and across from them and leaning over the railing to boom down at him. 

“What the _fuck_ are you _doing?_” 

Sirius barks out a wild laugh at the sheer audacity on display here. “You want to get hit?” he raises, lifting up the deck chair in his hand. “I’ll aim real good, promise you that.” 

“OK, Hank,” Remus calls out. “You’re not helping.” 

“Are you going to do something about that,” Hank shoots back, pointing deftly at Sirius twiddling the deck chair in his hand by the handle, winding up to launch the chair. 

“You don’t think I’m trying to?” Remus returns forcefully, holding his left hand out to Sirius deftly. “You need to get lost.” 

“I’ll be lodging a complaint to the landlord,” Hank mentions, turning on his heel in a whirl. 

“Good luck with that one,” Remus snaps after him. 

Sirius lowers the deck chair, finding Remus’ own ‘tude on display just grounding enough to simmer down a notch. “I don’t need to hear it, Remus,” he rattles off tightly. “I tried to leave before I—”

He cuts off as Remus heads for him, hands up in front of him before he sets them splayed on Sirius’ shoulders. “It’s OK,” he says, calm as a creek suddenly, but at least he’s not staring at Sirius like he’s afraid to move and that’s really all Sirius has for the moment. “They’re sturdy chairs, they’ll survive.” 

Sirius stands there with Remus hands just weighing him on him like two gentle anchors, but he can’t stop convulsing, his chest rising and falling at a speed he can’t control. “I’m so sick of this,” he puts out.

Remus lets go of him to reach for Sirius’ pack on the table, pulling one out. “I know,” he says, plucking Sirius’ tiny red lighter off of the table. 

“I don’t need this,” Sirius presses. 

“I know you don’t,” Remus says, muffled as he lights up. He takes in a long haul, turns the cigarette and holds it out to Sirius, and lets his haul out with a firm exhale. “Pride’s in three days; it’s genuinely the worst time for this to show up and I’m really sorry.” 

“I keep getting dicked around,” Sirius puts out roughly. “I can’t have a single fucking moment of peace with him before he makes it fucking impossible—”

Sirius cuts off as he hiccoughs violently, stepping back from Remus and lampooning the deck chair still in his hand across the terrace before taking a full haul off of the cigarette. “That’s the last one,” Remus conditions, pointing to him directly, and Sirius breathes his haul out, nodding for it. “I’m not going to pretend that I know exactly what to say, but I’m going to try to get you back, OK? And you’re just going to have to let me, yeah?” 

Sirius nods again, mouth in a firm line as he nods erratically. “Good. See, my knee jerk reaction is to try and find the reasons why someone might do what they’re doing, even if I personally don’t understand it,” Remus keeps on, “but it’s not so easy with this because I’m coming into it so late and there’s so much I’m still learning and grappling with, and even if I want there to be some sort of silver lining, it’s frighteningly clear that Reg was a very complicated man, so I don’t even want to try to explain him away, I’m taking on the ideology itself, OK? There are so many reasons why I hate that this keeps happening to you, but there’s also a very selfish one, if you’ll let me say it?” 

“Please,” Sirius exhales, trying to ignore the fact that he can plainly see James and Peter not-so-subtly watching them from the living room window beyond Remus. 

“Well, I don’t—” Remus starts, shaking himself out for a beat, “—I’m never going to understand why there was so much distaste for something that’s just the luck of the draw for you; it’s the same as you constantly getting badgered and bullied for coming out of the womb left handed.” 

“Yeah,” Sirius grants, tight as his throat feels. “‘_Oh, you like dick? Here’s a literal lifetime of browbeating even from beyond the grave; we’re that obsessed with your fucking sex life_.’” 

“Exactly, it’s mad; full stop,” Remus allows, wringing his hands out at his middle. “And I know it’s caused so many problems for you over the years so I’m not cheapening that when I say this, but I—” he taps his own chest insistently, “—am incredibly grateful you turned out to be so profoundly gay.” 

Sirius’ snort is as involuntary it is powerful. “Mm?” he raises, taking in a haul.

“Mm,” Remus returns. “And while there certainly are so many other, more important things about you than who you make cry in bed, I’d still say your status is one of my favourite things about you, and while I know I’m not part of your family and it won’t make up for everything else, I hope that’s at least something to cling to.”

“More than just something,” Sirius pushes out, dragging a hand back through his loose-falling hair. “I bet you are real grateful for that.” 

Remus nods, a grateful kind of half-smile on his lips. “Mhm,” he affirms, stepping in a step so he’s directly in front of Sirius. “Worked out really well for me, if I may say.”

Sirius pushes out an amused breath. “You can always say that,” he says, dipping his head down into the crook of Remus’ neck, taking in a deep breath with Remus’ telltale scent, reminding himself that this is the real deal; concrete and tangible through a storm.

“You’re OK,” Remus says quietly, running his hands over Sirius’ back. “Yeah? You’re OK. What’d James say, hm?” 

“Stop, Remus,” Sirius puts out weakly. 

“No, I think that’s the last thing I should be doing,” Remus replies. “Who’s taking names with the world at his feet? You, or you?” 

“Me,” Sirius puts out reluctantly. 

Remus hums his affirmation, holding him just a little tighter. “I love you,” he says, close by Sirius’ left ear, pulling a muted sound from him. “I do, more and more every day.” 

“I just trashed the terrace, Remus,” Sirius puts out pithily. 

Remus hums circumstantially for that. “It needed a bit of feng shui, if you ask me,” he offers. 

Sirius tosses out an exhausted laugh, lifting his head to smile sadly at him. “You’re being so much nicer than you should be.” 

“Hold that thought,” Remus instructs, knicking the cigarette back, “because I’m about to blow your mind so you’ve already spoken too soon, saying that.” 

Sirius' chest feels like it could collapse in on itself. “Tell,” he probes. 

Remus smiles as he shoots a stream out of the right side of his mouth. “Given that Pride is in days, to keep in with the spirit of it and you, I’m willing to let you teach me a Zumba routine for the fun of it,” he raises, tapping Sirius’ collarbone with a few fluttered finger tips. 

Sirius genuinely feels as if his heart grew three sizes in the span of a single second, and really only manages to take in a half-breath before speaking. “Really?” he asks, absolutely fucking jazzed already.

“Mhm,” Remus affirms, lifting the cigarette to his curved smile. “I wouldn’t mind picking up where we left off first, but after that, yes.” 

“Two routines?” Sirius haggles, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

Remus puts another haul out through his nose, but his smile suggests he isn’t about to pull the plug on it. “Fine,” he grants, “you can have two.” 

“And really, you may want to try our warm up routine,” Sirius mentions, “simply because you’ll want to be loose and limber for the session and it’s a ton of fun in itself—” 

“Two routines and a warm up coming up,” Remus tacks on, handing the cigarette back to Sirius. “First, let’s clean up the rubble, shower, maybe put some actual clothes on for the lesson, deal?” 

“Deal,” Sirius sends him, taking the cigarette back from him.

Two more quick hauls and he’s done with it too, butching it out in the ashtray on the table and heading to collect the furthest chair on the terrace, then picks up the other laying sprawled on the porch floor on the way back to the table, scooting them back into their original placement. Remus goes for the second chair Sirius tossed that’s now laying askew near-ish to the living room window, shoos their shameless audience members off rather pointedly, and lugs the chair back to the table. 

Sirius follows Remus toward the kitchen with his forefingers at the small of his back, prodding him on a beat through his substantial hike in mood, and Remus must really be trying to keep Sirius’ spirits up for he doesn’t bat back at Sirius’ hands once, just lets him be his theatrical self. 

Once inside Sirius traipses on ahead of Remus, tugging him out of the kitchen and down the hall by the wrist, thrilled to pass the news onto the other two. He stops still in the doorway, looking left, right, all around the living room for the chest, but the room is devoid of it and only has James and Peter standing at attention side by side where it once sat, their hands crossed innocuously behind their backs. 

“What did you do with it?” Sirius asks. 

“It?” Peter raises, putting on a pondering expression. 

“Don’t know what you mean, mate,” James insists, blinking over at him. 

Sirius taps the top of his nose jovially, loving these two more than he can even really handle just then, but it doesn’t take him long to remember he’s got brilliant news. He clears his throat and lifts his free hand in a closed fist, miming speaking over a microphone. “Remus answered the call of Zumba and has voiced that we’re to teach him the ways of it,” he puts out, sending James and Peter into a round of hooting that he feels is completely appropriate for the occasion. 

“Nothing too complicated,” Remus sounds off over the commotion, “this doesn’t mean I’m joining the float as I’m truly happy with the job of watching you all dance by and quite satisfied with that arrangement, and I’ll ask that you please pick ones that will be light on the thrusting; those are my terms.” 

“Oop, _Call on Me’s_ out, then,” Peter says of it. 

Remus aims a finger snap/point combo at Peter. “Precisely.”

“I object?” Sirius says at once. 

Remus pushes out a sigh through a wince. “I just don’t think I have the ability to even try to match the hip action in that one.” 

“Legend says otherwise,” James puts in sagely. 

Sirius taps himself just underneath his right collarbone. “I’m legend.”

“Yeah, no, I gathered that,” Remus returns plainly. "If you get _Call On Me,_ then I veto the second one be _Walking on Sunshine;_ it's been in my head for weeks, so something good should come of that at least.” __

_ _"I could never argue with that pick," Sirius instills, giving a chef’s kiss for it._ _

_ _“You two’re gonna—” Peter starts, gesturing at Sirius and Remus’ matching flannel attire, “—do this like that?” _ _

_ _Remus gives Peter a plain look before refocusing more on Sirius. “You get the shower started, I’ll get us a change of clothes, and we’ll all meet right back here, in say, twenty?” he raises, looking round at the other two before he seems to really think about that last bit before making a quick amendment. “Half hour, maybe.” _ _

_ _Sirius moves for the hall while Peter pushes out a long and lustrous _pfft_. “More like a full hour,” he returns. _ _

_ _Sirius preens from the bathroom door, hand on the knob. “Make it a clean forty-five, give or take,” he concludes, pulling the door open and slipping through the doorway _ _

_ _He shuts the door behind him, heads for the tub straight away, and pushes his right arm past the shower curtain to run the taps. He tests the water with a short feel of his hand until he can deem it an appropriate temperature for Remus’ typical liking and pulls up on the shower rod, bringing the shower head to life. _ _

_ _He takes his hand back, straightens up, and unties the sash of his housecoat, letting it fall off of his arms and off of him in a simple swoop. He stoops to pick it up, hangs it on one of the hooks behind the bathroom door, and heads in, lolling his head one side underneath the stream, trying to keep his mind from going back to places he doesn’t want it going to, but he gets stuck on something else, and then he’s feeling out of sorts until the bathroom door opens again._ _

_ _He peeks his head out of the shower curtain and spots Remus carrying in a pile of folded clothes with their recently opened bottle of lube on top of it. He knocks the bathroom door shut again and heads for the counter by the sink, leaving their pile on it. He undoes his own housecoat, walks it to hang on one of the hooks on the bathroom door rather than drop it to the floor by Sirius’ own, and nabs the bottle of lube on the way back, smirking as he tosses up and catches it again in his right hand. _ _

_ _“I really should have put it in my pocket, given all the heckling I got on the way back for it,” he says circumstantially, coming for the shower. _ _

_ _“Rookie mistake,” Sirius calls it, stepping aside to let Remus in ahead of him. _ _

_ _“It was, no way around it,” he concurs, pulling the shower curtain closed behind him and leaving the lube in the middle compartment of the shower hanger. He reaches up and gets his hair good and damp underneath the stream before turning halfway toward Sirius to have a glance back at him, but it’s too quick a move for Sirius to feign like he’s doing alright. _ _

_ _Remus drops his arms right quick, turning toward him fully with a deep frown on. “How else can I help?” he asks. _ _

_ _Sirius takes in a tight breath, unable to shake the feeling that the longer he doesn’t do something about the feeling in his bones, the longer they’ll stick around. “Do _you_ feel I coddle you too much?” he asks, peering at him openly with his lower lip caught between his teeth._ _

_ _Remus appears not to know what to do with the question for a beat or three, garnering Sirius to think he really ought to time his moments of vulnerability better, but in a sense this is the typical spot for this sort of thing. “Is that what’s happening here?” he asks, gesturing at Sirius’ guilt-ridden stance. _ _

_ _Sirius gives him a numb shrug. “You’re one of the only things I feel like I’m doing right anymore,” he raises. “If I scare you off, then I’m—”_ _

_ _“You’re not going to scare me off,” Remus puts it plainly. “I’m not even going to entertain that thought.” _ _

_ _“Well, I am,” Sirius returns, his shoulders stiff. “Going to entertain it.” _ _

_ _Remus lets out a heady, considerate hum at that. “So, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it over the near-year I’ve known you and I’ve come up with a pretty good analogy for it; would you like to hear it?” he prefaces. Sirius nods emphatically, blinking at Remus expectantly, who lifts his hands illustratively. “I want you to picture an auditorium filled with people and a man at the front of the room behind a podium, talking into a megaphone.”_ _

_ _Sirius tilts his head, already vividly picturing it. “Not a microphone?” he double-checks. _ _

_ _“Megaphone,” Remus affirms. “A white body with a red interior.” _ _

_ _“OK,” Sirius nods, smirking. “I’m picturing it comically huge, that alright?” _ _

_ _“I don’t think it’ll ruin the analogy either way,” Remus accepts. “So he’s talking into it, just dragging me to the ends of the earth and back—” he pauses to smile as Sirius puts out an indignant noise at the thought alone, “—stay with me, OK? He’s at the top of the hall just ruining my life, and the crowd is slapping their knees, hooting, whistling, stamping their feet in clear agreement, and there you are at the back of the hall watching it all happen.” _ _

_ _“Hate this,” Sirius deadpans. _ _

_ _“Right, that’s what I’m getting to,” Remus insists. “If you were seeing that, you would likely take on the task of fighting each and every one of the people in that room, is that safe to say?” _ _

_ _“In a heartbeat,” Sirius returns. _ _

_ _“Right,” Remus accepts, “and that’s the sort of energy you take on when even one person comes at me, for anything, big or small, even if it has some truth to it; do you see what I’m saying?” _ _

_ _“I’m a lot,” Sirius translates, frowning with it._ _

_ _Remus pushes a sigh through his nose, smiling at him weakly. “Sirius, you’ve said it yourself, you’ve a protective streak that starts and ends with me,” he raises, “and I’ve learned that also means you’d fight an armchair if it seemed like it was looking at me wrong.”_ _

_ _Sirius breathes out a sharp huff at the truth hung like a banner in front of him, looking left, right, and back at Remus and his dampened mop of curls on the top of his head. “I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing in your mind,” he admits._ _

_ _“Well, neither of those options are what I would call it,” Remus offers. “To me, it’s equal parts overwhelming and endearing, and I go back and forth on it depending on where my head is on a given day, but I would, wouldn’t I?” _ _

_ _Sirius pulls an agreeing breath through his nose. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “You would.”_ _

_ _Remus steps closer, reaching to brush Sirius’ wet fringe back with his right hand. “Our first shift, you proudly told me that you take care of your own, and even as I continually tried to come up with reasons to keep you at an arm's length, I still found it a remarkable trait and it drew me to you even if I so didn’t want it to, and I certainly didn’t want to feel a visceral urge to know what it’d be like to be considered one of your own, I can’t deny that I felt it,” he details. “And then, that radius you keep around the people you’re closest to opened up to let me in too, and I didn’t know what to do with it while at the same time I rather liked that became so protective of me.”_ _

_ _Sirius takes in a short breath. “Are we talking October?” he checks. “‘Cause I was all about locking you in then and that would fit the description.” _ _

_ _“Mhm, it was,” Remus nods. “Halloween specifically was where I really saw your protective streak go wild.”_ _

_ _“Oh, well shit,” Sirius accepts. “Yeah, I was fucking protective then; I was about to lose you to Lily and the gulags.” _ _

_ _Remus works his mouth around a smile. “It was intoxicating,” he says. “And please, nevermind how fast I ran from it, OK? Just know that I was still so mesmerized by how you picked me up the way you did and made me feel so chosen that I almost didn’t transfer out because I wanted to feel more of that and I was still so convinced your open arms were conditioned to us working in the same space so much and leaving meant losing that; the decision wasn’t an easy one, you know that.”_ _

_ _“I do,” Sirius allows. “Though I find it appalling that you thought work had anything to do with it.” _ _

_ _“Well, I had to learn that, alright?” Remus huffs. “You became my best friend in the span of a month, and you still are —yes, you’re a lot, but I love _your_ version of a lot, even if it knocks me sideways sometimes.” _ _

_ _Sirius pushes his face against Remus' collar, drowning out an incredibly gooey noise in his throat, and then another as one of Remus’ hands comes up and whisks through his hair. “Remus.”_ _

_ _“No, I’m not done; that’s only grown over time because you’ve only grown more protective of me as we have gone on,” Remus tacks on, the jerk. “So, all that to say, it’s cyclical for me now depending on what’s happening around me, to me, you name it; if I’m feeling beat up or attacked, you coming in to defend me feels remarkable, but when my jitters are up, it does make me nervous, and when it gets between you and our friends, I’d rather disappear.”_ _

_ _“Our,” Sirius repeats, lifting his head with a distinctly proud smile on. _ _

_ _“Our,” Remus amends, pressing a kiss to Sirius’ temple. “You could all do with a little less of—” he pushes out a puff of breath, “—trying to feed me when I’m genuinely not that hungry? Or trying to give up your seats because I’m just such a delicate flower that I can’t manage standing for a few minutes—”_ _

_ _“I know,” Sirius puts up, lifting his head. “I know, I know, I know; we’re a lot.” _ _

_ _“_A lot,_ a lot, but it is what it is,” Remus returns, grinning now. “I know that it comes from a good place, but it does get overwhelming at times — especially when you’re all at it at once, Cunt; it’s like a contest between the four of you sometimes.”_ _

_ _“We just love you so much, Remus,” Sirius insists. “You were like, the full embodiment of what we’d been missing and then there you were and you fit in with us like a glove, but we’re really in deep now; none of us want to lose you, so it’s just — ramped up by a lot of notches and we’re probably going to keep doing it and pestering you, and I don’t know how we’re to change that—” _ _

_ _“I don’t think any of us can,” Remus cuts in, giving the side of Sirius’ left cheek a warm, easy caress with his right hand. “In the end, is it really something that I can complain too much about?”_ _

_ _“I mean,” Sirius says, stopping there, going with a simple shrug instead._ _

_ _Remus pushes a quiet breath through his nose. “Sirius, I moved out here alone, I spent my first year and then some alone, and I’d have probably kept to myself for the remainder of my schooling if I hadn’t somehow managed to get picked up by a misfit, tornado family in my second year, and now they’ve laid claim on me as their pseudo-son even though I’m taller than every one of them,” he stresses, tapping Sirius’ cheek once with his forefinger. _ _

_ _Sirius smacks his lips once. “I hope I’m more the protective hubby in this scenario.” _ _

_ _“And you are,” Remus confirms, leaning in to press a kiss to Sirius’ lips and breathing out contentedly after it. “I _know_ how lucky I am to have been picked up by you even if I must huff to survive, so, if it’s alright with you, I’m just going to keep feeling my way through each of these instances as they come, and in return I’ll ask you not to carry the entire cross on your back when those bozos in there are nearly as guilty of loud, loud love as you are, do you think you can do that for me?” _ _

_ _Sirius gives a meek noise as he nods, running his top teeth over his bottom lip. “I love you so much.” _ _

_ _Remus’ smile is of the lopsided variety. “Show me,” he prompts, and Sirius doesn’t need to be told twice. _ _

_ _

_ _\- _ _

_ _

_ _The evening prior to Pride finds Sirius sitting crossed-legged on his bed and pressing a face mask on. Once it’s on he leans more to the left, likely looking similar to a buoy as he attempts to get a decent view of his face in the mirror above his bureau so he won’t have to get up to check if his face mask is pressed on properly, and the sound of the front door opening and shutting takes him out of it for a moment._ _

_ _He smiles to himself, refocuses on the glimpse he has on himself in the mirror, and presses down a ripple underneath his right cheek before deeming his visage covered. He straightens up as he hears a short, simplistic whistle out in the hall, a non-verbal question as to where in the flat Sirius may be, and Sirius replies to it with a quick whistle of his own and smiles bright as Remus pokes his head into the room. _ _

_ _“You look lovely,” he offers, eyeing Sirius’ visage with a lopsided smile on. _ _

_ _“Ta,” Sirius chimes. “There’s one on there for you, too.” _ _

_ _Remus’ gaze follows Sirius’ hand fluttering to the surface of the bureau where his own wine mask is laying and gives out a light trill, going for it and having a glance over it. “Rosé,” he puts up, piqued. _ _

_ _“Mm, I went ahead and picked the Merlot for myself,” Sirius mentions. _ _

_ _“Rather on brand,” Remus deems it, having a look over the back of the packet. “What language is this in?” _ _

_ _“Haven’t a clue,” Sirius raises. “Korean is my best guess, but all I needed was the type and the time-frame and those are in English at least.” _ _

_ _“Oh, I see that now,” Remus nods, stepping toward the bed. “You’re very brave, trying this out hours before Pride; what if you have a reaction?”_ _

_ _“Well, I’ve only had it on for about thirty seconds, but it’s yet to burn so I think I’m in the clear,” Sirius raises. “Besides, see how good it smells?” _ _

_ _Remus steps up onto the edge of the bed with his wine mask in hand, takes two steps in before planting himself directly across from Sirius, and leans in to get a quick sniff of Sirius’ mask before perking. “Ohh,” he says, reaching with his free hand to give an easy pet over Tango’s head, who’s laying on his side like a hog, taking up most of the left side of the bed. “I have a query for you.” _ _

_ _“Mm?” Sirius prompts. _ _

_ _Remus nods, bringing his legs in to sit cross-legged and inadvertently mirror Sirius’ stance. “Lily and Pete are crashing here tonight, yes?” he raises, holding the packet in his lap idly. _ _

_ _“Still the plan,” Sirius affirms. _ _

_ _“OK, I figured, but do you think there’s room for one more?” Remus asks. “Only I think it’d be much easier if Dorcas stayed over rather than me and Pete having to spot her tomorrow in the crowd.” _ _

_ _“‘Course she can,” Sirius returns. “She can either have that couch—” he points to the one on the far end of his fairly won double room, “—or we can pile a load of blankets into the living room and they can all pile onto them.” _ _

_ _“Innovative,” Remus calls it, leaving his mask on his lap as he reaches behind himself to pull his phone out of his back right pocket. “I told her you’d likely be fine with that, but I’ll just let her know it’s a go.” _ _

_ _Sirius nods for it, turning and aiming a smooch noise at Tango, who simply stares up at him from his hogged out position remaining unmoving apart from his tail thumping on the bed at a steady beat. _ _

_ _Remus sets his phone face up on the bed between them and turns his attention onto his mask, picking it up and thumbing at the seam of it, but he pauses the action to have a bemused glance around. “Quiet around here,” he observes. _ _

_ _“Mm, James wanted majooters and the other two agreed rather passionately,” Sirius offers. _ _

_ _“Sorry, what?” Remus asks, smirking. _ _

_ _“Mojitos,” Sirius translates. “Apparently they stumbled on a new dive up the road a bit a couple weeks back and they offer a two-for-four cocktail extravaganza.” _ _

_ _Remus hums lightly for that. “Over Gallaghers’ way or the other direction?” _ _

_ _“Other,” Sirius provides. _ _

_ _Remus accepts that with a nod before sticking his head on a right angled tilt. “You didn’t want to go with?” _ _

_ _Sirius lifts his shoulders easily. “You were already on your way,” he says. “I figured I’d wait here and see if you’d be up for wandering over there eventually.” _ _

_ _“Might as well do this first, but yeah,” Remus says, flapping the packet in his hand. His phone pings right about there and he reaches to swipe at the screen, having himself a read of it. “She’s backing a bag now, might as well wait for her to get here, yeah?” _ _

_ _“I’m comfy,” Sirius offers, and Remus reaches over and begins typing out a response with his right forefinger alone. “I rolled a pinner for you a bit ago, in case you did want to join them and they’re already sauced when we get there.”_ _

_ _Remus takes his hand back, perking at that. “So thoughtful,” he compliments, pulling the seams of the packet apart. _ _

_ _“Well, I’ll be having a toke or two, so not that thoughtful,” Sirius corrects, smirking as he lifts out of his position and leans over the dog to reach for the pinner he put on his nightstand. “Sorry, dude.” _ _

_ _Tango doesn’t seem to care much about being draped upon one way or another while Sirius plucks his lighter and ashtray off of the nightstand’s surface along with the joint. He brings all three over the dog and sticks them in between him and Remus’ knees, smirking again as Remus pulls the folded mask out of its packet and gives the folded mask a long, calculating stare. _ _

_ _“Here,” Sirius offers, holding the pinner out to Remus in exchange for the mask. “It’s a bit of a task to unfold, but I managed it.” _ _

_ _Remus pawns the mask off on him, taking the pinner in turn and picking the lighter up from in between the two of them, flicking it over the end of the joint and taking in a lengthy haul while Sirius peels the damp mask apart until it begins to look like the white silhouette of a face. _ _

_ _He raises it and hovers it in the air between the two of them. “Gimme your face,” he bids. _ _

_ _Remus smirks his haul out of his nose, leans in a touch to present his visage to him, waiting until Sirius lines the eye holes of the mask up with his peepers before he lifts the joint from below and takes another quick haul off of it. _ _

_ _He shoots his exhale out and to the left, lifting the joint and holding it up to Sirius’ mouth so that Sirius can have a toke while he works. “I have another query for you,” Remus says idly, his neck stretched to capacity presumably to help Sirius align the mask to all corners of his visage. _ _

_ _Sirius nods for more while his lungs are full, smoothing the top edge of Remus’ mask against Remus’ forehead. “Well, I may be imagining it,” Remus imparts, “or reading into it too much, so by all means, if you think I’m getting ahead of myself here, do say so.” _ _

_ _“Understood,” Sirius says, smoothing his thumbs underneath Remus’ eyelids to press the mask into place. _ _

_ _“It’s to do with Peter and Dorcas,” Remus supplies. _ _

_ _Sirius’ gaze flickers up to meet Remus’ while he works on smoothing down the left side of the mask. “Saw that, too, did you,” he raises, smirking for it. _ _

_ _“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Remus clarifies. “I thought I might’ve been seeing something more on Peter’s end at brunch, but then I wondered if I were seeing something on Dorcas’ end, too, especially when we were riding back to hers, but I should leave room for the fact that she might’ve just been having a grand time in general and the fact that Pete’s head was in her lap was more incidental.” _ _

_ _“Sure, it’s possible,” Sirius permits, onto the right side of Remus’ face, “only I agree she looked rather cozy, if that helps any.”_ _

_ _“I’ve been going back and forth on it,” Remus says. “One moment I’d be piqued at the possibility and the next I’d tell myself to quit it; earlier today I reached out to verify that we’re still good for tomorrow, and she did specifically ask if Pete would be there,” he says airily, “but then I felt bad for it, thinking that I might be the vapid one here, getting caught up in the idea of my only two single mates pairing up and I felt I’d need to get taken to the firing squad for the thought—” _ _

_ _“Take me with you, then, ‘cause I’m just as guilty,” Sirius manifests, dropping his hands from Remus’ face with an air of accomplishment and knicking the joint from Remus in quick succession. “Come on, it’s not vapid; a girl like her would rock Pete’s fucking world.”_ _

_ _Remus lifts his newly freed hand with a breath of relief. “Thank you,” he puts up. “And not only that, he’d be great for her too, and the bloke she was seeing while away is based out of Bristol and he keeps trying to set up another meetup, and he’s fine, but—” _ _

_ _Remus trails off, making a bit of a face. “Is he a dink?” Sirius raises, lifting the joint to his mouth for a toke. _ _

_ _“Huge dink,” Remus allows, speaking quietly, like a gigantic hand will come down from the ceiling and give him a nice clap over the head if he talks too determinedly about it, “I mean, I’ve heard a lot in the past few months to have an idea that he’s a bit daft, but I think she might see it as endearing?”_ _

_ _“Oh, no,” Sirius muses, taking another toke. _ _

_ _“She told me he thought a samosa was a dance,” Remus deadpans, and Sirius coughs out his haul amidst a mangled laugh, flying his hands to and fro in front of him, begging Remus to give him a second before adding any other anecdote, but Remus attaches his hands to Sirius’ wrists and holds them for support as he fights through his own mirth, but he doesn’t quit one bit, “and I think I was meant to laugh not at him but at the comedy of such an observation, and I just couldn’t, Sirius; my only advantage was that it was over the phone so she couldn’t see me.” _ _

_ _“What is she _doing?_” Sirius puts out._ _

_ _Remus lets go of Sirius’ wrists to raise his hands in agreement. “He must be that good in bed, because there’d be no other sense to it,” he says, reaching to steal the joint back from Sirius’ clutches. "I'm not even telling you half the braindead takes I've heard of him spouting."_ _

_ _Sirius pushes out a lengthy breath for that. “Well, is she dating him or is it more of a when in Rome sort of situation?” he checks. _ _

_ _Remus nods. “It seemed to be the second one while she was there,” he says. “And then he was willing to come to her for her birthday, so I don’t know how casual it is, really, if he was willing to travel for a little something.”_ _

_ _“Well, wait a tic,” Sirius puts in, “was this the bloke she dissed to hang with us longer?” _ _

_ _Remus forwards him a tiny, pointed smile as he holds his haul in, holding the joint over the ashtray and flicking the ash off the tip. “Oh my God,” Sirius puts out. “Was already on his way when she pulled out?” _ _

_ _Remus hums skeptically. “I think she told me it was more an evening plan, so I doubt he was on his way yet.” _ _

_ _“Well, alright, good in bed or not, she still picked a car of buffoons over a guaranteed sexcapade,” Sirius reasons plainly. “I mean, I’ve had things like that; sort of a rainy day arrangement, he knew exactly what it was, I could go over, hit it, and head on out and we’d go on with our lives and then meet back up the next time we were gunning for a quick one, and that was that.” _ _

_ _“When was this?” Remus asks. _ _

_ _“Oh, as recent as last month,” Sirius relays. _ _

_ _“Fuck you,” Remus returns, huffing a laugh all the same. _ _

_ _“It was over a period of like, three years,” Sirius provides, knicking the pinner back for a little more of it before it’s gone. “He was good enough at it to keep on the back burner, and I think he’d say the same.” _ _

_ _Remus seems to wait until Sirius has exhaled fully to prod for more deets. “How’d that end?” he asks, accepting the lasts of the pinner. _ _

_ _“Well, this other bloke sort of wandered into my sights, funnily enough, so my attention went elsewhere,” Sirius provides. _ _

_ _Remus lifts the joint to his pointed smile. “Go on,” he prompts, going for a haul. _ _

_ _“Well, the thing is, laddie,” Sirius starts, pulling a snort out of Remus for it, “when Remus Jean Lupin strolls into the scene, the bloke you keep in your back pocket suddenly becomes rather moot.”_ _

_ _Remus pushes his haul out through his nose, reaches to crush the embers of the joint out in the ashtray, and freezes rather suddenly, his gaze the only thing that moves. “Is he the one you called Remus?” he asks, a pointed smile on now, too._ _

_ _“Oh, no no,” Sirius denies. “_He_ was the banker I met with once I finally got Alphard’s money, and, listen, you were in the picture, yes, but it was early days and the man was making intense eyes at me over his desk and I had to give it a whirl, I hope you understand.” _ _

_ _“Well, there’d be no other choice if he gave you The Eyes,” Remus says plainly. _ _

_ _“Alright, you were clearly all over my mind then,” Sirius puts in, calling for a bit of reason, “I just wasn’t aware yet that you’d end up being my paramour.” _ _

_ _“Paramour,” Remus repeats, reeling a tad, but the smile suggests this is becoming rather playful. _ _

_ _“You heard me,” Sirius goads. “The more time I spent with you, the less I felt like going and getting it elsewhere, and the longer we went on dancing around each other the more you started to embody exactly what I wanted and needed out of somebody, and then I really didn’t want anyone else, fuck buddies included.” _ _

_ _Remus folds his hands in his lap, swaying back and forth at a light, leisurely pace as a light dusting of rouge over his cheeks. “So, it just ended with him?” he prompts, giving a finger snap to pair with it. “Just like that?” _ _

_ _“Well, on my end, it did,” Sirius offers. “I still got texts every so often, but before you and I were a thing I’d say I was working, busy, you name it, and then once we were a thing, there was a boyfriend in the picture, so I’ve continued to decline for that very reason.”_ _

_ _Remus looks left before looking back at him, putting his head in a little more toward Sirius. “He’s still texting you?” _ _

_ _“Yeah, but it’s more of a ‘_is that boyfriend still around_,’ and I reply that you sure are, and that's generally the end of it,” Sirius raises. Remus doesn’t answer that with anything and Sirius feels an odd sort of tingling going up his spine as he points to his nightstand where his phone is. “You can look at them; I don’t entertain him for long, I promise you that.” _ _

_ _Remus shakes his head, reaching for the wrist Sirius has extended and gently bringing it back down. “No, it’s OK,” he insists, patting it. “I’m sorry, I just had a moment there, reacted too quickly.” _ _

_ _Sirius nods, the inside of his lower lip caught between his teeth before he thinks of a better anecdote. “The last time he asked, we were gallivanting through Paris, so believe me when I say I was very adamant in my reply given how love-drunk I was feeling.” _ _

_ _Remus breathes in through his nose, his mouth curling into a reluctant but true smile before he leans in and presses a wee kiss against Sirius’ lips while avoiding their masks getting stuck together in the process. “I’d just think that knowing you’re involved with someone else and after months of repeated declines he’d,” Remus pushes a breath out, using his hands to gesture, “move along?” _ _

_ _“I believe you called me an Adonis once, so you know rather well that it’s easier said than done,” Sirius mentions, preening even with Remus' prompt huff. “It’s a non-issue, Remus; the only reason I even brought it up is because I’m trying to say that if Pete slides in there, he wouldn’t be stealing Dorcas so much as he'd be giving her a much better trade off — and _he_ knows what a samosa is, at least.” _ _

_ _Remus pushes a breathy laugh through his nose, nodding for that. “He does know that,” he allows. “In any case, I’ll be around the two of them all tomorrow, so my goal is to not cramp their style and just — sort of, “ he flutters his hands around in front of him leisurely, “—let the sparks fly from there; if there are any to fly, of course.” _ _

_ _“Alright, we’ve already established that sparklers seem to have been lit here,” Sirius mentions plainly, “so, now, it’s just a matter of seeing to fireworks going off from here.” _ _

_ _“Well, I don’t know how to do that,” Remus says, lifting and dropping his brows in a quick beat. “I’ve never played matchmaker before; I don’t want to be too obvious about it only to have one or both of them resist it and I don’t know that I really have the sort of prowess to pull it off.” _ _

_ _“Umm,” Sirius drags out, “remember that time you got Lily to put Dorcas’ ring on without any clues as to why? Prowess is simply in your nature.” _ _

_ _Remus smirks a laugh, ducking his head. “My heart was beating so fast,” he insists. _ _

_ _“I could genuinely feel it in my hand,” Sirius says, lifting the one he held Remus’ in at the time. “Nevertheless, you wear innocent curiosity on your face while being a complete sneak like no one I’ve ever witnessed before, so I think you handle a little matchmaking.” _ _

_ _Remus' smile goes to the sheepish side of things and this time, when he leans in to initiate a kiss, he drags it out longer than the last, a careful hand pressed to the side of Sirius’ neck. Sirius flicks his tongue against Remus’ mouth and Remus pushes a contented breath through his nose as he grants Sirius access to it, and they carry on like that, nipping and nuzzling and breathing together until Tango lifts a paw and sets it right on Sirius’ left knee. _ _

_ _Sirius pushes a laugh through his nose, pulling back from Remus’ lopsided smile. “You little shit,” he directs at the dog. “Your dad needs a little love too, you know.” _ _

_ _Tango evidently doesn’t give a single shit, scooting in and draping his front half over Sirius’ legs, and that he can’t really complain about. “How was work?” he asks, smiling at Remus over the dog’s head. _ _

_ _“Good,” Remus returns, nodding before he takes a hold of his lower lip, fiddling with it with his right hand. “I talked about you a bit.” _ _

_ _Sirius does a factory reset. “Excuse I?”_ _

_ _Remus lets his hand fall from his mouth, the small smile he has on radiant in and of itself. “Not that you really need any more validation in this respect, but Ian is rather taken with you, I have to say,” he says, smiling pointedly. _ _

_ _Sirius puts out a charmed noise. “Is he?” he probes, shimmying his shoulders. _ _

_ _“Mhm,” Remus affirms. “Thinks your a right stud and I rather agree, so we have that in common.”_ _

_ _“This is—” Sirius puts up, lifting his hands from around the dog’s bulk to gesture for his inability to articulate what it even is, and finally settling on a simple gesture toward Remus. “Look at this; you’re smiling about it.” _ _

_ _“It was nice,” Remus raises earnestly. “I told him I’m taking you home soon and about the big reveal — I didn’t get into that much detail about all of that, he was heading out soon and I was soon to start on the floor, but I did get a little bit of information about his own coming out, and honestly it was a bit funny.” _ _

_ _“Oh?” Sirius asks, the single worded question coming from deep in his throat. _ _

_ _Remus smirks a laugh through his nose, his eyes bright while they’re a bit narrower than usual, but that’s the pot’s fault. “He said he told his dad in the car while he was getting taught how to drive,” he puts in, his voice wavering there at the audacity of that detail, “which he did say in hindsight was a risky place to drop that, but in his defense, he thought doing it in a place where his dad couldn’t go anywhere and would have to face it was more what he was going for.” _ _

_ _Sirius takes in an endeared hum at that. “No, I get that,” he nods before a pause. “Well, in theory I can.” _ _

_ _“Right,” Remus says, automatically reaching to run his right hand back and forth over Sirius’ left forearm laying over Tango’s bulk, as if saying he’s sorry Sirius’ situation wasn’t like that by any stretch without actually saying it, and that in itself keeps Sirius from dwelling on that fact for too long. “But, the funny part about it, is he told him and his dad just went, ‘Mm, _mhm_—’” _ _

_ _Sirius barks out a laugh immediately following the tone of the hum paired with Remus’ impression of a man who’s just had his son tell him something incredibly obvious. “Mm, he does have _ friend of Dorthy_ written all over him,” Sirius puts in. “Wouldn’t be that difficult to pick out if you’re paying any attention to your kid.” _ _

_ _Remus gives a throaty, closed-mouthed laugh, his fingertips continually tracing back and forth over Sirius’ forearm. “I found myself hoping that mine could have a similar reaction,” he says, working his mouth between a frown and a tight smile. “I really don’t even know what I would do if either one of them said, ‘_um, yeah, we know,_’ but it would be a lot easier to hear, I think, than to have to hear that they feel they’ve been lied to for so long.” _ _

_ _“Would we call it lying?” Sirius raises through a squint. _ _

_ _Remus pauses while poised to speak, blinking once for the question. “It’s definitely omitting details,” he calls it._ _

_ _“Right, but omitting details and not correcting who they think you’re seeing doesn’t necessarily count as lying, but it won’t get you sent to Bad Son jail, I don’t think,” Sirius puts it, keeping his voice absolving. “I don’t know if they could ever see you like that.”_ _

_ _Remus squeezes Sirius’ arm before going straight back into his quiet tracing pattern. “It still feels like I waited too long sometimes,” he says; quiet, like a secret. “Like, I could’ve told them the basics, that boys were just as likely if not more likely to catch my eye, but I just kept waiting for something concrete to come along, soften the blow.”_ _

_ _“No, I think it’s good you did,” Sirius says, wanting to absolve that read as quickly as possible. “Now, we go there with months under our belt—” _ _

_ _“You don’t think that,” Remus cuts in, insistent. “I hurt you by keeping this so quiet.” _ _

_ _“Not from them,” Sirius clarifies, giving him a calm but pointed look. “I never had a problem with waiting on that; I called you the boss in that scenario for a reason.” _ _

_ _Remus pulls his lower lip into his mouth, averting his gaze to a spot on the wall behind Sirius. “Every new month just felt too soon,” he says. “And as if the second I spoke you out loud to them, I’d lose you for talking about it.”_ _

_ _“Well, that must’ve changed in May, then?” Sirius raises. “What kicked it into gear?” _ _

_ _Remus takes his gaze off of the wall and fixes it back on Sirius. “I told you.” _ _

_ _Sirius sets his free hand on top of Remus’ and inadvertently stops the movement of it. “I know that, but you just said you feel like you waited too long sometimes, so maybe remembering what made you want to share the news with them finally is what you need to think of right now,” he offers. “And every other time you find yourself thinking like this, but we could just try for right now.”_ _

_ _Remus sits with the new weight on him, pulling in a long breath through his nose. “At first, I didn’t understand why you were pushing for a term abroad for me, and the easiest explanation to me was that you were trying to get rid of me.” _ _

_ _Sirius hasn’t got a hand free to press a voluminous fart noise into, but he blows a substantial raspberry at that to make up for the lack of an echo. “As if I’d ever.” _ _

_ _Remus ducks his head, smiling at the display. “Well, you must understand that it made the most sense to me, with what I had to go on.” _ _

_ _“No, I know that,” Sirius returns, flicking Remus’ hand once. “My point is, I just got you so the last thing I wanted to do was have you off studying somewhere else, but it’s what you wanted.”_ _

_ _“That was huge for me,” Remus stresses. “Especially when you flung the check at me; you recited an entire soliloquy about you needing to step aside _for_ me and—” _ _

_ _He stops there, a stuttered noise caught in his throat, Sirius takes in a breath through his teeth, covering up the tight grip around his esophagus with some tried and true levity. “Your eyes, Remus,” he says simply. “They got massive when you talked about the idea, and even as you talked yourself out of the idea of being able to go there was a fire in them; I had no choice but to not only let you go, but help out where I can.”_ _

_ _“That should have been enough for me,” Remus says, frowning. “It was enough, and yet I still waited, and waited, and then you planned a whole trip and fucking brought me there to see where I was going to be staying, and you were so excited for me that waiting much longer seemed ridiculous; look at what I have?” _ _

_ _Sirius’ face feels so hot it almost burns just to be inside of his own body having Remus gesture at him. “Well, there you have it,” he says; quiet, like it's their secret. “You waited for just the right time.”_ _

_ _Remus’ long inhale catches on a hitch, his gaze dropping to the dog and back up to Sirius. “Move him if you want to get lucky.” _ _

_ _Sirius perks right the fuck up, erratically snapping his fingers toward the side of the bed until Tango starts to lug himself up and off of Sirius’ lap. “Sorry, you gotta,” he insists, directing him off of the bed. “Do we have enough time?” _ _

_ _“For a quick one,” Remus conditions, peeling the mask off of his face. “She’s on her way by now, I’d imagine.” _ _

_ _“Well, fucking’s off the table, then,” Sirius says of it, peeling his own mask down. _ _

_ _Remus huffs a laugh, pushing himself up from the bed. “Just lie down, hm?” he says, lobbing his mask into the bin on Sirius’ side of the bed._ _

_ _Sirius does so immediately, laying back and depositing his own mask into the bin before shimmying his briefs down alongside his trousers while Remus moves the ashtray back to Sirius’ nightstand and hobbles himself out of his own trousers. The two of them stick theirs on opposite sides of the bed for now when they’ll just need to put them back on in due time, and Sirius certainly thinks they’ll be taking turns, but when Remus moves to lay the opposite way, Sirius learns quite suddenly that this is not the case. _ _

_ _Sirius puts out a bold, grateful noise as he rolls toward him. “I love your mind,” he manifests._ _

_ _Remus smirks a laugh from near the foot of the bed, budging in close to Sirius’ body and licking a line up Sirius’ already halfway hard cock, and Sirius isn’t about to get left behind in the running, reaching to wrap his hands around Remus’ hips and pulling them in to do the very same back to him, and there starts a battle of perseverance. _ _

_ _The good thing about making Remus moan around his cock is that this clearly won’t be very long, the bad thing is, Remus might just win this round when the vibrations fully surrounding his cock are rightfully doing him in. It takes a quelling of the mind and some centering to keep up with him, but Sirius does have the advantage of being angled slightly more from above than Remus does, so to that point, Remus can’t go completely ham on Sirius’ cock without possible breathing problems, whereas Sirius can easily put his neck into it at double-time, and then Remus begins to cling hard to the backs of Sirius’ thighs, losing his own rhythm as Sirius gallops ahead of him in the running, and suddenly Remus’ mouth is off of Sirius’ cock. _ _

_ _“Fuck you,” he puts out, wanton as he dips his head down and subsequently gives in. _ _

_ _Sirius hums brightly around his cock for the forfeiting and puts all he’s got into it, but given that Remus, an asshole in the simplest terms, chooses to bite down on Sirius’ right hip as he rocks against Sirius toward his release, Sirius promptly chokes around Remus’ cock, more for the set of teeth bearing down on his leg, his eyes shut tight as he wills himself not to burst before Remus has his mouth on him again._ _

_ _He swallows down Remus’ load slowly, takes to licking Remus clean as a means of keeping it together, and soon as he’s finished with that, Remus is back at it again, shoving Sirius’ hips down flat on the bed and working his mouth over him at warp speed, swallowing around him at each interval and humming while he does it, and Sirius reaches down and clasps his hands at the back of Remus’ head, his toes curling in as he finally allows himself his release, coming so hard he sees white dots speckled about behind his eyelids. _ _

_ _He lays back in a single flomp, eyes fixed on the ceiling as he catches a semblance of his breath, and Remus shifts up the bed next, planting himself down on Sirius’ left side, and curls into face Sirius more, pressing the lower half of his face against Sirius’ upper arm. _ _

_ _“One of our best times,” he deems it._ _

_ _Sirius hasn’t got the speech patterns to agree verbally just yet, so he simply nods for it, scooting his arm forward from Remus’ face and bringing it up and around him, feeling that holding him close is really an answer in itself. _ _

_ _Remus switches to pressing his smile up against Sirius’ left side, leaving Sirius with a prime view of a pair of gigantic eyes underneath a mop of curly fringe. “You know,” he says, thirty seconds or so later, “they say that the honeymoon period doesn’t last forever, but I don’t know that there aren’t moments where it filters back in.” _ _

_ _“Hm?” Sirius hums, turning his head fully toward him. _ _

_ _“It still feels like we’re still in it, in a way,” Remus says. “Or, I still feel disgustingly happy to get to see you so much of the time, and statistically I’m supposed to be a wee bit sick of you by now but I’m not. I'm just really not.”_ _

_ _“Shit, me neither,” Sirius says, his voice rather hoarse to his own ears. He takes in a breath through his nose, whisking his right hand up through Remus’ hair, wanting him to keep talking. “You're feeling good, then?” _ _

_ _"I mean, June was one of the toughest months of my life easily, and I’ve had a lot of those,” Remus says plainly, and something about the direct bluntness of the line gets Sirius laughing despite the delicate subject matter, “but you made it so much better just by being in it with me.” _ _

_ _Sirius pushes his hand around the back of Remus’ head, cupping it as he leans down to leave a kiss on his forehead. “I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” he says, lips hovered over Remus’ skin._ _

_ _Remus lets out a sigh at the ping of his phone still over near the end of his bed, laboriously lifting himself up onto his right elbow and footing the phone closer to him, rather than simply moving to get it, and that, Sirius can identify hard with. It takes some coordination, but eventually Remus bats the phone close enough to reach down for it, pulling it in and having an easy glance over the screen as Sirius gives into a substantial yawn, halfway aware of Remus shooting right up in bed beside him. _ _

_ _“She’s downstairs.” _ _

_ _“Already?” Sirius yawns. _ _

_ _“Mhm,” Remus affirms, scooting toward the end of his bed to pull his briefs out of his trousers._ _

_ _Sirius lays back with his hands behind his head and takes to brightly watching the show that is Remus speedily trying to maneuver his feet into the leg holes of his trousers, and once he manages that, he looks up at Sirius and pauses long enough to aim the two finger salute at him before continuing on, lifting onto his knees as he tugs his trousers up his hips. _ _

_ _“You have to get dressed, too,” Remus points out, fastening his trousers. _ _

_ _“I’m getting to it,” Sirius says, not moving at all. _ _

_ _Remus shoots him a pointed look before letting himself out of the room, but the smile on his face rather marred the effect of the look overall. _ _

_ _

_ _-_ _

_ _

_ _By all accounts, the restaurant is far too fancy for the likes of them. Sirius receives that message loud and clear once they’re seated and Remus heads off in search of the loo, leaving Sirius to observe the lofty dining area and peruse the wine list which boasts a fair amount of house specials with price tags hitting the three digits. _ _

_ _Remus turns up rather suddenly, sinking into the seat across the table from Sirius, and remarkably showcases a similar thought pattern. “Schmancy in here,” he says, leaning into the table to speak a little closer, a touch lower. “You have to check out the bathroom before we go; the taps are a waterfall.” _ _

_ _“Are they?” Sirius returns, absolutely piqued. _ _

_ _Remus nods emphatically. “There’s a whole little nature scene to that sink,” he insists. _ _

_ _“Well, shit,” Sirius says, glancing over his shoulder in the direction Remus came from, debating whether he should go do that now or wait it out a little, and a waiter brings over a basket of bread sticks almost in response to that, cementing to Sirius that the table is where he needs to be for the moment. _ _

_ _“Do you need more time?” the man asks, depositing the basket between the two of them on the table. _ _

_ _“Oh, so much more,” Sirius insists when he’s still only holding the wine list. _ _

_ _The waiter dips his head for a nod, sidles off toward the bar in the corner, and the two of them are again left to their own devices. Sirius takes one look at the basket before lifting his gaze to meet Remus’ with a lofty one of his own, finding Remus’ right eyebrow has taken a quick journey up his forehead while the left remains in place._ _

_ _“Well, what are we to do with these?” Remus asks, a wry smile on his lips. _ _

_ _“I think you know,” Sirius sounds out; a convocation, a challenge. _ _

_ _There, it’s a race to grab the stick with the most impressive girth and Sirius comes out the winner of that particular spat. Honourable as ever in the face of defeat, Remus accepts his loss with humility and settles for a different stick out of the bunch. _ _

_ _“Suppose we’ll learn here whether size truly matters,” Remus says, bread stick at the ready._ _

_ _“The age-old question,” Sirius considers it, brandishing his own. _ _

_ _An alarm begins to ring above their heads, the wall behind Remus’ seat opens up and shoots streams of dry ice out of it, and bears of light zoom about the place as they commence their sword fight; Sirius can feel the eyes in the room on them, feels the atmosphere about the dining room shift from heightened sophistication into carnal energy, hears the hoots and hollers of bets cast upon who the winner of the sword fight will be—_ _

_ _Sirius starts awake, finding himself on his back and taking in a resounding breath as he blinks around his bedroom as his alarm blares from his nightstand. He reaches out with his right hand and taps the screen of his phone to switch the alarm off and promptly puts his left hand out to the left, grabbing for Remus, who, turns out, seems to have been already awake and sitting up against Sirius’ headboard with _A Tale of Two Cities_ propped in his lap, and on top of that is now right spooked by Sirius’ sudden movement._ _

_ _“What happened to you?” Remus inquires, peering over at him amusedly._ _

_ _Sirius can’t help it; he transforms into a useless blob, a humanoid laugh. He lifts his arms, rubbing his fists sharply over his eyelids as he gathers his thoughts enough to relay the importance of what he just dreamed up, and rolls toward Remus, putting one hand on Remus’ chest and the other on his right forearm. _ _

_ _“I was dreaming that we’d just been seated in this hoity-toit restaurant and began commencing the most fierce bread stick battle the world’s ever seen—” he gets out, bringing a rolling laugh out of Remus’ throat that takes him by surprise by the looks of it, and Sirius surges on in his detailing, chest heaving as he lifts his hands to aid in demonstration, “—_shh shh,_ it gets better; there were strobe lights going about the place the second the battle started, alarms sounding off, the people at the other tables were goading us on, casting bets on who’d come out of it the winner—”_ _

_ _Sirius trails off as Remus promptly cups his right hand over his mouth while he holds his free hand up, seemingly requesting Sirius give him a bloody second to digest any of that. _ _

_ _It takes ten seconds or so for Remus to reign it in. “Well, who won?” he asks, smiling eagerly over at him._ _

_ _“I can’t say for sure, I woke up before either of us could be crowned king,” Sirius insists, pulling a plain huff out of Remus. “The title could have gone to either of us; we were both spry with our dueling hands as if this was something we’d done a million times over and perfected along the way which is really just hilarious on its own, but moreover, you ought to know my stick had the most girth out of the two of ours, so.” _ _

_ _Remus pulls an inhale through his nose, humming thoughtfully. “I believe they call that wishful thinking,” he starts, a pondering but direct air about him._ _

_ _Sirius flings himself up, tossing his right leg out and over Remus, landing astride his body pinning the man down for a well-deserved jab session, but Remus blocks his efforts with his hands, laying them overtop the pages of his new book. “You best take your blessings with humility and _none_ of this gloating,” Sirius presses, dissolving Remus into a fit of his own. _ _

_ _"All this talk about wanting me to gloat more, and here you are, fussed," Remus puts up airily, lifting his hands to block Sirius’ hands from making the book a casualty. “Careful, this is an antique." _ _

_ _Sirius sends out a profound _pfft_ for that, batting Remus’ hands. “Would you like a tea while I’m up, maestro?” _ _

_ _“I sure would,” Remus replies, beaming below him. _ _

_ _Sirius dips his head down, pressing a kiss to the right of the lapel of Remus’ housecoat where a glimpse of his collarbone can be seen and in turn winning himself a quick kiss return on the top of his head. He breathes in long before lifting himself off Remus' hips and hoists himself back toward the edge of the bed before maneuvering himself down from it._ _

_ _He tappers over to the hooks behind his door, pulling his own housecoat off of them and slipping it on. He steps out into the hall, pulling his door closed behind him and tying the sash around his waist as he heads up the hall and into the living room, perking as the profoundly colourful beats of _Dancing On My Own_ floats back to him from what sounds like the bathroom; the sudden start of the tune making it feel a little like it’d begun to play simply because Sirius emerged onto the scene and that feels rather apt, he has to admit. _ _

_ _He saunters past the open door on the way to the kitchen, spotting Lily and Dorcas huddled around the bathroom mirror still in their respective sleep clothes with various make-up bags strewn on the counter, and the image of them dolling up extravagantly paired with perhaps the gayest choice of tuneage is both a little on the nose and particularly lovely thing to witness at one go._ _

_ _The two of them are a tad too focused on their work to notice him going by and Sirius heads into the kitchen with a bit more of a bounce to his step, finding James and Peter at the table with bowls of cereal in front of them. _ _

_ _“M’ladies,” he greets, heading for the kettle on the counter by the stove. _ _

_ _James salutes him with his free hand while the other brings a spoonful of Cheerios toward his mouth. “You ready, king?” he asks before a bite._ _

_ _Sirius lifts the kettle off of the counter to bring it to the sink to fill, shaking it as he goes. “Not ‘til I get this figured out,” he insists. _ _

_ _He fills the kettle to the brim, walks it back to the counter, and plugs it back in, pulling Remus’ tea down first and making the difficult choice of whether he’ll do better with a blonde or a dark roast. Blonde wins out, however, and he sets his Press up, the grinds scooped in and ready to go, places a tea bag into Remus’ mug, and since he’s got a little time before the water fully heats, he heads back down the hall toward the bathroom. _ _

_ _“Oh good, you’re up,” Lily says as he heads into the room._ _

_ _“In theory,” Sirius says, sidling in and footing the toilet seat up, his back to the lasses at the mirror as he undoes the sash of his housecoat. “You two can either look away or use my mirror, but I’m going to need this.” _ _

_ _“Well, I was going to ask if we could use yours anyway,” Lily returns, beginning to gather up her supplies. “Is Remus decent?” _ _

_ _“More than, but knock in case he’s started changing,” Sirius replies, and with that her and Dorcas carry their armfuls out of the room and down the hall, _Robyn’s_ voice getting further and further out of earshot as they go. _ _

_ _Dorcas foots the door half-way closed, her arms a bit too full to use for the job, but that’s good enough for Sirius, frankly. He takes care of that, tucks himself back in and closes his robe again, using his left foot to push down on the flusher when he can’t be arsed to lean forward and push it down just then. He moves for the sink, washes up before splashing a bit of water on his face in an attempt to wake himself up further. _ _

_ _He heads back to the kitchen and takes care of his and Remus’ respective cups, picking up the mugs and walking them out of the kitchen and back down to his room, coming into it to find Lily in front of the mirror on his bureau which he rather expected to see, but Dorcas is sitting across from Remus on his bed with her supplies strewn around her. Sirius walks Remus’ tea over to the left side of the bed and holds it out to him, and Remus takes hold of it with a twist of a smile on his own lips, nodding to the right. _ _

_ _“Your phone’s been going off like mad,” he offers him. _ _

_ _Sirius hums lightly, plucking his phone up off of the bed with his newly freed hand and letting out a huge puff of breath at the messages in his inbox from various folks and friends, all of them some degree of questioning him on where he’ll be over the course of the day and when._ _

_ _“You weren’t kidding,” he says, moving to sit on the bed and scrolling through until Marlene’s name takes his interest. He types out a quick, ‘_heading to gallaghers after zumba, come there if you want to live_’ in response to her heckling and fires that off. _ _

_ _He leaves his phone aside, more interested in what’s happening here than answering each and every one of the rest of the questions in his inbox just now, taking an observational glance over the scene and setting his gaze on Dorcas sifting around in one of her makeup bags. “What’re we doing here?”_ _

_ _“Well, he gave me permission to doll him up, but all I’ve come to so far is the knowledge that we’ll be using highlighter to accentuate this God-given jawline,” Dorcas supplies analytically, nodding toward Remus’ overcome expression. _ _

_ _“Approved,” Sirius deems it, lifting his mug toward his mouth. _ _

_ _“And from there, I don’t know yet,” Dorcas says. “Depends how much freedom he gives me.” _ _

_ _“We’ll have to do something with those lashes,” Sirius considers. “Really make those eyes pop.” _ _

_ _“I was just thinking that,” Dorcas says, turning her head to him with an emphatic look to her gaze. _ _

_ _Sirius smiles over his coffee mug. “Bit of liner, bit of mascara,” he tacks on before a sip._ _

_ _“I’ve got a curler here,” Lily chimes in, speaking a little slower than the rest of them when she’s currently tracing a wing onto her left eyelid, and that does take some concentration. _ _

_ _“Oh, that thing’s terrifying,” Remus says of it. “I draw the line there.” _ _

_ _“It won’t hurt you,” Dorcas assures him, exchanging a quick smile with Sirius. _ _

_ _“So you say,” Remus returns, lifting his mug for a pointed sip of tea. _ _

_ _“Don’t move when it’s coming at your eye and you’ll be just fine,” Sirius insists._ _

_ _“No one’s going to be able to see what you do to my eyes, though,” Remus mentions, a smirk on his face. “I’m going to have to wear shades the whole time.” _ _

_ _“Not when you’re inside, Remus,” Sirius puts up. “I want to be able to _see_ those peepers from across the pub.” _ _

_ _“Challenge accepted,” Dorcas insists, twisting open a compactor and dabbing her beauty blender up in there before raising it toward Remus’ visage. _ _

_ _“What’s this?” Remus asks, holding his mug in his lap while following with his gaze as the blender comes toward his face._ _

_ _“A beauty blender,” she answers. _ _

_ _“No, the stuff on it,” Remus clarifies. _ _

_ _“Primer,” Dorcas forwards. “Consider it the first coat of paint for the artwork I’m about to create on your face.”_ _

_ _“OK,” Remus replies, a little hesitant in tone as he tosses a side-glance at Sirius. _ _

_ _“It’ll act as a base so we can slap the highlighter on you smoother and make it last longer, which is exactly what we want,” he provides, gesturing with his mug toward the bureau. “I’ve setting spray over there, by the by.”_ _

_ _“Oh, I’ve some here,” Dorcas mentions, already at work._ _

_ _“No, he’s got the good shit,” Lily tacks on, working on her right eye now. _ _

_ _Dorcas pauses mid-stroke of the blender to look round at the bureau and her entire body language lifts as she spots the canister. “Oh, you do,” she puts out fondly. “Nevermind, I’m using that.” _ _

_ _Sirius smirks, looking over at Lily carefully painting her right eyelid with liquid liner. “Have you got your kiki down pat?” he checks, smiling over his mug. _ _

_ _“_I’m gonna let you have it,_” Lily recites loftily. _ _

_ _Sirius’ smile goes into a right grin. “Please let me have it,” he insists. _ _

_ _“I think that might be the one I’m most thrilled to see in-action, but I’ve also accepted the chances of the lot of you being on that specific one when you roll by are very slim,” Remus puts in, remaining still as a statue while Dorcas blends away. _ _

_ _“If you don’t get to see it live, we’ll request it at Gallaghers and do the whole thing over for you,” Sirius manifests. _ _

_ _“Deal,” Remus forwards, giving him a small smile that might’ve been larger if Dorcas weren’t busy beating his face up, but his eyes do more for his smile than his lips do._ _

_ _“Is that where we’re going after?” Dorcas asks._ _

_ _“We have to support our home base,” Sirius says, before gesturing his mug at Remus, “and he isn’t much for clubbing as is.” _ _

_ _“OK, I like to be able to hear,” Remus puts in pointedly, “and Pete’s not much of a fan either.” _ _

_ _“Can I dance there?” Dorcas quizzes them, concerned with the real questions. _ _

_ _“Oh, there’ll be dancing,” Sirius instills. “They clear a whole section of the floor for it; they know what their patrons want.” _ _

_ _“Then I’m in,” Dorcas puts down, exchanging her primer compactor for concealer. “Can we pick your outfit, too?” _ _

_ _Sirius takes in a resounding noise as he swallows a mouthful of coffee. “Yes, yes, yes,” he chants. _ _

_ _“OK, you already picked the corduroys,” Remus raises, “What more do you want?” _ _

_ _“To pick your outfit?” Sirius returns, not seeing a reason in dressing it up in anything other than the truth of it. “We never did decide on a top.”_ _

_ _“Well, we—” Remus starts, giving a frank smile, “—got a tad distracted, didn’t we.” _ _

_ _Lily puts up a faux-gasp. “You two?” she raises, spraying the hell out of her face with Sirius’ canister of high-end setting spray. “I don’t believe it.” _ _

_ _“Chill out over there?” Sirius bids._ _

_ _Lily mimes spraying the bottle at him and then switches to lobbing it onto the bed for its next use. “Alright, we’re not done here,” Dorcas says, turning Remus’ face toward hers, beginning to blend again._ _

_ _Sirius hums lightly through another sip of coffee, lifting off of the bed and skirting around the edge of it to head for his closet where some of his more fanciful options live. He leaves his mug on the nightstand nearest to him, opens the closet, and has himself a few moments to sift through the items hanging in there before he snorts, pulling a black jacket he found in a thrift store that’s got about a billion rainbow tassels flowing from the sleeves. _ _

_ _“If I could get you into this, I would,” Sirius makes it clear. _ _

_ _Dorcas glances over, snorts, and pauses her work so Remus can turn and have a look for himself. “Honestly I’d be alright with that if I wouldn’t completely bake in it,” he says, smiling big. “Something with shorter sleeves to offset my covered legs would be ideal.” _ _

_ _Sirius takes that bid to heart, sticking the jacket back and shoving half of the hanging wardrobe aside to get to the more summery items. “Well,” he drags out, lifting another hanger out with a white tank hanging from it, “this one is quite unassuming in nature, but has a nice, universal theme going on at the front.” _ _

_ _Sirius showcases it and the capital lettering of ‘_DICKS DICKS DICKS_’ stamped onto the front of it in rainbow paint. ”Literally where did you find that?” Dorcas demands. _ _

_ _“He just happens upon them,” Remus answers for him. _ _

_ _“This one spoke to me on a visceral level and I had to bring it home with me,” Sirius tacks on._ _

_ _“And that’s a no from me,” Remus finishes. _ _

_ _“Boo,” Dorcas shoots at him. _ _

_ _“Seconded,” Sirius imparts, putting the shirt back on the rack._ _

_ _“I’ll never be able to share a single photo of the day,” Remus reasons. _ _

_ _Sirius sends him a puff of breath, not really having a retort ready to go when he supposes there is that to consider, and instead goes ahead and pulls another option out, holding up a mirror-studded tank, also white. _ _

_ _“Are you interested in being a human disco ball?” he inquires._ _

_ _“I’ll take it over _dicks dicks dicks_,” Remus says of it, taking advantage of the break in his primping to take a sip of tea, “but let me just raise a counterpoint; _Def_.”_ _

_ _Sirius drops the disco-inspired tank to the floor at once. “Would you?” he asks, overcome already. _ _

_ _Remus lifts his shoulders once, an easy smile on his lips. “I mean, it’s probably your lightest option and I’ve grown rather fond of it at that,” he says. _ _

_ _Sirius immediately heads for his dresser, pulling the second drawer open and conducting a thorough search. He finds it sooner than later, turns to lob it over to Remus, and Dorcas tosses a glance to Sirius as she works on Remus’ face. “What are you wearing?” she asks determinedly. _ _

_ _Remus smirks as he catches Sirius sending her a pointed smile. “It’s really something,” he offers. _ _

_ _Sirius heads back to the closet with a skip to his step. “He picked it out,” he mentions, flipping past a few garments on hangers to get to the first prize, “and I have to say he picked right; it gives me incredible room to move around freely, light enough for my skin to breathe while I’m working up a sweat, and it shows off these legs, which is really the most important part, let’s just be honest about that.” _ _

_ _“It took a good hour of him modelling various options, but the instant he put that on it was unarguably the right choice,” Remus says of it. “And the legs were definitely the deciding factor.”_ _

_ _Sirius preens a little at the voucher, turning from the closet to showcase a romper also of the rainbow variety and draping it over his body to showcase its fit. Dorcas glances over to him again and gives out an excitable trill._ _

_ _“We’re romper twins, I can’t,” she says of it. _ _

_ _“You can and you will,” Sirius returns. _ _

_ _“Well, mine’s more of a full suit and it’s just black,” Dorcas puts up, “whereas yours is — beyond.”_ _

_ _“Do you want rainbow coloured beads?” Sirius raises. “We kept getting given them last year so I’ve got, like, thirteen of them somewhere.” _ _

_ _“Yes,” Dorcas says gravely. _ _

_ _“Done,” Sirius instills, going ahead and leaving his romper on the bed when he’ll just have to change into it in due time, and braces himself as Lily turns to him with a thoughtful air about her. _ _

_ _“Want me to do you?” she offers, tapping her makeup bag once. _ _

_ _“Do I,” Sirius echoes, moving to sit beside Remus on the bed and garnering Lily to bring her supplies to the bed and sit across from him and beside Dorcas, creating a little primping station. “You best give me wings, d’you hear me?” _ _

_ _“Oh, believe me, I was planning to,” Lily instills, shifting to sit cross-legged in front of him._ _

_ _Peter and James join the troupe a little ways into both Remus and Sirius’ transformation,and both blokes decide to pile onto the bed and watch the rest of the process, though James certainly makes sure to ask that he get his own face a little beat himself. _ _

_ _“Well, I’m going to have to make it speedy,” Lily mentions. “We’re getting close.” _ _

_ _“No one talk for a sec,” Dorcas instills louder than the conversation. Sirius looks sidelong as she slowly brings the eyelash curler in for Remus’ left eye, gives a squeeze on the end of the curler, pulls it back to inspect, smiling brightly. “See? No harm, no foul.” _ _

_ _“That wasn’t that bad at all,” Remus concedes, and with that Dorcas moves onto his right eye. _ _

_ _“You look awful purdy, Remus,” Peter says once it’s officially safe to talk. _ _

_ _Remus lifts his left hand up and sticks it underneath his chin for a lighthearted display in response and drops it again right quick as Dorcas bids him to. “Eyes shut,” she tacks on, shaking the canister of setting spray. _ _

_ _Sirius manages a little longer of a side-view of Remus fluttering his rather fantastically painted eyelids shut before Lily pushes one, single breath out of her nose. “Quit peeking at him, please?” she raises, working highlighter onto Sirius’ left cheekbone with a practiced flourish of her hand. “He looks a beaut, but you don’t need confirmation on that so much, I don’t think.” _ _

_ _Sirius snorts, straightening his gaze out and training it on the small crease between Lily’s dolled up eyebrows. “You got me there,” he lets her have._ _

_ _“Yer done,” Dorcas says, patting the tops of Remus’ knees once. _ _

_ _Remus pushes one, long, rather horse-inspired breath out, stretches his neck long in Sirius’ peripheral, and promptly heaves up out of his seating position to move for the hall. _ _

_ _The moment Remus exits the room, James ducks his head with a smirk on. “Imagine that’s the last we see of him,” he puts up. _ _

_ _“I need the loo,” Remus calls back in his defense. _ _

_ _Dorcas heaves out a breathy laugh as she pushes off of the bed, standing at the foot of it as she gathers her supplies before bringing them over to the bureau. There she spreads them all out over the surface of it and begins to sort her own face out given that her visage is nearly done but only one eye is dolled up, and that is a detail Sirius hadn’t noticed until right this very second._ _

_ _“Did you just get completely distracted by him?” be raises, smirking for it._ _

_ _Dorcas pushes out an amused breath. “Well, I had to ask if he’d let me play around and then when he said yes I didn’t want him changing his mind before I finished my own face,” she explains, fishing around in one of her bags. _ _

_ _Sirius sits with that for a moment. “Sneaky _and_ clever,” he forwards, and Dorcas sends him a bright look in the reflection of the mirror before continuing on where she left off on her left eye. _ _

_ _Lily sits back from a bit, having herself a look at her work on Sirius’ visage, and pushes a single breath of near-completion out of her nose. “Almost there,” she trills, reaching for the setting spray and giving the canister a solid shake. _ _

_ _Sirius lets his eyelashes fall shut, sticking his face out, and moves with each spritz to help Lily get as many angles as can be done. When he opens his eyes, he finds Remus has made his reappearance, standing over by the set of drawers and attempting to tug a pair of briefs on underneath his housecoat without giving everyone a free show in the process. _ _

_ _Remus smiles over at Sirius, who’s just a wee bit distracted by what’s just been done to his eyes; if anything, he can’t look anywhere else but at them._ _

_ _Remus says something, that much is true, but Sirius sure misses it. “Hm?” he asks, refocusing right quick._ _

_ _Remus' smile goes a little sheepish. “Is it too much?” he asks. _ _

_ _“Excuse you,” Dorcas puts in from over by the mirror, “I kept it simplistic while also letting those eyes pop as per request, and your cheekbones look bomb so you’re welcome for that, too.” _ _

_ _“I was only checking,” Remus insists. _ _

_ _“And I, admiring,” Sirius tacks on. _ _

_ _Remus’ mouth curls up all twisty. “I asked about the plan for later while you were doing that, then,” he reiterates. _ _

_ _“Well, once we’re done we’ll be far and away, but we’ll just take the tube back, yeah?” James raises, sitting remarkably still for the likes of him while Lily works on his face. _ _

_ _“Yeah,” Sirius says, lifting up and stepping down on the side of his bed. “We'll be done before the parade's over for you lot, so ring me when you've finished up and we'll meet up from there.” _ _

_ _Remus nods, satisfied with that by the looks of it, and reaches into the top drawer and lobs Sirius a new pair of briefs before he heads over to rummage through his night bag to pull out his corduroys. “Where are you three going to be watching from?” Lily asks. “We need to know ahead of time so we can know to put a little extra something into it when we roll by.” _ _

_ _“I figured I’d take them to the usual spot,” Peter raises, none too fussed about it. _ _

_ _Sirius logs that away, keeping a mental note to be sure to look right as they’re dancing along to see if he can spot them. “You still haven’t said where that is,” Remus mentions, shimmying his trousers on underneath the skirt of his housecoat. _ _

_ _“He told me where it is,” Dorcas says, methodically running an eye pencil underneath her right eyelid to match it up with her finished right one. _ _

_ _Remus finishes up with his fly, drops his hands and brings them up to his hips, eyeing Peter first and then Sirius, who went ahead and threw his housecoat off once his briefs were securely on his hips, and then over to Dorcas finally. _ _

_ _“Want to tell me where we’re going since they’re apparently not going to?” he raises. _ _

_ _“Piccadilly Circus,” Dorcas relays. _ _

_ _“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Remus puts out, tossing his housecoat in the hamper near Sirius' dresser._ _

_ _“The crowd will be sizable, yes,” Sirius mentions, pulling his romper off of the bed and giving it a zip-down. “but with that comes the right sort of energy you should have for your first Pride—” he looks round at the rest of them, “—am I right, or am I right?” _ _

_ _“He’s right,” Lily puts in, dabbing her beauty blender along James’ jawline. “You’ll hardly mind the crowd once they get going.” _ _

_ _“I don’t know about that,” Remus puts in, pulling his housecoat off of his arms. _ _

_ _“It’s really rather infectious,” James nods for it. _ _

_ _“Exactement,” Sirius raises it from there, stepping into the leg holes and lifting the short sleeves up over his shoulders. “Talk to me after it’s all said and done and I bet you’ll have had a gay old time.”_ _

_ _Remus pushes a single breath through his nose, gaze on Sirius, but his lips curl at the corners as Sirius zips up. “I can’t even be that disappointed with you when you’re in that,” he says frankly. _ _

_ _“If that’s the case, then I’ll add it to my regular wardrobe,” Sirius returns, bending over the bed to pick up the _Def Leppard_ shirt and pass it off up to him. _ _

_ _“Oho, my God,” James says as the shirt passes his peripheral. Lily pauses long enough for James to turn his head toward Remus as he pulls the shirt on over his head. “Who’s a hottie, he’s a hottie.” _ _

_ _“Yeah, yeah,” Remus says, waving him off as he has a look down at the shirt on him from above and tugs at the front of it. “Did it shrink in the wash? Bit shorter than it used to be.”_ _

_ _Sirius hears the quizzical tone as he pulls his hair up into a bun and squints over at the mere three inches of skin between the hem of the shirt and the belt of Remus’ trousers, finding those three inches complete gifts if anything. _ _

_ _“Say it did shrink, we’re not out here trying to hide that arse behind two three sets of material, OK?” he returns, tying his elastic in a double loop. “Let’s just get one thing straight here.” _ _

_ _“Straight,” Peter puts up skeptically. _ _

_ _“You’re right, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking,” Sirius amends on a dime. _ _

_ _Dorcas turns away from the mirror with her the eyelash curler firmly squeezed over the lashes on her left eye and peers at Remus with her right one open before clicks her tongue. “You made it sound like he put you in a crop top.”_ _

_ _“Don’t talk while you’re doing that or you’ll blind yourself,” Remus returns on a dime._ _

_ _He stoops to pull his tube of sunscreen out of his night bag and rising to his feet with his gaze moving to Sirius before he gives a quick flick of his right wrist in a beckon. Sirius practically traipses around the bed to get to him, finding the fact that Remus thought of getting Sirius covered in sunscreen before even himself a rather lovely thought to contend with. He steps up close, holding his arms up and out, and he steals a quick kiss or four while Remus works on lathering him up. _ _

_ _Remus puts his right hand on Sirius’ waist before tapping him and gesturing for him to turn around, and Sirius swivels on his heel, facing the bed while Remus’ works on his back and shoulders and watching Lily give James’ face a solid few sprays of setting spray since that’s what’s directly in his eye line. _ _

_ _“Can I get a squirt of that?” Dorcas asks, putting the curler down on the bureau. _ _

_ _“Sure can,” Lily replies, giving a final spritz over James’ visage. _ _

_ _“OK, you are all pitching in for the next canister,” Sirius puts in, turning his head to aim an additional comment at Remus specifically. “Except you.”_ _

_ _“Oh?” Remus says, wryly from behind him. _ _

_ _“Them’s the perks,” Sirius returns simply. _ _

_ _“I will just fork over for the whole next one, how ‘bout that,” James says, blinking his newly primped eyes up at him. _ _

_ _Sirius nods once, fine with that arrangement, and Lily pushes up to her knees and backs off of the edge of the bed, handing the setting spray off to Dorcas. “Do you want me to grab your bag?” she offers, stopping at the doorway to aim the question at her. _ _

_ _“Please, yeah,” Dorcas nods, giving the canister a few good shakes. _ _

_ _Lily’s gone and back within a minute, carrying her and Dorcas’ bags with her upon her return and beckoning Dorcas along with her. She leads them over to the other side of Sirius’ fairly won double room and works at sliding closed the wood partition in the center of the room that can potentially be used as a partition to make Sirius’ double room into two separate rooms if he were so arsed to make that happen on a given day. _ _

_ _“There are so many secrets to this place,” Dorcas says of it, behind the partition. _ _

_ _“I’m still finding new and exciting things to pour over,” Remus tacks onto that._ _

_ _Sirius puts in a snort there. “Or jolt back from.” _ _

_ _"Or pull your hair out over," Peter puts in. _ _

_ _“Oh, those too,” Remus says heavily, tapping Sirius’ waist to suggest he’s quite finished. _ _

_ _Sirius swivels around again, takes hold of the sunscreen, and starts the process all over again for Remus’ protection from the beat of the sun while the girls go back and forth on the other side of the wall. _ _

_ _“That looks so good,” Dorcas shoots out. _ _

_ _“Which part?” Lily asks. _ _

_ _“Well, both, but the top — the top,” Dorcas stresses. _ _

_ _“Oh,” Lily says, charmed by the sound of it. “Thanks; I knit it myself.” _ _

_ _“Shut it, no you didn’t,” Dorcas returns. _ _

_ _“She did,” James puts up. “Watched her work on it for a month.” _ _

_ _“Well, now I’m really regretting this,” Dorcas says, and what that is, Sirius doesn’t know, he just knows by the sound that leaves Lily’s throat that she does not agree one bit. _ _

_ _“Why, it’s perfect,” she puts out, footsteps that presumably are hers sound along the floorboards before Lily puts out a striking gasp. “It’s so soft.” _ _

_ _“Well, that’s why I went with it — that and it breathes well and has pockets,” Dorcas says, of her outfit, Sirius has to assume now. _ _

_ _“_Pockets,_” Lily puts out emphatically. _ _

_ _“Yeah, but if I’d have known how much leg everyone else was going to be showing, I’d have come in-theme,” Dorcas puts up. _ _

_ _Remus turns toward the wall to give Sirius a chance at getting his back lathered. “I’m not showing leg,” he raises._ _

_ _“Wish you would,” James puts in, lifting his left leg to extend his foot closer to Remus and budging his left hip with his big toe. _ _

_ _“No, see, you’re still showing leg, just not as much thigh as the rest of us, but we can’t be helped,” Lily reiterates. “I insist that you wear it and if you go home and change, I’ll just be upset about it all day.” _ _

_ _“I could kiss you,” Dorcas returns, sounding rather touched._ _

_ _Sirius looks left, finds James’ eye, and the snort he lets out is both voluminous and involuntary, but it can’t be helped what with James openly trying to hide the fact that he’s rather piqued by that image. _ _

_ _“What’re you laughing at?” Lily asks of him, still behind the partition. _ _

_ _“Mmkay, I’m going to need to judge these outfits as well, so,” Sirius says instead, lifting his free hand to snap his fingers. _ _

_ _He leaves a quick kiss on the tip of Remus’ nose, turns from him, and faces the other way as Lily and Dorcas come out of hiding, revealing that Dorcas’ capri-length black pantsuit that was advertised earlier, and while Sirius does agree wholeheartedly with Lily on the answer to whether Dorcas should stick with it, Lily’s knitted, rainbow coloured crop top _needs_ attention first and foremost. _ _

_ _“You made that in a month?” Sirius demands. _ _

_ _“OK, a week over a month,” Lily confesses. _ _

_ _“Still, that’s so fucking cute?” Sirius stresses, and with that, he can move right onto Dorcas, pointing to her gravely. “Yes, yes, and yes.” _ _

_ _Dorcas sticks her hands in the pockets of her jumpsuit, smiling sheepishly. “I can’t argue with that.” _ _

_ _“If you want a splash of colour, I have a pink sun hat which would go perfectly with this,” Sirius says, circling his hand around in gesture to her outfit. _ _

_ _Dorcas’ eyes go bright before something seems to dawn on her. “Why do you--” she starts, trailing off as Sirius heads for the door. _ _

_ _“He just has things,” Remus comes in. _ _

_ _“Picks them up when he gets struck with the idea they could be useful someday,” Peter offers. _ _

_ _“And is this not useful?” Sirius returns, rifling through the shelf at the top of the closet in the art/storage/whatever-else room. He puts it on for now, having himself a further look for the vibrantly coloured beaded necklaces he promised, and finds them shoved in the drawer of the desk in the room. “A-ha, we’re golden — do you want all thirteen necklaces or just one?”_ _

_ _Dorcas snorts back in his room. “Just one should suffice.” _ _

_ _Sirius heads back to his room with his finds, takes the hat off and displays it out to her, and puts the beads over Dorcas’ head and around her neck before she places the sun hat atop her head. _ _

_ _“There, you smashing babe, you,” Sirius says, feeling like a million pounds surrounded by another couple million other pounds. _ _

_ _From there, the troupe has to split up; Sirius, James, and Lily are expected to be at the start of the parade route by eleven sharp for the commencement of the parade at noon, while the other three have a little more leisure time than they do, so it’s no surprise that they simply take to lazing about on Sirius’ bed, and Sirius sees no reason to kick them out and make them find another spot to hang out in. _ _

_ _He goes for his coffee on the nightstand, finishes that off, and glances over at them strewn about on the bed. “You may want to leave soon-ish, given the crowd and all that,” he says. “Would be nice if you could actually see something.” _ _

_ _“We’re going in, like, twenty,” Peter insists. “Don’t rustle your jimmies about it.”_ _

_ _“I’ll rustle your jimmies,” Sirius manifests, heading out into the hall where Lily and James are pulling their shoes on and asking for a few more minutes to fully be ready to go. _ _

_ _He goes for the kitchen to deposit his mug in the sink, heads for the bathroom for a brush, and partakes in a cap-full of mouthwash because he’s feeling the razzmatazz coursing through his veins and why the hell not get extra minty fresh while he’s at it. He heads back up to the front hall, bypasses Lily and James waiting in the doorway for him, and moves back into his room, heading for Remus and leaning in to leave a quick, parting kiss on his lips. _ _

_ _“Ring me later,” he bids. _ _

_ _Remus nods brightly, covering his chin and mouth with his right hand as he does it, and Sirius flashes him a grin, heading back to mum and dad waiting it out in the hall for him to get his blasted shoes on. _ _

_ _-_ _

_ _One thing Sirius will say, is that prior to getting a backstage pass to the celebrations at Pride he’d often thought about what a time it would be to be up on one of those floats having a gay old time like everyone else up there, but he was naive in not preparing for the amount of pure, uncensored waiting that actually occurs behind the scenes. _ _

_ _He should have sensed it ahead of time. Theater class back in secondary taught him all about the goings on beyond the stage, all the rearranging and preparing of set pieces, the time-consuming act of getting into costumes on-the-go, all the cues to wait for, it’s all a waiting game, and adding to that, this time around, he’s dealing with a long, long, very long parade that snakes through the city at a snail speed, starting and stopping and starting again and stopping again; something that rather looked seamless all the years he’s spent going as an onlooker, but now, he’s got a fine idea of all the moving parts that come with. _ _

_ _Their float is tenth in line, which is not bad overall. They could’ve landed closer to last place and then they would really have to sit tight, so really, it just means leisure and/or more practicing time; Sirius can’t say he needs the practice, but he finds it a better option than to simply stand there. It starts out with just a few of them practicing, and before long the whole class is in form with Andrew at the top of the float, snapping his fingers to a steady beat to give them something to follow since they can’t really be blasting their tunes just yet. _ _

_ _Eventually, and Sirius means eventually, their float rides around the corner and onto the main stretch of road it’ll continue on for ages, there isn’t any reason for them to fall into place given that they’ve been rather sorted out for a good while now, and soon enough the drastic opening of _Get Ready For This_ sounds out and Sirius, in formation, dips his head down for a beat or two, smirking to himself at being reminded again of Remus’ reeling at the drastic start to the tune weeks back now. _ _

_ _He straightens up in time to embark on the routine and there, he has to admit, it’s such a blur. There are bits and pieces that stick with him as he goes along, like how he loves how feral the crowd goes each time they begin their routine of _Let’s Have A Kiki_ with Lily at the helm, swapping out with Andrew and assuming the role of teacher for the class behind her in a pure Scissor Sister homage and, in turn, teaching the crowd as well, though Sirius is none too surprised that many, many of those gays are already very familiar and seeing that always adds a little more magic to it._ _

_ _And how different it is to move in a seamless formation while the ground you’re on is moving along. It’s not chugging along speedily by any means, but it’s a tad different from what they’ve been trained to do; Andrew specifically put tape down on the floor of their classroom to mark the length and width of the float they’d be dealing with and incorporated forward steps into his choreography knowing that they would all be atop a moving float as they danced and perhaps help them out a little bit, so thankfully they do have the rote memory of the steps involved to help them out, but it sure is something, to be dancing on a moving stage. Sirius, spry in nature, tells himself as he’s going that if someone goes toppling off of the side of the float, it won’t be him, at least. _ _

_ _And how surprisingly easy it is to not mind it so much when pockets of the crowd thin out in spots that are less accessible for a crowd to form and then come back together as a sea of colourful, loud heads depending on which part of the route they’re on; even as the crowd thins out now and again, the music is so bloody loud it doesn’t much matter if the cheers can’t quite match up, and in contrast, when the crowd becomes thick yet again, there are moments where Sirius can’t really even hear the actual music over the combined roaring of folks chanting along to whichever banger is playing at the moment and he has to fall back on instinct and not simply rely on the lyrics or notes to know where to move this hip or that arm, but that in itself is a fun exercise and a challenge Sirius is rather up for. _ _

_ _Sirius would like to thank the trenta sized cold brew he packed down on the tube on the way to the start of the route for it sure does come in handy in keeping his energy up. When practicing in class or at home, typically speaking it would end up being one full run-through, but today, they’re in for multiple, so while it certainly is and will be more extraneous as they go along._ _

_ _Once they chug along to Piccadilly Circus, Sirius can’t help but smirk. Remus had been fair to assume he likely wouldn’t get to see them doing _Let’s Have a Kiki_ in real-time and in fact, almost hilariously pointed even, they’ve just finished that one prior to coming up on that stretch and have moved onto En Vogue’s _Free Your Mind,_ which is both a positive and a negative; positive in that the routine Andrew choreographed for it requires full energy and is perhaps Sirius’ favourite of the lot, the negative being that there’s a lot of twists, turns, grandiose movements involved and while Sirius does keep more of an eye out toward the right side of the road when he can manage it, he is a tad bit saddened by the thought of not catching a glimpse of him. _ _

_ _And then, as if haloed by the a singular, perfectly placed ray of the sun and surrounded by a chorus of angels shouting out Handel’s Messiah, Sirius spots one Peter Pettigrew waving his arms around like he’s hailing a plan down to a runway, sat with half his torso hovered above the crowd and, Sirius soon finds out, perched on the shoulders of one Remus Lupin in order to have even a chance at the seeing anything major, and Sirius gets one, short glimpse of Remus’ head o’ curls in the sea of heads below Peter before the beat picks up and the routine calls for Sirius to be facing forward, but he feels utterly rejuvenated by that one, tiny glimpse of Remus that he puts. The effort. In. _ _

_ _And that’s it, really; going along from there, it feels as if he already won gold and the rest that may come with the rest of the parade circuit merely a bonus. Luckily for him and perhaps the overall experience itself, the rest of the parade is as or nearly as high energy as Piccadilly had been, and eventually, once their float enters the final stretch of the circuit, he feels oddly projected from Sirius prior to getting to dance high above a sea of his own kind and into Sirius having done that already, and being permitted to enjoy something he’s wanted to try and do for years and years now, feels rather small in the grand scheme of things perhaps, he’s not the first to stand on a Pride float and he certainly won’t be the last, but just then? Nothing is bigger than being able to say he did this and got cheered on the whole way through._ _

_ _Once they're officially finished, Sirius wants nothing more than to simply cross the barricaded intersection and sprawl face-down on the grass in the square across the street. He sets off for it, pulling his hair free of its pun to let it free fall around his shoulders, but on his way there he knows and gets stopped by four separate people and all Sirius can offer them is a wave and an exhausted smile as he heads for his destination._ _

_ _He gets to the grass, sinks down on all fours, and plants himself down flat, his entire body limp as a noodle. Very soon, he's joined by James and Lily, who take to sprawling on either side of him, also right zonked by the looks of it._ _

_ _"I'm—" Lily starts, on Sirius' right, "—I’ll go get us coffee soon, just — gimme a second."_ _

_ _"I'm not complaining," Sirius insists, eyes shut as he breathes in the scent of the earth._ _

_ _A second turns into a minute and turns into a good thirty more before Lily lugs herself up from the grass and searches up the closest cafe to their vicinity on her phone. Once the destination is decided, Sirius gives lifting his head a shot, where he realizes both Andrew and Lily’s friend from class, Renee, ended up joining them in their grass-sprawl._ _

_ _Lily takes everyone’s order and soon commissions Renee in the help of carrying the drink trays back with her, which then leaves Sirius, James, and Andrew which is... certainly an interesting mix and not who Sirius would have preferred to stay behind, but it’s a bit late to do anything about it now._ _

_ _“I think,” James puts up a decent five minutes later by the feel of it, pausing there for upwards of ten seconds at least before keeping on, “I’ve died.”_ _

_ _Andrew puts out a round off half-laughs, half coughs. “I really thought you were going to end with something much more intense.”_ _

_ _“Do you mean to suggest my too-soon death isn’t intense?” James raises. _ _

_ _“What with that dramatic pause and all, yeah,” Andrew puts up. “Bit anticlimactic overall.” _ _

_ _“No no, I see how it is,” James returns airily. “Find another best student for this one has died.” _ _

_ _Andrew hums plainly. “My best student is getting us drinks, but you rest in peace.” _ _

_ _Sirius primarily stays out of it and figures he’ll soak up some sun while he’s down here, giving himself until Lily and Renee make it back with trays of drinks before trying his hand at moving, but even then he doesn’t really do much more than roll onto his back and half-into James’ side. He reaches his left arm up and out for the drink Lily’s holding out to him, keeps it held in his hand while he searches for the will to sit up straight. In the end he really manages to scoot himself up and back a little, leaning the backs of his shoulders up against James’ left hip while James remains immobile and laying spread eagle on his back, but that’s really all Sirius can muster right about then._ _

_ _Sirius pops the paper off of his straw and sticks the straw in his drink, silently draining a good quarter of it in a handful of seconds. Lily finishes handing out her tray and sits down across from Sirius, slow-sipping from her own drink while she leaves James’ still untouched drink beside her for the time being, and perks when _Kiss Me_ rings out of her drawstring bag where all of their phone’s were put for safekeeping. _ _

_ _Sirius lifts his free hand to hold it out for his phone, an expectant smile on his lips, but the phone stops ringing moments after Lily gets it out of her bag and at what would realistically be only the second ring. Lily blinks down at the phone no longer ringing before her shoulders come up in a shrug._ _

_ _“Service might’ve dropped,” she says, passing the phone off to Sirius all the same. “He’ll try again soon, I bet.”_ _

_ _Sirius simply places it face up on his chest and waits the half-minute more before the same tune rings out again, only this time it’s accompanied by James deadpanning the lyrics while continuing to lay flat on his back like an over-exerted noodle, and that gets Sirius pushing out tiny, breathy laughs as he swipes the screen and puts it to his right ear. _ _

_ _“Hey, hey,” he says by way of hello, blinking a few times at the echo of innumerable voices on the other end of the line._ _

_ _“Hold on,” he hears, and Sirius does as bid, holding on while Remus presumably searches for a less crowded spot. “Can you hear me now?”_ _

_ _“Better,” Sirius offers. “Is your service taking a hit, too?” _ _

_ _“Well, that and I very suddenly got visited by the Trojan Fairy when I tried you before,” Remus mentions. _ _

_ _Sirius pushes out a series of mangled breathy laughs. “Did you?” he probes._ _

_ _“Mhm,” Remus affirms. “And when I say visited, I mean I got chased down by him, and he went and stuffed twelve condoms in the back pockets and insisted I’ll be needing them all.”_ _

_ _“Wise words from the fae,” Sirius deems them, grinning from ear to ear. _ _

_ _The echo surrounding Remus’ voice dies down enough to hear him in all his glory. “Anywho, hi hi,” he says, carrying right on. “Did you have fun?”_ _

_ _“Too much,” Sirius raises, “and now I’m nothing but a pancake.” _ _

_ _“You were so good," Remus emphasizes, "and I mean that.”_ _

_ _Sirius makes a throaty, trill of a noise, hearing Remus’ earth-shattering smile from all the way over here. “Thank you,” he says, feeling a warmth spread over his cheeks that hasn’t got much to do with all the sun he got up on that float. _ _

_ _“I knew you would be, but just watching one or two of you is one thing, but you along with the whole group?” Remus keeps on. “Wildly fun to watch; it’s some sort of perfect meeting between jazzercise and flash mob.” _ _

_ _“Now you understand why I like it so much,” Sirius raises. _ _

_ _“I think I do,” Remus lets him have. “So, the parade’s still going strong over here, so I don’t know when they’ll be looking to head out just yet, so if you guys want to go on ahead, we can just meet you there in a while, I just wanted to see if you’d answer.” _ _

_ _“Barring handcuffs, I’m not sure much could stop me from answering,” Sirius offers. “No rush mind; you have fun and head down whenever you like, only I’ll ask for there to still be twelve condoms on you upon your arrival.” _ _

_ _Remus snorts on his end of the line. “I doubt I’ll be using any between now and then, somehow,” he puts up, “though if there are eleven, it just means I dropped one along the way.” _ _

_ _“And to that, I’ll cling,” Sirius maintains. _ _

_ _“You — fun, too—” Remus says, his voice getting harder and harder to make out over the telltale sounds of an air horn popping off nearby him._ _

_ _“OK, I will,” Sirius returns, connecting the dots just fine._ _

_ _He lets Remus both off the hook and line by pressing to end the call, takes another solid drink of his coffee, and James shifts minimally as Sirius sets his phone down on his chest again, tapping Sirius’ back with one of his forefingers. “Explain,” he bids. _ _

_ _Sirius smirks around his straw. “Remus got a visit from the Trojan Fairy,” he relays, sending Lily right on into a round of trilling._ _

_ _“Oh, imagine his face,” she raises, overcome with the image herself. _ _

_ _“He seems alright with it,” Sirius passes along. “Found it more funny than anything else by the sound of it.” _ _

_ _“Well, that’s what he gets,” James classifies it. _ _

_ _“For?” Sirius checks, shifting down a little so he can turn his head and see James a little better. _ _

_ _“Owning that face, what else?” James offers. _ _

_ _“Well, that I can’t deny,” Sirius allows. _ _

_ _Andrew pauses in sipping from his own cold brew. “Is the elusive boyfriend going to make an appearance?” he puts up wondrously._ _

_ _Sirius aims a tight smile over at him. “I wouldn’t call him elusive so much as busy, but yeah, he’ll be along,” he returns, aiming the next bit toward Lily. “The parade’s still going strong on their end, so we have plenty of time to migrate over there and they’ll come down when the whole thing evens out.” _ _

_ _Lily nods eagerly for that, pointing the straw of her drink between both Renee and Andrew. “We’re heading to Gallagher’s,” she mentions, “did you want to come along?” _ _

_ _Renee’s answer is to touch base with whoever she names, Sirius can’t really say he’s listening at this point when Andrew’s reply is what takes more of his focus. “I have to make sure all that gets sorted out,” he says, waving back toward their float laying empty down the block, “but I’ll swing by later if you’re all still there.” _ _

_ _“Oh, we’ll be there a while,” Lily says knowingly, “but we can hang out a bit longer, no sense in rushing off.” _ _

_ _Sirius sits with that for upwards of a minute, simply sipping on his drink and weighing his options before he feels his only real move at this point is to simply give Remus a quick heads up. He plucks his phone off of his chest and thumbs around for Remus’ number, typing in a quick ‘_zumba boy’s gonna be there too apparently, heads up 7up_’ and firing it off to him. _ _

_ _He sets his phone face up so he’ll be able to see the reply whenever it comes in, which ends up being about three minutes later, all said and done. _ _

_ __I somewhat had a feeling that might happen_ _ _

_ _Sirius reads it, takes in a shallow breath picturing him making room for an uncomfortable scenario, and hovers his thumbs over his screen, trying to come up with something to respond that may quell some of the nerves on Remus’ end. _ _

_ _ _bright side, you look fit as shit so today might be the best context to have to meet him :)_ _ _

_ _He smirks as he sends it off, though a few beats later, he falters on that read of it, grimacing over it coming off a bit too aloof on Remus’ end, but his next reply comes in the form a simple, ‘_xoxo_’ and whether Remus took the sentiment to heart or not, Sirius really can’t say for sure, but instead he chooses to hang onto the feeling he gets when he focuses on the the nature of the reply, feeling — hoping that he’s done right by him by acknowledging that this could be something to warn him about._ _

_ _Sirius unzips the front of his romper a bit and sticks his phone in the pocket on the inside lining of it, suddenly rather interested in moving things along, and in truth, it’s growing increasingly tragic that he hasn’t got a blended margarita in one of his hands already. _ _

_ _He lifts off of James’ side, reaches for James’ drink still sitting untouched by Lily’s left knee, and turns around, sticking the drink near James’ head and bending the straw in for James to ideally sip from. “Fuel up,” he bids. “I want a margarita and I can’t go about having one if you’re taking a million years to regain your strength.”_ _

_ _-_ _

_ _Herding the gang down to Gallaghers is no easy feat, Sirius will say that. He’ll also fully cop to the fact that he’s definitely one of the reasons it’s taking so much time to get there, but that’s no fault of his own either; as Marlene once told Sirius, he’s akin to the sun while the people around him are the planets that feel an almost intrinsic pull to him. Naturally, she’d had a few glasses of wine at the time and so had he and James, who incidentally concurred with that read and then decided to add onto it, citing Sirius as a light source and the rest of them a pack of shad flies unable to get themselves from gravitating toward him. _ _

_ _On the one hand, not the best read of him, Sirius will admit, but even he felt there was a bit of harsh truth to it, though he wasn’t much interested in doing the work to reflect that and instead chose to focus on the general sentiment being that he’s got charisma coming out the wazoo. Today, he’s feeling the positive and negative to those wine-inspired analogies of yore when literally every other block has somebody he knows, hasn’t seen in months or has seen more recently but still must stop and say hello without getting a pointed text later on for not stopping, and he receives the added bonus of running into lads he’s spent time with in a bathroom stall and/or on a sturdy piece of furniture, and Sirius will fully admit that with those particular run-ins he doesn’t linger around too long, not much point when he’s already spending far too much time on His Day with someone he’s spent similar time with in an empty dance studio, and that, frankly, is enough world-blending for him, thanks much._ _

_ _James and Lily combined are another reason this is taking forever for they themselves have a network of folks they keep passing by in the crowd and stopping to chat with, but since Sirius is just as guilty of that, he can’t stand on solid ground and complain about it too hard without getting dragged for it. _ _

_ _Once they do arrive, there is but one free table out front on the terrace and the five of them immediately steal and lay claim on with the understanding that once the sun sets they’ll be migrating inside where the dancing will be happening. _ _

_ _Lily and Renee snag the seats on one side of the table while Sirius goes ahead and grabs the seat on the end, his left side next to the terrace railing while James takes the spot on his right, thank Cunt, and that leaves the far end for Andrew, as it should be. _ _

_ _James pats his pockets a bunch of times before making a prompt O shape with his mouth. “Ah shit.” _ _

_ _“Someone pickpocket you?” Sirius asks. _ _

_ _“More like I just didn’t bring it at all,” James confesses. _ _

_ _“I’ll get yours, hon,” Lily offers, sitting across from Sirius. _ _

_ _“Nah, I’ll just go get it now,” James insists, pushing out of his seat._ _

_ _He doesn’t even get a step further before their table gets seized by Kim, their favourite of the waitresses around these parts, and Sirius simply tugs James back into his seat by the left sleeve of his shirt._ _

_ _“Would you relax?” Sirius raises, lolling his head to the side to eye James naughtily. “You want a margarita, yeah?” _ _

_ _“I mean, yeah,” James puts up. _ _

_ _“Then I’ll get us four and you can go make a run for it later,” Sirius decides. “No stressing, all’s well.” _ _

_ _Twenty minutes further and one round of margarurites down, another table gets vacated nearby and James and Andrew take it upon themselves to lug that one over by theirs to create a double table for the rest of their rag-tag gang to utilize once they arrive, and Sirius enjoys this development for two reasons; one, he’s not the only one thinking ahead here and that’s refreshing to see, and two, he didn’t have to do any of the lifting. _ _

_ _He gets a text when Remus & co are heading down to the tube, so Sirius projects a time he thinks is reasonable that they’ll arrive, and then adds ten, fifteen on top of that to leave room for the crowds littered about and undoubtedly also taking the tube, and Sirius settles into working on his second drank. _ _

_ _Sirius sucks out the dregs of his second blended glass of cheer with his vibrant purple dick-shaped straw, pushes his empty, bulbous glass back on the table, and answers this intrinsic need he feels through his body to look up and past Lily’s head, and very soon Sirius understands why he’d felt the necessity to look up for a starkly familiar head o’ hair above an increasingly familiar pair of sunglasses hovers above the pedestrian traffic. _ _

_ _Owing to the fact that Sirius and James took up the corner spots directly beside the terrace railing, Sirius briefly toys with skirting through the crowded terrace to get to the sidewalk, but truth be told he doesn’t much feel like putting that kind of work in, so instead he goes ahead and lifts out of his seat, climbing over the railing and hopping down onto the street that’s been walled off for pedestrian traffic only for numerous city blocks. _ _

_ _He heads up the street toward Remus’ own gravitational pull with a light skip to his step, feeling easy, breezy, beautiful already, and the moment Remus spots him and beams? Sirius is feeling all those in multitudes. _ _

_ _Remus walks quicker than the other two, pushing ahead and effectively taking Sirius by the waist and lugging him in close, and Sirius can’t fucking help it any way shape or form, he’s jelly-limbed and that’s alright with him. Remus winds his arms around Sirius’ back, crosses his wrists behind him and gives Sirius a squeeze, and something about his body language oozes ease, like Remus didn’t even have to think about this part even Sirius knows that can’t be true._ _

_ _“You look so happy,” Remus says; quiet, like it’s just the two of them and Peter and Dorcas aren’t mere steps from getting to them. _ _

_ _Sirius drops his gaze to Remus’ smile, wants to nip at them and a little right here on the street, but he sniffs, nodding earnestly as he brings his right hand up and splays it over the side of Remus’ neck, holding him instead. _ _

_ _“Alright, we will just—” Dorcas says, linking her right arm in with Peter’s and tugging him along. _ _

_ _“Good job, Sirius,” Peter calls back to him. _ _

_ _Sirius turns his head, aiming a smile over his shoulder and quickly turns it back to Remus with a tilt of it to the right. “Are you seeing that, too?” he raises, a pointed smile aimed at Remus. _ _

_ _“We’ll get to that,” Remus says, waving it off with a shake of his head first, and a kiss second. _ _

_ _If Sirius weren’t busy restarting completely, he might have put at least something into the kiss, but he merely stands there, mind-blank as Remus tugs soundly at his lips with those perfect fucking ones of his own, and then, it’s over too soon and Remus is looking at him with open disarray. _ _

_ _“Was that not OK?” he asks, his arms bearing down on either side of Sirius’ waist. _ _

_ _Sirius hawks out a bark of a laugh. “Shut it,” he returns, smirking through his nose, but even with the amusement coursing through his veins and his skin singing fucking opera up in here, Sirius can’t quit staring at Remus like he isn’t dealing with Remus, but his doppelganger. _ _

_ _“When did I start falling for you?” Sirius quizzes, squinting at him. _ _

_ _“What?” Remus asks, blatantly confused, and Sirius can’t decide if that’s typical of him or highly suspect. _ _

_ _“You heard me,” Sirius says, lifting his eyebrows once. “When?” _ _

_ _“Outside work,” Remus answers, his own brow furrowed over his sunglasses. “I tornadoed through the place, ranted at you, and you somehow found it endearing.” _ _

_ _“More than,” Sirius returns, accepting that this is his Remus and giving out a comfortable sigh. “I thought I was dealing your doppelganger for a beat there, had to check.” _ _

_ _Remus pushes an amused breath through his nose, leaning in to press a kiss to Sirius’ forehead and leaving his mouth there. “I’m invisible today,” he says, and Sirius has to pull back from him and gauge his expression because his tone isn’t giving anything away, but he sure doesn’t expect Remus to be grinning, nor giving him one with quite this much joy written on it. _ _

_ _“How’s it feel?” Sirius asks, a smile tugging on his own lips. _ _

_ _“Inspiring,” Remus answers. _ _

_ _Sirius lifts his right hand and beckons Remus with his forefinger. “Imma need to—” he beckons once more, “—try that again.” _ _

_ _This time around, Sirius effectively kills it with the reciprocation factor, and he knows he’s killing it because Remus full on shudders against his mouth and pulls his arms free from Sirius’ waist to take Sirius’ face in his hands instead, and Sirius downs a pathetic little noise against his mouth as Remus drinks him in and leaving him even more of a jelly-legged pseudo humanoid. _ _

_ _Sirius pulls back with tiny, rough gusts of breath leaving his mouth, and even though he knows that Remus knows that no one’s going to say shit about it today and that’s partially where this bravery is coming from, this cannot continue out in the street, it just can’t._ _

_ _“Bathroom or my place,” Sirius offers. Remus doesn’t so much as answer with words, rather it’s more a bemused sound instead. “We can either rut together in the bathroom or take this back to mine for a brief intermission, so take this question as a consolation for your efforts and make a choice; simple as that.”_ _

_ _“Yours,” Remus answers, and though it’s instantaneous and leads to Sirius assuming that the bathroom was never an option, he can’t even find it in him to be fussed about it. _ _

_ _Sirius beams, stepping back from Remus and tugging him along speedily, but then it’s not so easy getting past Gallaghers’ front terrace without getting hailed down by a put-upon James, so Sirius veers them off course and runs them by the terrace railing. _ _

_ _“We just have to—” he starts, left hand clasped with Remus’ left, his right held up with his thumb pointing deftly down the street as every single one of their table mates blinks up at them, and at least four of them are avidly waiting for whatever excuse Sirius can come up with, and he’s not about to give ‘em that, “—ehh, we’ll be back.” _ _

_ _“Sluts, sluts, sluts,” James chants to the tune of _Shots_, which is really more fortunate than it sounds for a pleasant amount of the patrons out on the terrace start to join in, and then it’s a whole whirlwind and the two of them slip off amidst the tomfoolery pretty well unnoticed. _ _

_ _“Well, that—” Remus says, keeping up with Sirius’ pace quite well, “—not how I expected to be introduced...” _ _

_ _Sirius turns with an expression of full mirth as Remus trails off to let a laugh escape, and shit, he must really be in a stellar mood if he’s giddily laughing over his first semi-interaction with Zumba Boy. “Fuck it, that’s half the awkwardness of meeting out of the way,” he offers._ _

_ _“Umm,” Remus hums in return, smirking through his nose, “do you not think that might be a tad awkward to come back to?” _ _

_ _Sirius puts out a rigorous _pfft,_ flinging his lobby door open. “Believe me, he’s going to go home with someone tonight; I really don’t imagine he gives a shit.”_ _

_ _“Well, I’m sure he is; big, strapping lad like him,” Remus says, stopping with the lobby door held open by his left knee, which stops Sirius from going anywhere, so Sirius is in the prime vantage point to watch Remus take a tight breath in through his teeth. “So listen, if you’re not completely sold on this, I might go back and see what I can do about getting him home—” _ _

_ _Sirius lifts his free hand and trumpets a resounding ‘_ooooooh_’ at him through it. “I’m going to get you so hard for that,” he manifests. _ _

_ _Remus puts out an amused trill as he traipses on ahead, tugging Sirius up the stairs with fervor. “Between you and me, I think _you_ might need to get got,” he tosses over his shoulder. _ _

_ _Sirius frankly cannot argue with that, lets go of Remus’ hand altogether, and switches to prodding him up the stairs faster with his hands, but the second Remus shoves Sirius’ front door open, Sirius strikes a Superman pose. “Bet you’re rather happy I don’t lock my doors now,” he raises._ _

_ _Remus rounds on him immediately, putting his arms through Sirius’ posed ones and yanking him inside. He knocks the door shut with a quick kick and tugs Sirius toward his room with his hands on the zipper of Sirius’ romper. He gives it a few good tugs as Sirius helps steer Remus through his open door, but apparently he gets fed up with the severity of the zipper. _ _

_ _“Get the fuck out of this,” Remus asserts, backing into Sirius’ room. _ _

_ _Sirius starts pulling the zipper down slowly, tooth by tooth. “I thought you said you liked it on me,” he raises in his best valley-voice, moving back with a shimmy and going the extra mile by draping himself back against the side of his bureau. “That’s no way to speak about my most festive attire.” _ _

_ _Remus steps in between Sirius’ knees and starts tugging on Sirius’ hands to ensure the zipper gets taken down. “It’s between this and the apron,” he mentions. “Bit rude of you to even leave it out of the running.” _ _

_ _Sirius plucks Remus’ sunglasses off of his head, lobbing them behind Remus and over onto the bed, seeking a chance to see Remus’ eyes in all their glory. “Do you want to—” he starts, tossing a fair chunk of his hair behind his right shoulder with a flourish of his head, “—teach me how to be less inconsiderate... _sir_?” _ _

_ _Remus hikes Sirius up onto the edge of the bureau, pushing Sirius’ legs apart as he shakes his head plainly. “I don’t think we have that kind of time.” _ _

_ _Sirius gives out a half-laugh, half-pout. “Just once,” he states, “I’d like you to just, go along with me; it won't hurt.” _ _

_ _“I can’t, Sirius,” Remus stresses, smiling weakly. _ _

_ _“I want you to shove me down and teach me something,” Sirius keeps at it, rubbing up on Remus’ groin. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” _ _

_ _“See, I feel like I do that already, just without the dirty talk,” Remus mentions, still fucking with Sirius’ zipper until, oh, 2.4 seconds later when he seems to be right finished with that altogether. “You get yourself out of this trap and I’ll be right back.” _ _

_ _Sirius needs some context clues as to where Remus is going before he’ll comply, but in the end Remus only skirts around the outside of the bed to get to Sirius’ drawer, and that answers that. He immediately takes the zipper down the full way, making sure it’ll make a noise as it goes down, and Remus pauses his fishing in the drawer to point at him with his free hand. _ _

_ _“That thing is rigged against me,” he defends, point blank._ _

_ _“Oh, mhm,” Sirius goads, wiggling his arms out from the sleeves of it. _ _

_ _He pushes the top half of it down to his waist but from there he’s a little compromised, and while he does try to lift himself off of the bureau’s ledge with one hand while he works on tugging the romper down further with his free hand, but if does much more of that he has a feeling he’s going to end up sliding onto the floor._ _

_ _He slumps back onto the bureau’s edge, huffing a laugh as he pushes his newly freed hand up through his hair. “Love that there’s a giant bed right there, but we’re ignoring it for this,” he mentions, draping himself back onto the bureau and the various make-up bags still all over it.. _ _

_ _Remus waves him off with his free hand while the other pulls the lube out of the drawer. “I think it’s kind of fun,” he says, moving around the bed to get to him. There he hands Sirius the bottle and tugs Sirius hips in from there, bracing his legs on either side of his body as he works Sirius romper and briefs down over his hips with a quizzical expression that renders Sirius a captive audience. “What’s it again, something something _teamwork_...” _ _

_ _Sirius pushes out a breathy, endeared laugh, leaning up and in to catch Remus’ lips with his own, and Remus responds in kind, working Sirius’ romper down off of his legs while he leaves Sirius’ lips kiss-soaked and numb to the touch. _ _

_ _Remus pulls back from Sirius’ lips, giving them a chance to recoup whether he’s aware of that or not. “Let me just,” he says, pairing it with an idle scoot of Sirius’ body, bringing him to the front of the bureau and scooting his hips off of it to give himself more room to work with. He pushes a few of the make-up bags aside and another out from underneath Sirius’ back, plucks the bottle of lube out of Sirius’ grasp and flicks at the cap open while Sirius tries to be of some help by leaning back onto the bureau and bracing his legs around Remus’ waist, his hips tilted at an upward angle._ _

_ _There’s something rather on brand about Sirius getting fingered while there’s definitely something on the surface of the bureau poking him in the back, he really has to admit it. He huffs out a laugh, bracing a hand behind him as he lifts off of the bureau a little, tossing a glance over his shoulder, and Remus goes ahead and reaches behind Sirius with the hand that isn’t inside of him and sweeps it underneath Sirius back to push the offending item aside, only then it goes right over the ledge and lands on the floor with a clatter. _ _

_ _Remus’ visage lights up with sheepish amusement, a little less concern than he showed for the untimely death of Sirius’ lamp, but it makes Sirius’ throat catch on another laugh as he rolls his hips up and against the expert crook of Remus’ wrist still moving underneath him. _ _

_ _He turns his head to have a look down beside the bureau and puts out a breathy gasp when he spots the casualty lying on the floor. “The curler,” he puts out faux woefully. _ _

_ _“Not _that,_” Remus plays along, though he’s finished with the ruse quicker than Sirius is by the looks of it. “Is it still in one piece?” _ _

_ _“Yeah,” Sirius pushes out, driving his hips down on Remus’ three-finger deluxe, “yeah, it’s fine.” _ _

_ _“Good,” Remus puts it. “I don’t know how much one goes for in the event that I’d have to replace it.” _ _

_ _Sirius stutters out a half-coherent _pfft._ “In what world would you be the one replacing it?” _ _

_ _Remus sends a mock _pfft_ right back to him. “I just sent it careening—” _ _

_ _“After reading my plight and trying to do something about it, so I’m sorry but this all traces back to me,” Sirius says circumstantially, lifting his hands in between them to paw at Remus’ fly, needing some of that pipe sooner than later. _ _

_ _“You’re good?” Remus checks. _ _

_ _Sirius gives him a rigorously plain look as he pops the button of Remus’ trousers free, speedily taking the zipper down and getting enough leeway to shove them down past Remus’ hips, and about four Trojan condoms fall out of Remus’ back right pocket and onto the floor behind him, taking the both of them out for at least thirty seconds or more. _ _

_ _Remus reigns his snickers in first and removes all digits from inside Sirius to replace them with the head of his cock, and Sirius takes a full breath in before Remus pushes in, letting the breath out as Remus bottoms out. _ _

_ _“Hm?” Remus checks, bracing his hips almost delicately in place in case he’s got to make a quick U-ie and pull right back out. _ _

_ _Sirius nods emphatically, reaching his arms around back of Remus and tugging in on his hips, and from there Remus moves them experimentally, gaze fixed and analytical on Sirius features, and because of that Sirius gets to see the first sign that Remus is quite enjoying himself; his brow furrowed as he shuts his eyes for a few intervals, only he opens them again and fixes his gaze above Sirius. _ _

_ _Sirius leans his head back to have a look, finds him checking out their reflection in the mirror above, and promptly lowers it yet again with a wry smile on. “That’s why you moved me,” he wagers. _ _

_ _“I moved you for leverage,” Remus maintains, dropping his gaze to Sirius again, “and that’s just a bonus.” _ _

_ _“Yeah?” Sirius goads, tightening his heels around the back of Remus and rocking them in at a quicker beat. “‘S’it hot?” _ _

_ _“Stupid hot,” Remus returns, dropping his hands to the surface of the bureau and giving it to Sirius harder than he was even hinting at, but when in Rome… _ _

_ _Sirius drops his hands to grip the ledge of the bureau on either side of him, ends up sort of bringing the bureau with him and back against the wall with each thrust, and soon there’s a timely beat to it that Sirius goes and and follows since it’s already happening, his breathing ratcheting up quicker as a result of exertion, and then he quiets the fuck out of himself to amplify Remus’ voice, however difficult that is with Remus hitting him at the perfect angle, and— _ _

_ _A loud, loud series of nonsensical noises echo out in the hall that undoubtedly are coming from James as the front door bursts open, and it’s all incredibly close given that they never even bothered to shut Sirius’ door. “Pause pause pause,” he puts out, his footsteps bounding down the hall past Sirius’ room. “I’ll be two seconds.” _ _

_ _Remus does stop, looking down at Sirius with an expression of pure and utter bewilderment, and Sirius pushes a series of breathy laughs out of his nose. “He forgot his wallet,” he passes along, quiet in between the two of them. _ _

_ _Remus blinks once. “He couldn’t have waited until we got back?” he puts up. _ _

_ _“You’re right, he’s a fiend,” Sirius allows. _ _

_ _“I’m going to keep going,” Remus mentions plainly._ _

_ _Sirius practically vibrates out of his skin in anticipation as Remus lifts Sirius’ legs by the ankles and indeed keeps right on, but the angle switch is a) doing wonders for him, and b) fucking evil as it is necessary to keep the bureau from knocking into the wall for Sirius is nearly blinded by each thrust, and this is it; this is the test of his lifetime, one where he must bare his teeth down on his lower lip and call on the strength of the scribes to keep from shouting a series of nonsensical noises of his own, and he does miraculously hold out until mere milliseconds after the front door slams shut again, and there he puts out a stuttered, brazen cry as Remus picks up the pace even further._ _

_ _Remus hooks Sirius’ left leg over his shoulder and drops his hand in between them, flattening his palm against Sirius’ cock and driving it over Sirius as he drives Sirius back into the bureau, and then Sirius is just calling out for him, again and again, hands up in his hair as he gives himself over to getting fucked sideways. _ _

_ _Right as he has Sirius is toeing the edge, Remus pushes his legs down to hang loosely at his hips and drops his head down to swallow Sirius’ last utterance of his name, gripping Sirius’ thighs tight as he speeds toward his own release, and frankly Sirius isn’t surprised they come within a mere second of each other, but it sure is lovely when that sort of thing comes around. _ _

_ _Remus puts out a noise of great exhaustion as he rolls his hips through it, dropping his head down and breathing openly against Sirius’ throat. Sirius can feel the damp curls of Remus’ fringe and answers an indulgent urge to reach up and pet it limply, matching the limp hang of his legs around Remus’ hips as they slow to a slow interval._ _

_ _Remus lifts his head after a few pets of his hair, his smile lopsided as he presses it to Sirius’ own elated one, pushes up into Sirius as if he just needs to have that feeling around him once more before he’s spent, and Sirius breathes heavily against his lips, tightening his legs around him in thanks for that lovely thought, and even though they certainly do have places to be and people to mingle with, that fact doesn’t really stop them from lazily smooching until Remus seems to run out of air. _ _

_ _“How much of this,” Sirius breathes, flourishing his hands around their rather provocative positioning, “do you think he saw on the way out?” _ _

_ _“Not much,” Remus answers. “He hand his hands up like this.” _ _

_ _Sirius snorts loudly as Remus lifts his hands and plants his palms over his eyes. “Then I’ve still seen more of his escapades recently than he’s seen of mine,” he says, stretching long. “I win.” _ _

_ _Remus gives a contented snicker in his throat before taking in a full breath through his nose. “Alright, we should get a move on,” he mentions. _ _

_ _He lifts Sirius off of the bureau and hitches him up on his hips, walking him out of the room so Sirius hasn’t much room or need to object; he merely lets it himself get carried down to the bathroom, feeling that the one thing that was missing over the course of the day is back, and for that, Sirius doesn’t think he’s felt more whole than this very moment._ _


	19. 19.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this update is going to be particularly heavy. tw's will be at the bottom and pls do heed them!
> 
> we're only halfway toward this story's predestined end, can you believe it? there's a-plenty more on the way that will be joyous and bursting with love in its many forms, but on the other hand some of these arcs will continue to get heavy as more and more unfolds and as these lads work on their individual and combined issues. i am extremely excited about what's still to come, you guys; this is years in the making and i'm covered in hives over getting to share this fic finally, but i do want to take the time here to remind everybody that this is a long-form story that will take time to tackle the issues brought forward with absolutely intended nuance, and an open mind is highly important going forward as these are two incredibly human folks try to make sense of the world around them, and that includes some messy stuff that won't be concluded and tied up in a lovely, bright bow in just one chapter, rather it'll be over the course of many. that, i feel, is rather typical of my style; i don't enjoy rushing plot lines, I like taking the time to let the characters take chances, make mistakes, get messy (toot toot), and maybe get the entire wrong idea of a situation and have to work on restructuring their mind frame to better understand what their knee-jerk reactions actually mean so they can work on being better; i love it all, so: there's a long road ahead if you're interested in coming along for it, but this story won't be a short, sweet after-school special, and it may take until the whole fic is fully uploaded and has a complete tag on it for the whole picture to be seen in all its entirety. 
> 
> tbh i really don't love that i have to preface this as i do feel my previous work was nuanced and a blend (pfffffffffft) of light and dark elements, so on one hand that should speak for itself, but unfortunately my gut's telling me that i gotta just lay it down plainly, so: what's said and felt by any one character in any particular chapter may very well change over time and likely will, seeing as evolving and working on your preordained setbacks are really just another part to the human condition, and flawed characters are my bread and butter; it may take chapters before a situation is resolved, and it may very well not be to your liking! but it will be to mine, and that's the whole reason i started this monster-fic; i want to be proud of what i put out and i'm at my proudest when i simply let the characters be their flawed, but lovely selves; i've never really been out to gather scores of people together to have a teachable moment, so if you're looking for that here, you will likely be disappointed.

Once out of the shower, Remus gives a quick towel off of his hair, ties the same towel around his waist, and leaves the bathroom door ajar as he heads back down the hall toward Sirius’ room, while Sirius deals with the state of his hair at the bathroom mirror.

He can’t really be bothered with doing much to his hair past a towel dry; it’s just too hot to consider using the hairdryer, and if he’s honest, having damp hair hanging around his shoulders seems like just the perfect plan to combat going back out into the hot hot heat outside.

Sirius flips his towel down and off of his head just as the bathroom door is creaking open and looks to find Remus hanging back by the bathroom doorway, fully clothed again and holding Sirius’ romper out to him.

Sirius hums in thanks. “Are you suggesting I go sans pants for the rest of the day?” he asks, eyeing the suspicious lack of undergarments being transported to him.

“They’re in there,” Remus says, nodding to the folded garment in his hands, “but you do what you like.” 

Sirius takes hold of it and reaches in between the fold to pull them out, trilling lightly. “You think of everything.” 

“I try,” Remus says, heading down the hall toward the kitchen.

Sirius finishes drying off, maneuvers himself back into his romper, and leaves the bathroom, letting out a bird whistle in the hallway and getting a twitter back from what sounds like the terrace. 

Sirius heads there, spots Tango hogged out on the tiled kitchen floor for a cool spot to lay on, and gives him a side rub with a foot on the way by. 

He heads through the screen door that’s been propped open by one of his shoes and thinks he may just leave it that way to air the flat out a little. 

He steps out onto the terrace, finds Remus hitting his pipe with the biggest schooner Sirius has in his kitchen sitting in front of him and filled with water, and gives out a snort as he heads to take the open seat on Remus’ right. 

“Is someone parched?” Sirius raises.

Remus exhales a cloud and gestures toward the gargantuan water glass with the pipe. “That and Dorcas has my water bottle in her bag which isn’t here,” he offers.

“Fair enough, gimme somma that,” Sirius says, holding a hand out for it.

Remus goes to hand off the pipe to him, but Sirius shakes his head, pointing past Remus for the schooner. “Oh,” he says, realization dawning on him along with a laugh as he reaches for the handle of the glass.

“I mean, hand that over too while you’re at it,” Sirius insists, taking hold of the glass held out to him with both his hands.

“Mm,” Remus hums, sneaking one more hit off the bowl while Sirius indulges in a grand gulp of water.

They exchange treasures there, Remus taking the gargantuan glass off of his hands before handing the pipe over to him, the lighter coming along a beat after that.

“So, Dorcas and Pete were looking a little cozy, I thought,” Sirius mentions, flicking the lighter over the bowl before leaning in to take a hit off it.

“Mm,” Remus hums, more melodious this time around, and the two of them break into similar shoulder-shimmies before breaking and falling into a bout of snickers. "What I can't quite figure out, is if they've already hooked up, or if they're about to." 

Sirius lets his cloud out early, nodding profusely. "Right?" he puts up. "She was a little too comfy dragging him along, and Peter would love nothing more than being a purse for a willful lass." 

Remus hangs his head through a devastatingly endearing laugh. "You have a point," he lets him have. 

"Love when you give me that," Sirius says, smiling as he lifts the pipe to his mouth again. 

Remus has a glance over his shoulder back toward the kitchen. “What do you think about bringing him along for a bit?” he raises. "I saw a ton of dogs being trotted along on the way there, could be nice for him." 

Sirius pushes out a new cloud, nodding profusely. “I think it’s brilliant,” he says of it, his voice coming out hoarse, but lively. 

Remus looks back at him, his right eyebrow raising a notch above the brim of his sunglasses. “What’s Gallagher’s rule on dogs?” 

Sirius puts out a hum, feeling rather nonplussed about it. “I feel as long as he’s outside the railing he’ll be allowed to hang out with us,” he wagers. 

"Well, if Oliver's on shift, then, yeah," Remus says, smiling there. "I don't see him saying no, somehow." 

"That's exactly what I'm hoping," Sirius affirms. 

glancing back over his shoulder and throwing his voice toward the open doorway. “Do you want to mingle?” 

Tango answers the question by scuttling off of his side and trotting out the doorway, jaw hanging open with his tongue on display for the world to see, and Sirius gives out an excitable trill. “We could find you a little outfit too,” he raises.

Tango seems joyful either way, but Remus huffs a laugh. “What could we possibly put on him?” he asks, and Sirius lulls his head to the side with a pondering expression, thinks it over, and switches to giving Remus one stark look with a wry smile on, pulling a smirk out of Remus. “Oh, this bodes well.”

One moment Sirius is handing the pipe back to Remus, and up and out of his chair in the next, hearing a laugh from behind him as he traipses back inside. 

“It’s more an accessory,” Sirius mentions, calling it over his shoulder.

He heads through the kitchen, living room, and down the hall through to the art/storage/whatever room, digs around in the drawers, in search of the wee top hat with a rainbow ribbon around the brim that he spotted and brought home ages ago now in hopes that he’d find something perfect to do with it one day.

He traipses it back through the flat and back out onto the terrace, takes to a knee and pulls the drawstring down to fit it under Tango’s chin before popping the hat on his head, looking to Remus with a bright air of curiosity as to what he thinks of it, but the man’s busy with the pipe and pulling a righteous toke off of it, but he turns to Sirius as he holds it in, scans the scene, and immediately bursts his haul out of his chest, falling into a half-coughing, half-laughing fit.

“Where did you find that?” he demands once he can.

“A magician never shares his secrets,” Sirius gives sagely before going ahead and telling him anyway. “This craft store like, a year ago now, somewhere around there.”

Remus has a more extensive look over the little top hat perched on Tango’s head. “You know who’d look great in this?” he raises. 

Sirius takes in an overwhelmed breath, freezing with his hands up in front of him. “Our Ludwig who art in heaven?” he throws up.

“The one and the same,” Remus affirms, smiling wryly as he gives Tango’s ruff a pat. “After this one gets his use out of it, ‘course.” 

“Y’know, you’ve really warmed to him,” Sirius forwards. 

“The dog or the mannequin?” Remus checks.

“I mean, both but I meant Ludwig,” Sirius clarifies, shifting to sit cross-legged to give his knees a break from the wood flooring of the terrace. 

“I think it's more that I've just come to terms with the fact that he’s yet another forever-fixture of this place," Remus says for it, ever a ponderer, "much like the fish clock and Mama’s Kitchen."

“In other words, you’re simply used to him by now,” Sirius translates.

“Getting there,” Remus cements, holding up the pipe. “Want another before we go?” 

Sirius has himself a hit right where he‘s sitting, passes it back while he holds in his lungful, and eventually propels the smoke out the right side of his face and away from Tango, who still looks rather unimpressed even with Sirius’ efforts.

“I think he’s straight edge,” Sirius whispers.

“You can’t sit with us,” Remus sends the dog in an octave that’s at least nine times higher than his regular register, perhaps _the_ funniest impression of Gretchen Wieners that Sirius has ever had the pleasure of hearing.

Sirius turns his gape/grin toward Remus’ lopsided smile. “That’s it, this is officially the Pride I’ve ever had,” he says of it. 

Remus’ smile evens out into a full grin. “Yeah?” 

“After that impression, fuck yeah, it is,” Sirius returns. “And, you’re here; makes it that much better.”

Remus’ smile turns into one of the charmed variety before he leans over the arm of the deck chair he’s in, leaning both down and in closer to Sirius to get a smooch in, but Tango sticks his snooter right in between them and winds up winning himself a double smooch out of it on either side of his face, and then Remus has to help Sirius off of the floor because he’s laughing too fucking hard to manage it by himself. 

Remus heads off to deal with putting the recreational paraphernalia back in Sirius’ room while Sirius hypes the dog up with a round of claps as he leads Tango through the flat and down to the hall toward the hook his lead typically hangs from, stooping to clip it to Sirius’ collar.

Remus shows up in the doorway of Sirius’ room, captured perfectly in the frame of Sirius’ doorway like Remus is the subject of a life-size painting — but that could also be the combination of tequila and pot talking. 

“Oh shit, the curler,” Remus says, stopping short and bending to pick it up off the floor by the bureau.

Sirius sends him a mighty pfft. “Almost forgot about that.”

Remus sets the curler back down on the bureau and wanders out into the hall, having himself an observant look around the entryway. “Oh, hold on,” he says, coming alive and heading back up the hall. “I’ll get him water.” 

Sirius wasn’t really planning on going anywhere without him as is, so he hangs back by the front door, fluttering the fingers on his right hand over Tango’s snout while the dog goes absolutely nuts nipping at them. Remus turns up again with a plastic bottle he’s repurposed for Tango’s cause and slips it into the back right pocket of his trousers, the neck and cap of the bottle poking out from overtop his pocket as he moves ahead of Sirius to get at the door handle. 

“What a look,” Sirius forwards, heading out the door behind them. 

“Well, it’s the only option I have,” Remus defends.

“You have zero hands, yes,” Sirius says, shutting the front door behind them.

They descend the stairs at different speeds, Remus going down by a leisurely clip while Sirius pushes on ahead and runs down with Tango fast at his right side, gunning to get out into the wild.

Sirius pushes the lobby door open, letting Tango trot on through it, and pulls back on the lead to keep Tango from getting too far ahead while he glances over his shoulder, and Remus heads down the last few steps a little quicker to help Sirius’ efforts in chivalry not feel entirely moot.

“Why thank you,” Remus trills, heading through the doorway. 

Sirius lets the door shut behind them and quite soon gets the same hand clasped in with Remus’ and gets led across the sidewalk toward the road, possibly to make the most of this festival inspired street-walking while they still have it. Sirius doesn’t mind either way, feels quite happy about being caught between his man on one side of him and his veritable son on the other.

Lily spots them coming first and waves down Remus specifically, and Sirius can’t even be put off about getting the proverbial shaft when in fairness he did steal Remus away from the group to get some of that actual shaft, so he gives Remus’ hand a parting squeeze and Remus dutifully heads in through the terrace gate, heading toward the empty seat between Lily and Dorcas. 

Sirius skirts Tango around the side of the terrace and scales the outside of the railing, where he finds James has not only stolen Sirius’ corner spot in his absence, but Peter went and nabbed the one across from James, so that really just leaves one open spot for him, and that’s a chair sandwiched between James and Andrew.

Sirius sidles into James and Peter’s peripherals, but he isn’t even allowed the time to be pithy about the game of musical chairs that went on in their absence when both James and Peter erupt into bouts of hooting and hollering at the appearance of their canine buddy. Sirius winds up smiling as he ties Tango’s lead to the railing, and then James makes the situation a notch better by gesturing to a new margarita sitting pretty in front of the only vacant spot at the table; he supposes they’re even, then. 

Sirius gives a half-curtsy in thanks, but looks down at the poor pooch beside him panting away and thinks he best set him up for success first.

“I’m gonna see if I can swindle him a dish,” he imparts, scaling back around the terrace railing and up and into the pub’s open windowsill. 

He heads in between two tables near to the door, skirts right and heads around two others as he spots a waitress carrying a drink tray toward the terrace, and continues doing a fair amount of acrobatics to get through the pub and back toward the bar. 

He heads up to it and rests his arms on the counter not far from Oliver’ pouring a whole round of shots into a row of glasses on a tray. Sirius waits until he looks up to mention anything, which he does mere beats, pausing his work by holding the tequila bottle in his hand on an upward tilt. 

“Just need a dish dense enough to feed my dog water out of when you get a second,” he puts out there, pitching his voice over _Fitz and the Tantrums_ playing through the speakers overhead.

Sirius would like it to be known that he’d have been a-ok with waiting until the tray of shots were finished pouring altogether, but Oliver goes ahead and sets the bottle on the bar, heading back through the kitchen doors. Sirius shrugs it off, bit late to do much about it now, and drums his fingers on the bar as _I Just Wanna Shine_ heads into the second verse, and soon enough Oliver sticks his head out of the kitchen doors and holds up a soup bowl quizzically. 

“Oh, yeah, that’ll do,” Sirius nods. 

Oliver walks it over, sliding it over the bar to him. “When'd you get a dog?”

Sirius glows like the rightful dog dad he is. “May,” he supplies, reaching in past the lapel of his romper to wrangle his phone out of the secret pocket in the lining. “Want to see him?” 

Oliver nods toward Sirius’ phone with insistence and Sirius thumbs back through his gallery for a good snap of Tango, and picks one where the dog’s quality snooter is very much on display. “Now, he’s much better in person, but this’ll do for now,” he says, turning his screen toward him.

Oliver moves his gaze from him to flicker it over the screen before doing a triple take. “That’s not real,” he says, quite convinced by the tone of it.

“Oh, but he is,” Sirius insists. “He’s out front if you want to come see for yourself.”

“I’ll poke my head out on break and see if you’re still around,” Oliver imparts, picking the tequila bottle up again before pointing at Sirius with the neck of it. “Don’t let him on the terrace or we’ll get dinged.”

“He’s tied to the outside of the railing,” Sirius confesses, gesturing quizzically with his hands. 

“That’s fine,” Oliver deems it.

“Sweet deal,” Sirius says, picking up the bowl and waggling it in thanks.

“Just the bowl, then?” Oliver asks, a half-smile on now.

“James had me covered,” Sirius says, waving it off. “Margarita night, you know how it is.” 

“And I do,” Oliver accepts.

“Thanks again,” Sirius says, putting it over his shoulder as he commences his journey back out of the pub. 

Sirius heads up by the right-hand side of the table and sets his right hand on Remus’ left shoulder to brace himself as he reaches in between Lily and Remus to get at the table. “‘Scusie,” he says to excuse his reach, plucking Tango’s water bottle off of the table where Remus set it, and leaves a quick kiss on top of Remus’ head because he can.

He heads back out through the terrace gate, sets the bowl down by Tango’s feet, and pours the water up close to the brim, giving Tango’s head a ruffle before simply leaving the bottle by the dish for now. 

With that out of the way, it’s officially Margaritaville again, and Sirius heads for his new seat, plops himself down in it, and takes a grand sip of it before meeting Andrew’s eye sidelong.

Andrew stirs his own phallic-shaped straw sitting in a veritable fishbowl of a daiquiri in front of him and hums thoughtfully with a smirk on. “He seeing anyone?” he asks, tossing his head idly across the table, but it wouldn’t matter if he were subtle about it or not when Remus is rather caught up with the lasses on the other side of  
the table. 

Sirius breaks into a haughty laugh, sliding his right foot over on the ground to give Andrew’s left ankle the boot. “Fuck yeah, he is,” he returns.

“How’d you land him?” Andrew asks.

Sirius smacks his lips once. “Sheer dumb luck,” he calls it. 

Andrew nods, letting him have that when Remus is genuinely looking his best, and goes for another sip off of his drink, sitting back in his chair once he’s done with it. “You look happy,” he supplies. Sirius gives a light hum around his straw for it and Andrew smirks at him again, this time lifting a hand and scrunches his nose up faux-quizzically. “I mean, you did vault the railing to get to the street quicker and then took to a skippity-skip along the road to get to him.” 

Sirius definitely feels rather rouge around the vicinity of his cheeks, but a spade’s a spade. “I really did, didn’t I.” 

“A lil’ skip and hop,” Andrew confirms, doing a wee impression of a pair of speedy legs with his right middle and forefinger. 

Sirius sits back in his chair now, too, though he takes his drink with him, ducking his head through a wry laugh. “He’s inspiring that way, what can I say?” he raises, shrugging his shoulders evasively.

Just there, Lily and Dorcas erupt into pink-cheeked guffaws over something Remus most definitely said on the other end of the table, and Sirius so wishes he’d caught what pulled that reaction out of the girls when it must have been magnifique with the way they’re clutching onto the table.

“Oh good, he’s funny too,” Andrew says dryly, sending Sirius a ha;f-smile.

“Oh, you just wait,” Sirius prefaces, "when he really unwinds you won’t be able to contend with it.” 

“Mm?” Andrew goads around another sip of his drink.

“Trust,” Sirius returns. “You have to look out for this lil’ smile, like this—” he gives it a college try, “—when you see it, you’d best just hope you're not nursing a mournful of drink at the time or you’ll be sending it right back out; his skill at observational comedy alone has rendered me useless too many times.” 

“God, you really are gone for him,” Andrew says of it.

“I really am,” Sirius allows.

He perks up in his seat right quick as the speakers out on the terrace proudly boast the opening bars of _Bad Romance_, signaling that it’s most definitely playing inside where the dance floor is and also where Sirius frankly is not. 

He looks across the table just as Lily turns her head and gives him one fierce look, and in the next moment they’re both grabbing their drinks and maneuvering themselves out of their seats, and by the time Sirius has made it to the end of the table, it appears both Dorcas and Andrew are also tripping over themselves and their chairs to answer Gaga’s call. 

Sirius alone takes a quick detour, making a beeline for Remus on the other side of the table, who seems quite happy where he is for the most part even if his flank has cheerfully ditched the table. 

Sirius leans in to leave a smooch on his lips, mutters a quick ‘back in a bit’, and Remus gives him a quick one in return before waving him right off. “Get in there,” he orders, and Sirius cannot deal with how fucking easy this can so often be. 

Remus slips into Dorcas’ vacated spot and joins the boys at the other end of the table and beckons Renee to scoot down from her spot on the corner, and with that Sirius rightfully lampoons himself into the pub, drink in hand and in search of his dance partners. 

The next while consists of more musical chair numbers as some members of the group stay back and hunker down at their quality spot out front while others pop inside to dance it out, and in one of those instances, James and Peter have ditched the table in favour of the dance floor, leaving just James, Remus, Sirius, and Andrew, of all possible combinations left to guard it. 

The mere presence of James does help filter the conversation, but this much must be said: Remus surprises Sirius on the regular, just a mere fact of life on its own, but here is no exception. Frankly put, this arrangement could have had every potential in the world of being woefully uncomfortable for everyone involved to different degrees, but Remus, too kind even in an awkward situation, engages Andrew by lobbing questions at him about everything to do with how he planned and choreographed the entire spectacle that he got to see so many snapshots of the whole of June while Sirius practiced his arse off, coming off like a genuinely sweet bloke that perhaps that helps Andrew, always a fan of talking in general but particularly about his zumba endeavours, engages him right back.

Oliver turns up by the table not long later, a determined look about him, and Sirius aims to look incredibly fine with being in the immediate vicinity of his boyfriend and two other men he''s also shagged senseless. 

“Where is he?” Oliver demands.

Sirius beams from the corner spot, lifting his right hand and pointing to the massive pooch just on the other side of the railing, as if the man wouldn’t have spotted him any time soon. Oliver heads out of the terrace gate, going around to the street, and weaves in between scores of people going to and fro to get to Tango, taking to a knee and showering him with pets.

“How old is he?” he inquires, holding Tango’s chin underneath his hands like it’s solid gold. 

“Two,” Sirius supplies, bright as a summer’s day since the topic is his lovable son. “He’s only going to get bigger, and I cannot wait until I have to struggle to pick him up.” 

“You can pick him up now?” Oliver checks. 

“If he’s sober,” Remus puts in, giving Sirius an idle look of warning. 

“I wasn’t going to demonstrate right this second,” Sirius defends.

“Good, you will not succeed,” Remus says of it. 

Sirius aims a huff at him and pointedly turns his head away. “You've got good timing, I was just about to run him home.”

“All this a bit much for him?” Oliver guesses, gesturing around at the festivities still raging on. 

“Well, and strange men keep running up to love him down,” Sirius mentions, “which would be a lot, in fairness.”

Oliver gives out a noise of faux-offense, rising to his feet and giving Tango with a parting pat on his head. “Just as well, I should head back,” he says, wiping the front of his shirt of stray dog hairs. “It’s nuts in there.” 

“The tips better be worth all this,” Sirius puts in. 

“They are and that’s all I’m holding onto,” Oliver insists, heading back around the terrace railing with a quick wave. 

Sirius gives him one as he heads back in through the open storefront, falls back into the table to find Remus and Andrew already a fair way into a conversation that he may as well not try to catch up with. He leans in a little to the left, hooking his chin over Remus’ right shoulder.

“I’m just going to run him back,” he says, tossing his right thumb toward the pooch. “You good here?” 

Remus stops mid-sentence and turns his head to him, nodding for it. “Yeah, I'm great,” he adds. 

“Back soon,” Sirius instills, leaning in to drain the lasts of the margarita he’s currently on and pushing his chair back from the table. 

He keeps his word on it, jauntily walking Tango back to the flat where he showers his bowl with kibble, gives him two treats because he’s feeling generous today, and heads back out into the fray, hoping and halfway praying that he hasn’t missed any devastatingly good tunes in his short time away. 

He comes up upon the storefront again, finding more musical chairs has been played while he's been gone; this time around Lily, Dorcas, and Renee are at the table while not a single male member of the troupe is to be seen. 

“Where’d the lads go?” Sirius asks, standing at the head of the table with frank perplexity. 

“Illegal drugs,” Dorcas passes along. 

“Those bitches,” Sirius pronounces, hands on his hips. 

He swivels on his heel, heading inside to order himself another fishbowl sized margarita from Oliver, tries it on the way back and finds he’s easily been given a fucking triple, and shudders for it, giving out a reactive whoop that gets swallowed up by the music playing throughout the place. He maneuvers himself through the hordes of people between him and the terrace, holds his drink tightly and aims to keep a fair berth around him to avoid wearing his newly acquired drink, but has to stop quickly and back up a step to avoid running into a bloke that’s very suddenly in his path.

The bloke ahead of him clues into the fact that he’s almost stepped back and caused a traffic jam, turns on his heel to get a glimpse. 

“Well, shit,” he says, brightening with recognition. 

Sirius can’t say he has a clue what his name is anymore — something with a G, that he’s about eighty-two percent sure of, but he does remember a few other things about him that he’d rather not get caught between again. 

“Hey hey,” he greets, ducking his head to take a big ol’ swig off his drink for the purposes of survival and comes back up focused on pretending he’s at work. “Come here often?” 

“No, first time,” Greg (?) returns. “What about you?” 

“Oh, this is my home base,” Sirius clarifies. “You still with—” 

Sirius pretends he simply cut off due to the volume of the music echoing around them. “Yeah, sure am,” Garrett (?) nods, successfully filling in Sirius’ blank. “Eight years next month.” 

“_Fuck,_” Sirius enunciates, flickering his gaze past him toward the front window just in time to catch Remus wandering in through it with Peter and James in tow, and his heart rate picks right up. “That’s nuts, congrats.” 

“Beau? Yeah, he’s just finishing work now, so he’ll be coming down soon,” George (?) puts in.

“Oh, well, great he can still make it for some of the festivities,” Sirius says, promptly avoiding the leer he can feel trained on him by internally panicking and externally remaining calm, attempting to send a telepathic signal for Remus to meet his eye and save him. 

Either telepathy is something to turn into a future career of his or Remus just simply spots him, but Sirius’ll take it whatever the reasoning; he smiles tightly, beckoning him over with a tight head nod.

Sirius breathes easier and tanks his lucky stars as Remus Fucking Lupin wanders over, effectively swooping in on Sirius’ left and giving Sirius’ arm a light tug. “Smoke?” he asks, smiling at him. 

Sirius nods eagerly, folds his arm in to tap Remus’ hand in supreme thanks, and flickers his gaze back to Giuseppe — whoever, doesn’t matter — before giving him an easy wave. “Good seeing you, bye,” he elongates.

Sirius keeping a solid hold on both Remus and his drink as they head for the terrace, Sirius leaning in to speak close to Remus’ ear. “Perfection, you are.”

Remus waves him off for it, stepping out onto the terrace floor. “I figured it had to be bad when I saw your work smile,” he mentions. 

“Smart lad,” Sirius calls him. “I actually do want to smoke.”

“I also figured that,” Remus says, leading them through the terrace, but the two of them have to go one by one to fit between the tables and chairs and people strewn about, but Sirius does appreciate that Remus keeps hold of his hand the whole way through the bustle. 

Sirius looks down at the drink in his hand and back up again as Remus gets to the terrace gate. “How far out do you think I can get with this?” he asks, swirling his glass for effect. 

“Well, don’t wave it around in the air and you’ll probably get away with it,” Remus supplies over his shoulder, unhooking the gate.

“There go my plans,” Sirius sends him, following him out and past the main door to get to the alley just beside the pub. 

Sirius leans his back on the wall and slides down it to have a seat before working his pack out of his pocket. Remus joins him on the ground, extending his long legs out ahead of him before crossing them at the ankle, and lulls his head to the side to look at Sirius, who’s just lighting up.

He waits until Sirius is finished puffing on it which just takes him up a solid notch on Sirius’ list of favourite people on Earth. “What’s the story there?” he inquires. 

“I,” Sirius elongates, pausing to shoot his haul out ahead of him, extending his legs out ahead of him to mirror Remus, “was a guest star in his and his husbands’... arrangement.” 

Remus’ expression clears off before a ghost of a smile tugs at his lips. “That’s not the answer I was expecting.”

“I contain multitudes,” Sirius summarizes, holding the cigarette up for Remus to take. “I cannot tell you what his name is, and I really only just found out his husband’s name just now, so it really wasn’t a life-altering experience, in case you were wondering.” 

Remus takes hold of it, tapping on it gently. “Well, he clearly remembered you, so,” he says, weighing his hands. “Must have been a good time.” 

“I mean, everybody came,” Sirius offers plainly, lifting his shoulders once. 

Remus shoots his haul out in three quick bursts, turning his head to smush his face against Sirius' right shoulder, his shoulders shaking profusely. “Well, thank Cunt for that,” he says finally, straightening up again, and even this has an oddly easy energy to it; Sirius can’t describe the feeling of feeling comfortable and not very much at all in one go. 

He trains his gaze on the brick wall across the alley from them and takes in a long breath. “I have had relations with four people in this pub, and number five’s on his way,” he puts up. 

There’s a frank few beat of silence where Remus' brow is just furrowed in thought. “Wait, who’s number five?” he asks under his breath. 

“The husband’s on his way here,” Sirius provides, going for an idle sip off his straw. 

Remus breathes in once. “Oh,” he accepts, bowing his head with a half-frown on. 

Sirius flickers his gaze sidelong, eyeing Remus' signature frown, and shakes his head clear. “Sorry, it’s just been a weird day." 

“Has it?” Remus asks, budging Sirius’ right arm. "You're so lively?" 

“Well, no, it's been brilliant for the most part, but,” he says, pushing a sigh out, “I saw a few more on my way to the pub, too, that’s like, nine blokes today? Seeing so many people on your list on the same day is a bit of a trip, I'll just say that.”

“I,” Remus allows, passing the cigarette back to him, “can only imagine.”

Sirius takes the cigarette and has a haul off of it, smiling weakly for the voucher. “Has it been weird for you?” he raises, budging Remus’ left arm. 

Remus is a little too quick to answer. “No, mm mm,” he says with a head shake to boot.

“Mhm,” Sirius returns, eyes lidded as he daintily flicks the ash off of his cigarette.

Remus pushes a meager breath through his nose, frowning again. “It has, a bit,” he confesses, "but that's just me, Sirius—"

“Was that so hard?” Sirius raises. “I can handle a little truth now and again, but I can’t always tell with you; sometimes you’re really difficult to read — and if that back there was you rising to the occasion then you ought to get an Emmy, cause nobody would have been able to tell you were uncomfortable.”

Remus huffs gently, averting his gaze to the brick wall across from them. “It’s your day, Sirius,” he implores. “I knew we’d be at Gallagher’s so I was prepared for Oliver to be around, and like I said, I had a feeling Andrew would be invited along, too, but then they were both there at the same time, and at least James was still bumbling around so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could have been, but what else am I going to do but rise above it; I have to, don’t I?” 

“Well, you don’t,” Sirius points out, going for a haul. 

Remus looks back at him again, his expression quite plain. “What was I going to do, rip my shirt open and fight the both of them right there at the table?” he raises. 

“I fucking wish you would,” Sirius returns, a wry smile on around his cigarette. 

“Well, I’m sorry I’ll be disappointing you more, then,” Remus says for it. “Popping people willy-nilly just really isn’t my style.”

“I’m just saying, it’s fair if you find it weird,” Sirius insists. “I really had a hoe phase.”

Remus snorts. “Had.” 

“_Oi,_” Sirius sends him, reaching with his free hand to jab him in the side. “I’m reflecting on my slutty, slutty ways, you shit.” 

“I’m _teasing,_” Remus implores gently, batting at Sirius’ hand once before taking hold of it altogether and holding theirs together in his lap. “And you’re usually better much better at knowing your audience than this, but I have to assume that's the margaritas talking.” 

“Hm?” Sirius probes. 

Remus sends him a sidelong squint. “Well, I don’t know if you remember, but we did ditch everyone to run off and have sex on your bureau a few hours ago,” he mentions. 

"Oh, no, I remember," Sirius insists. "I've got a bit of a limp going on from that escapade."

"I noticed," Remus mentions. “Do you think I’m a hoe, then?” 

Sirius eyes him once. “I mean, yeah,” he says, smirking around the end of his cigarette. 

Remus huffs out a laugh, hanging his head with a quiet smile on. He gives a sigh through his nose, knocking Sirius’ right arm with his left one. “Good thing we ended up together then, hm,” he says plainly. 

“Honestly,” Sirius says, holding the cigarette up for him to take. “Just a coupla hoes watching the sun go down.” 

Remus smirks as he takes hold of the cigarette. “The sun went down an hour ago,” he mentions.

“It’s a figure of speech, Remus,” Sirius sends him sweetly. 

“Is it?” Remus raises skeptically. Sirius gives a light trill in amusement, but silence falls over them while Remus has a drag off of the cigarette, but he speaks quite frankly once he hands it back to Sirius. “So what?”

“Hm?” Sirius hums, pausing with the cigarette held between his lips.

“So what?” Remus repeats, more concrete this time. “You know who doesn’t mind all this?” 

Sirius looks left then right. “No,” he probes. 

“Me,” Remus answers, lifting his shoulders once to pair with it. 

Sirius moves his frown from left to right. “You mind a bit,” he says knowingly. “I’ve seen your double blinks after I tell a tale of my youth.” 

“Well, you do have some bamboozling ones up your sleeve and you sometimes drop them without any warning,” Remus defends, “but it’s never been ‘why’s he such a hoe?’ Not once have I thought that.” 

Sirius takes on an imploring frown as he works to let that anecdote sink in. “No?” he checks, since they’re here. “Not even in the early days where the list just kept getting longer?”

“No, have you seen yourself?” Remus returns, a smile tugging at his lips. “I figured you got laid a lot.” 

Sirius puts out an amused trill, shooting his haul out in a few fast gusts. “I didn’t do half bad,” he allows. 

“Well, can we call it that instead of calling you a hoe?” Remus raises. 

Sirius pushes his next haul out with a sigh, turning to butch it out on the ground beside him. “I know you, though,” he says. “It probably spun you out; a lot more than you’re letting on, I think.” 

“It used to more,” Remus allows, and Sirius turns his head back toward him right quick. “Not because of anything you did, and not because of the number, but I’d stack myself up against them early on, wonder why you were even hanging around me, and I still do it now, you know that. Less often, definitely, but it still happens.” 

Sirius shakes his head with a huff. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you you’re a thousand times cooler than any of them.” 

Remus pushes a fumed breath out of his nose, giving him an imploring look. “I thought _you_ were the one who needed to be brought back to Earth here, not me,” he raises. “I love you, but you are sitting in an alleyway, on Pride, moping about all the sex you used to have to your current boyfriend; _I'm_ having a good time.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause you weren't out there swallowing up the neighbourhood,” Sirius counters. 

Remus reaches his right hand past him, tapping Sirius’ left cheek and effectively turning Sirius’ face toward his. “You’re OK,” he stresses, holding him steady. “Say it for me?” 

Sirius feels the tightness in his chest pull until he’s just wilted there beside him. “I’m OK,” he echoes, kneading Remus’ hand with his cheek. 

Remus leans in, pressing his lips to Sirius’ in a warm kiss that almost acts as a cementing of the claim. Sirius lets his breath out through his nose as it ends, staring at Remus like he’s got all the answers to his questions, and so often he really does know where to lay down the law and where not to. 

“What are you doing after this?” Sirius asks him, lifting his drink to sip off of and shuddering at the striking taste of it; this is probably the last one for a while. 

Remus hums to ponder. “Well, I’d better go and hang out with the cat,” he gives him. “I stopped in last night and gave her decidedly too much food to tie her over, but I shouldn’t hang around here too much longer.” 

Sirius hums in acceptance. “Fair enough,” he offers. “Did you have fun?” 

Remus blinks twice. “I just told you I did,” he says, smiling while eyeing him pointedly. “You’re quite knackered.” 

“I’ve had a lot of tequila, sweetie,” Sirius returns.

“And boy, do I know that,” Remus sends back, and Sirius is fucking living with all this feisty Remus he’s getting. 

“Umm, who decided to take a little walk and suck down a blunt while I wasn’t around, hm?” Sirius raises it. “Hm, hm, hm?” 

“We came right here, and we tried to flag you down on your way past but you didn’t see us,” Remus returns. “Point is, I've had loads of fun.” 

“Good,” Sirius returns at once. “It wasn’t just my day, you know.” 

Remus takes in a short breath through his nose, smiling for him. “I know,” he echoes. “Do you want to come to mine? There’s pot there.”

“You’ll also be there,” Sirius clarifies, smiling around his straw. "That’s sort of the draw."

“That, and the cat,” Remus raises. 

“Oh, her too,” Sirius accepts. “Can we go soon?” 

Remus looks up, down, and back at him, shrugging pleasantly. “Yeah, OK,” he nods. “You mean now, or?” 

Sirius swirls the bit he has left in his glass. “Just having one for the road,” he says, reaching behind him to brace the wall as he works on getting up. “Figure it’d be polite to say bye, too—” 

“Oh, you just hold on,” Remus says, batting at Sirius’ efforts to get off the ground and moving to his feet much quicker than him. 

Sirius ducks his head through a laugh, lifting his free hand for aid, and Remus tugs him up and onto his feet. 

Sirius lifts himself up with that, holding his cigarette down to Remus in offering, who takes it and has a few parting hauls off of it before he, too, is quite done. They turn the corner arm in arm, while Sirius tries to make quicker work of his drink, but he may just have to ditch it.

They get to the storefront as the devastatingly familiar opening licks of _Whataya Want From Me_ play out over the speakers out front, and the two of them lock eyes at once. “After this?” Sirius asks immediately. 

“Absolutely,” Remus returns at once, and the two of them dart up through the terrace and into the pub with James suddenly hot at their heels, weaving through the crowd and reuniting themselves with Lily and Dorcas to close the night out with such a passionate number. 

\--

It takes fortitude, strength, and a dash of pure will and drive each, but Sirius does finally manage to zip his suitcase shut. It definitely also took sitting on the thing to get it to flatten out enough for the zipper to move properly, so go ahead and tack manhandling onto the aforementioned list; there was some of that, too.

Sirius pushes a flyaway hair out of his face, pushes out a breath of relief, and ambles off of the suitcase and back onto his feet, deeming his few day venture in packing tres finit. He leaves his suitcase where it is, lets himself back into his bedroom side of his room through the Sirius-sized gap he left with the partition, and has a long glance over the bed, looking for the next thing to right since he’s obviously on a roll. 

He tidies the bed a little since that’s pretty well the first thing he knows he can at least do; he pulls their notebook off of it along with the pen he used to scribble notes with, tucks it away in the drawer of his nightstand, and leans over the side of the bed, pulling the covers back from the foot of the bed and lifting them over Remus’ shoulders. He has a look over head o’ curls poking out from under the covers, can’t really get much of a glimpse of Remus’ face when it’s pressed down on his pillow along, the rest of his body laying in a front-facing sprawl on his side of the bed, and that part puts a pause on Sirius’ calculations, bringing a smirk out of him instead. 

All while Sirius would let Remus take up the entire bed if he so chose to, Remus goes to his side of the bed for a cluster; this is the sort of boy Sirius won and it’s not a bad prize at all. 

Sirius lifts his gaze past Remus’ head and notes that the water glass he left for him is down to the halfway mark and both the both a painkiller and 5mgs of melatonin Sirius left for him are nowhere to be seen; a good sign when it means Remus must have moved at some point in the last while, but for the moment, the man’s back to being out cold. Sirius keeps his footsteps light as he rounds the bed to the other side, plucks the glass off of Remus’ nightstand, and sets off for the kitchen to refill it. 

He lets the tap run for a little over a minute, give or take, and goes for the ice tray in the freezer, popping two cherry shaped cubes into the glass for the sake of practicality and a bit of garnish. He walks the glass back through the flat, leaves the glass on the nightstand, and has another look over Remus’ front-facing sprawl, pulling his phone out of his back right jeans pocket.

A predicament unfolds as he flickers his gaze over the time. Sirius is about two hours off from banking his last shift at the company until the end of time, and Remus starts about the same time as he does, on the other side of the city. Sirius could and would potentially drive Remus over to his place to wait out the down time he’d have before his shift and still have time to make it back in time for his own, but they’ll have to leave sooner than later, and sooner isn’t looking plausible with Remus down for the count. 

Sirius takes in a quiet breath through his nose, turns for the door with his phone in his hand, and starts dialing for Lily as he gets to the hall. He shuts his bedroom door behind him, walks up the hall toward the living room, and steps over Tango’s bulk to get into the room as the pooch’s idea of a prime place to hog out is very apparently the middle of the hallway. 

He can’t call out on Remus’ behalf without getting himself into some trouble, that he knows, but if he could perhaps coax into the idea of letting Remus come in a little later than scheduled and win him a little more time to rest up, that would probably put him in the category of good trouble, and that Sirius can live with.

The dial tone cuts off after the third ring. “Hold on, I’m on the store phone,” she says, her voice coming through in a pronounced whisper. 

“OK,” Sirius whispers back, pulling a quick, throaty laugh out of Lily before she’s back to her previous call. 

Sirius heads for the couch, takes to a frontward sprawl across the couch a la Remus, and waits there until Lily is no longer occupied. “Ok, sorry,” she says, a good half minute later. “What’s happening?”

Sirius has to admit there’s something to her knowing that if he’s calling in the middle of the work day something must be up. “He’s coming off a really rough one,” he says, pushing himself onto his back instead. “Has quite the hangover--” 

“Wait, what?” Lily cuts in. “I thought he wasn’t allowed to drink.” 

“No, he isn’t,” Sirius accepts, settling back in with his free arm behind his head as a makeshift pillow. “Or, well, he shouldn’t so he doesn’t, but I meant a migraine hangover? That’s my bad.” 

Beat. “Is it anything like your regular hangover?” 

Sirius hums for it. “I mean, he’s not moving much, he’s a bit woozy, if he stood he wouldn’t stand on his feet for too long, so, sure,” he offers. “You’ve seen him after one, only he’s really fucking beat this time; I know he won’t want me to call out for him altogether and he’ll be fine soon, this one’s just a doozy and I don’t know if it’s fair or realistic to expect him to come in for two.”

“OK,” Lily says, and Sirius feels like he can almost hear her nodding along with it. “Well, I mean, if you want to send him for five, I won’t scream about it.” 

Sirius does a blink/reel hybrid. “Oh,” he says, right bamboozled. “Five, madame?” 

“We’ve got a full house here,” Lily says for it. “I’ll be on until at least four, maybe later knowing me, so do tell him that he won’t be putting anyone else out.” 

“That’s exactly what I was planning on telling him, but I’m glad I’ve got the go-ahead,” Sirius says, putting on a grin he has a feeling Lily knows is there. 

“Give him my love, please,” she imparts. 

“I will,” Sirius says, lifting himself off of the couch with a heave. “Thanks again, hey?” 

“You never did say thanks, so the ‘again’ doesn’t really apply--” 

Sirius sends a round of nonsensical noises into the receiver before pressing to end the call, pocketing his phone and traipsing back to his room to relay the good news. He crawls up the middle of the bed, plants himself beside Remus, curling in to face him sidelong and taps Remus’ left shoulder in a steady, one-note beat until Remus finally stirs. 

He hums a bleary noise, lifts his head off of the pillow beneath his face, and pushes his sleep mask up on his forehead, peeking his good eye open before turning his frankly unimpressed expression toward him. 

Sirius can’t avoid smirking, come now. “Sorry, but I’ve fun news?” he raises, bringing his voice to a whisper. “You may even like it.” 

“Mm?” Remus probes. 

“Well, your start time has been cut down to five,” Sirius mentions, “and while that means I can’t drive you in anymore, that’ll give you more time to sleep it off?”

And there, Sirius receives irrefutable evidence that Remus must definitely be knackered if all he gets for that is a bunch of blinks, a stark hum, and faceplant back down on the pillow. 

Sirius smirks a little more for that. “I’ll set an alarm, OK?” he says, leaning his right arm over Remus and pulling Remus’ phone off of the nightstand. 

He sets one for a time he’s pretty sure Remus will agree with, and then tacks on another alarm for a wee five minute snooze just in case. He leaves Remus’ phone where it was, takes his arm back, and leans in to speak directly to Remus, keeping his voice equally as quiet as before. 

“Have some more water, and then you can sleep all you want,” Sirius haggles. “Within reason.” 

Remus pushes another rather horse-inspired breath, the pillow beneath his face making it echo out and, to be frank, this is better entertainment than most programs Sirius has seen. “Come on,” he coaxes, running the pad of his thumb underneath the sleeve of Remus’ t-shirt to trace it over his skin. “You’ll be glad you did in a little while.” 

Remus gives a sigh through his nose, but reason usually does tug him along. He lifts his head again, pushes himself onto his elbows, and turns for the glass, carefully transporting it from the nightstand over to the bed to hold it upright between his hands. 

“I can’t fill it out yet,” Remus says coarsely. “I don’t have it in me.” 

“That’s OK, I put it away,” Sirius insists. “I did a good chunk of it already, so you have a look over it later on if you want; no rush.” 

Remus nods for it, tips the glass in so he can sip at it, and after a few beats holds it upright again and tests out his bad eye; Sirius simply watches him flutter his eyelids at differing intervals, feeling a tug at his lips. “I finished packing,” he mentions, 

Remus quits his eyelid tricks right quick and hums enticingly. “Quicker than me, even,” he says, half-smiling. 

“You’ve been busy,” Sirius excuses. “That being said, I should just put the notebook in there, but I might get you to slip it into your luggage because mine’s just about to burst.”

Remus nods for that. “I’ll take it with me when I go.” 

“It’s in my drawer,” Sirius supplies, pairing it with a nod back toward it. 

“I’ll work on some of mine tonight, see how far I can get with it,” Remus says before going for another tip of the glass.

“Yeah, see how you feel,” Sirius says. “We’ve tomorrow too, so nothing’s going to go topsy-turvy if you just want to take it easy tonight; I would.” 

Remus gives him a woeful little noise, swallowing slowly. “We’ve too much to do tomorrow to worry about packing,” he says of it, “but if you want to come by later, I feel like you could make something like packing feel less like chore.”

“You know I could,” Sirius says at once, a wry smile on. 

Remus gives him a smile with a pair of lidded eyes over it and turns to put the glass back on the nightstand, but Sirius got a good enough look at his eyes to be able to tell the bad one is equaling out with the good one a little more already, and after some more R&R, he’ll be good as new. 

Remus turns back to him and rolls himself more onto his right side to face Sirius better. “Are you excited?” he asks. 

Sirius breathes in and out once, his eyes coming alive. “You’ve no idea.” 

Remus gives him a sleepy smile, shuts his eyes, and gives a tiny, contented sigh, and Sirius scoots in close to leave a kiss on both of Remus’ shut eyelids in turn for it. A small smooch gets pressed to the right corner of Sirius’ mouth in reply, and while that likely has more to do with logistics and what Remus can and cannot manage right about now, it still gets Sirius’ mouth curling upward, the butterflies inhabiting his stomach taking flight. 

Right there Sirius’ phone starts to ring, cutting through the whimsy like an uninvited guest and pulling a guttural noise out of him. “Sorry sorry sorry,” he returns in a to Remus’ equally unimpressed groan, though for him it might have more to do with the pitch of the ringing. 

He speedily leaves both the bed and room while trying to fish his phone out of his back right pocket of his jeans. He shuts the door behind him again, heads for the living room for a second time, and swipes his thumb over the screen brightly letting him know Peter’s ringing him.

“Yo yo yiggity yo,” he says, grinning big. 

He gets a laborious sigh for it. “You’re seriously going to hang me out to try for that?” Peter returns. 

“Listen, you went and said that to me like I wasn’t going to?” Sirius returns. “Rookie mistake there, Pete.”

Peter clicks his tongue. “Are you at yours?” he asks. 

“I think this is the place?” Sirius answers quizzically, having a glance around his living room though Peter can’t see him doing it. 

“OK, good,” Peter replies, breezing right past Sirius’ antics, “‘cause my mum wants to come by and pick up the chest.” 

“Today?” Sirius raises after a pause.

“Well, she was hoping for it, yeah,” Peter says. “She made room in the den for it and everything, she’s excited about it.” 

Sirius huffs a sigh. “Pete, I’ve got work in a bit.”

“When?” Peter asks. 

Sirius takes the phone away from his ear to have a look at the time. “I start at two.”

“So?” Peter puts up. “You’ve time; she doesn’t live in Canada.” 

“So maybe I had other plans in mind for my pre-work self?” Sirius raises.

Peter gives a frank hum. “To sit around until you have to go in, I bet.” 

Beat. “Maybe so.”

Peter pushes out an unimpressed sigh on the other end of the line. “Should I tell her to come by tomorrow instead?” 

Sirius hums a frank no. “We’ll be in and out like mad, I can’t guarantee a time we’d be around.” 

“Right,” Peter puts in, like it’s actually just dawned on him that the day prior to their trip would be filled with last-minute errands, “no, that’ll be too much to coordinate.” 

Sirius pushes a sigh out of resignation. “Well, you’re going to have to tell me where you stuck it because I’ve no leads.” 

“Closet in the storage room,” Peter relays. 

Sirius snorts, heading there. “Lacks vision,” he supplies.

“Your only instructions were to get it out of your sight,” Peter defends. “It’s under a lot of stuff, though; you’ll have to do some digging.” 

Sirius huffs a Yuge sigh. “Every sentence out of your mouth is worse than the last,” he returns, opening the closet door and finds there is indeed a mountain of crap on top of his least favourite family heirloom. “I really think you two could’ve done better here.”

“Mhm,” Peter accepts, very clearly on speaker phone on the other end if his distracted tone and the echo of feedback say anything of it. “OK, I told her to give you some time to dig it out.” 

“N’aw, you’re going to give me that?” Sirius puts up faux-graciously, shouldering his phone so he can bat things out of the way with two hands instead of just one. “I’m leaving the house in an hour and a half and if she’s not here by then, she’s not to ring the bell or knock insanely loud; Remus is sleeping, so I’ll just leave it on my stoop.” 

“You’re going to make her carry it down herself?” Peter asks. 

Sirius huffs loudly as he tugs the admittedly heavy chest out of the closet and further into the room. “Hi, I have work?” he returns. 

“Fine, I’ll tell her to leave hers in an hour from now, deal?” Peter raises. “That way you’ll be more than on time but she won’t fall to her death trying to lug that thing down the stairs herself.”

“You do know it’ll be way less heavy without all that shit in it, yeah?” Sirius raises plainly.

“Sirius, I don’t want to lose my mum to a chest,” Peter puts it. 

“Fine -- you know, Remus gets quite rep for being worry-wart while you’re right here, spouting nonsense--” Sirius says before he feels his phone starting to slip from between his shoulder and neck. His phone soon hits the floor with a thud that Sirius doesn’t much like hearing, pulls a wince out of him as he leaves the chest where he got it to on the floor. He stoops to pick his phone up, checks that the screen hasn’t shattered, and presses it to his right ear again with a touch of relief wafting over him. “Yeah, I’m going to need two hands for this.”

“Likely, yeah,” Peter accepts. “Hey? Don’t get caught up in what’s in there because none of it matters; just throw it all out and don’t look back.” 

“I’m not throwing away the rolly toy,” Sirius defends at the audacity of the suggestion.

“What are you going to do with it?” Peter raises plainly. 

“I don’t want it, but some kid could,” Sirius puts up. 

“Fine, the rolly toy can stay,” Peter allows. “The rest goes in the bin.” 

“Well, I wasn’t about to put up a shrine in here, oddly,” Sirius serves him.

“Good, ‘cause James would smell something fishy a mile away and just desecrate it a literal hour after it went up,” Peter plays along. 

“That he fucking would,” Sirius returns, heading for a garbage bag from the kitchen. “Alright, I’m out.” 

“Thanks, kiddo,” Peter says in parting. 

“What is the matter with you?” Sirius sends him, affectionately baffled as he hangs up. 

He gets to the kitchen and debates whether one bag will be enough for the job, but eventually decides that should probably suffice. He walks back to the storage room, setting the bag aside on the floor as he stoops to open the latch. He knocks the lid back, looks over the inside of it, and promptly remembers there’s broken glass in there, huffing a sigh as he heads all the way back down to the kitchen to find some hand protection. 

Hand protection is rather lacking, turns out, but Sirius has a set of firetruck red rubber gloves that go all the way up to his elbows, so they’ll do in a pinch. He tugs them on, fetches the broom on his way back, and heads back into the storage room, sizing up the chest. 

If he pulls one thing at a time out of it, that’ll take forever and picking tiny shards of glass out of it isn’t something he’s particularly in the mood to do, and moreover, no telling if some shards would get missed. With that, Sirius balances the broom against the wall nearest to him, leaves the dustpan on the floor beside it, and steps in close to the chest before upending the entire thing. 

Not the quietest method, but everything sure does come pouring out of it and he doesn’t hear Remus swearing from the other room, so he’ll file this one into means to a greater end. He pushes the empty chest aside, takes care in kneeling before the pile of odds and ends in front of him, and double checks once again that he isn’t about to place his kneecaps down on any shards before settling down on the floor.

He sets the rolly toy aside from the get, but takes Peter’s parting wisdom to heart, flapping out the large black garbage bag and focusing on tossing everything else into it. The frame goes the easiest, he doesn’t want that thing around as is, and when he gets to that lovely photo cutout of he and James, it’s entirely possible that he crushes it into a nice crumpled ball before chucking it into the bag with the sentiment scrawled on the back of the photo along with it, and that does feel something like power.

It goes easier from there, anything of true value is already in Remus’ possession, as they well should be, so the rest isn’t worth debating on keeping. It goes so swiftly that Sirius has to pull the notebook he just absently stuffed into the bag back out of it to have a better look over the cover. There isn’t anything particularly striking about it, it’s a simple granite design, but there’s nothing written on the front which has Sirius scouting the first page, which he finds has a doodle of a cartoon man in the middle of eating a cake with the words ‘_LOVE THAT CHEESECAKE_’ written in absolutely striking calligraphy overtop of it. 

Sirius lets out a bemused, throaty laugh, flipping to the next page to get some more of this, but rather than a devastatingly random doodle that page has a passage on it and from the first peek at the penmanship — strict cursive, lack of dots over the I’s, a large loop underneath every Y — the blood in Sirius’ veins begins to thrum. 

He flips to another page, and another, and another, and really only gets the understanding that some entries in here are short, some long, some more half-page entries, and oh, this is too good. Oh my my, did he just find a diary? How quaint. 

He uses his right thumb to flitter through the pages until another figure catches his eye and stops to flip to the middle of the book, finding a sketched self-portrait. It’s good. Suspiciously good. What the fuck, Reg could draw? 

Sirius turns the page sideways, examining the sketch, and no; upon further inspection, that isn’t a self-portrait at all, that nose is all Sirius. 

He shuts the book right quick, righteously spooked when it’s not everyday you open a book and find a too-realistic sketch of yourself looking back up at you; if he backs up a bit on the floor, he thinks it’s more than fair. If he wrings his hands out next, even more fair, as far as he’s concerned.

He looks around at the rest of what’s in front of him, pushing the notebook aside to work double-speed on getting the rest of the stuff into the garbage bag while the skin on Sirius’ arms thrum the whole way through. He pushes off of the floor, brings the broom over to sweep the shards of glass up, and upends the dustpan in the garbage bag before tying it and calling this impromptu task complete. 

He shuts the lid of the chest, drags it out of the room and toward the front door, and leaves it out on his stoop, shutting out his view of it by closing the door. That done with, Sirius fetches the bag filled with his childhood and then some, drops it by the door to take down with him when he leaves, and walks the notebook through the flat with him, stopping in the kitchen to pull his rubber gloves off and stick them back underneath the sink, and heads out onto the terrace from there. 

He stops to knock the screen door open with a foot, letting Tango parade along outside with him, and moving to have a seat at the end of the table. He reaches for his pack in the middle of the table, plucks one out to light up, and eyes the notebook while he puffs on the end of his cigarette. 

He shouldn’t. He knows. They’re Reg’s thoughts, not his own. He knows he shouldn’t just open this notebook right here in front of him and simply look down at the words, and if by some chance he happens to use his innate ability to read, who could blame him really. There’s a strikingly accurate sketch of him in here, that much he very well saw, and excuse him if he’s curious what else is going on here. 

He flips forward to the first entry again, scans the etching of Dec 4th and by the year, a whole whopping after Sirius booked it, if he has his dates right, and sighs gears himself up for some daggers coming his way. 

_I suppose not giving us any indication where you were going was rather purposeful on your end, but did you even think about what would happen if one of us passed? Are we really so dead to you that you wouldn’t even want to know if something happened? Am I that dead to you?_

And Sirius shuts the book. Secret thoughts about him, he expected, but for the words to be directed straight at him? Bit arresting. He doesn’t love where it ended up either, that much is true. He lifts his gaze to the far end of the terrace, thinking this cannot do well for him. He could really just wander back inside, take a comfortable nap alongside Remus until he’ll need to lug the chest downstairs, forget he ever saw this thing. 

He opens the book again. 

_It’s going to be a little more troublesome getting in contact with you, but there are theories, of course; the Potters’ first come to mind, and that’ll be where our mother looks first. _

_She found your delightful manifesto on the side of the mantelpiece and is in a right state, by the way; I’m sure you loved to know that. Now, what I’d personally would want to know is if that frankly baffling collection of words was a recent gift or if they’ve been there for quite some time—_

Sirius’ head floods with this newfound information — she finally found the etching of ‘_Live, Laugh, Eat Ass_’ he meticulously carved into the marble with his piece of shit pocket knife a good year prior to that even. Incredible. 

He ducks his head and proceeds through a whirlwind of quiet laughter at the mere image of their mother finding it and promptly going absolutely spare; delightful indeed. 

Sirius sniffs, sits up taller in his seat, and dives back in. 

_—but even more importantly, I find myself wondering what on earth would have possessed you to carve such a phrase into a mantelpiece in a room that guests regularly frequent? The entire piece is going to have to be replaced, but come to think of it, I suppose that’s something you might’ve been halfway hoping for. Congratulations, then._

_Get help while you’re out there, would you? _

Sirius pushes out a haughty, wounded noise, flipping the page and huffing about it. fuck that; if it took The Burg nearly a year to spot it herself, then the house guests were likely safe from having to stare down life’s simple pleasures; maybe he’s the one who needed help, hm? Ever thought of that, Reggie? 

Sirius fumes as he flips to the next page, finding an entry there from just after Christmas, dated the twenty-sixth, and it’s really easy to soak in when it’s just one single line. 

_All I ever hear about is you; what you’ve done, what you haven’t done, you. I’m sick and tired of you. _

“Oh, boo hoo,” Sirius tosses out as he moves onto the next page, finding the next entry dated for mid-September. The jump in time is a bit reeling in itself; what, did he have nothing scathing to say all that spring? Summer even? Busy man. So kind of him to make time, and from the looks of it, he made up for the shrewd length of the last entry by penning a novel this time around. 

_A typical issue I’ve been saddled with just by having been born second to you, is that I’ve consistently spent years coming up underneath your shadow. We’ve all heard that cliche, so I won’t bother spending much time on it; this is really more unique to you. I would say I’m used to it by now, that I’ve learned to remind myself that my strengths are my own and have nothing to do with yours, but this is just getting ridiculous. It’s my own fortitude at the instrument that finally landed me first piano in orchestra, that’s what should be the focal point. Mine, not yours, mine, I don’t care if you got there first; I’ve worked tirelessly at this for years, practiced longer hours than you ever did, I understand precision, I respect discipline, and I can play with my eyes closed now, but what’s that matter? All I’m getting are repeated references to you and your playing as if it’s somehow news to me that your entire presence in this program and beyond was completely unorthodox. — _

“Oh, fuck _off,_” Sirius puts out, slapping the book shut. 

He opens it again after a good haul off his cigarette, picking back up where he left off, but it's a new paragraph. 

_—Interestingly enough (and I do have to find something of note in continually hearing about you wherever I turn, you understand) the opinion of you round the program is somewhat polarized. Bates — you remember him, I’m sure, he remembers you well. Can’t stand the sound of your name being uttered about the class, I will say that, but that’s not much of a surprise when you made a complete joke of his meticulous planning and work just getting us all ready for the performances, so at the very least I do hear from him about how my playing is more classically trained than yours ever amounted to, and that could be all well and good if the students in my grade and beyond didn’t speak glowingly about you and (their words, not mine) your ‘legendary exit’ from the program. _

I landed this role at the beginning of last year and I’m still hearing about how well you did. It doesn’t matter where you go or how far you run, I’m still going to be doomed to come up second to you. 

Thanks a lot, Sirius. 

Sirius sits with that until the cigarette that has gone largely untouched reveals that it’s down to the but and promptly lets Sirius know that by burning his fingers. He tosses it away instinctively, but he’s much more focused on breathing steadily than the lingering sting on his right forefinger. How exactly was he supposed to do anything about their order of birth? How? So sorry that he got forced to sit and practice and sit up straighter and practice some more at an instrument he never had a love for on his own, just like fucking Reg had to. 

He didn’t have a magic device that rewinds time, did he, and certainly hasn’t got one now, though if he did he’d use it just to rewind and slap this entitlement clean out of this kid.

Sirius fumes as he moves onto the next one, dated for October, and this one’s quite short as well. 

_I cut my hair incredibly short so people in the halls would stop calling me ‘Lil’ Sirius,’ but it just won’t stop. _

Sirius lifts his hands and flies them toward the open book in front of him, needing the fucking professor to come around to his seat and explain the source material better for him because he’s clearly just not getting it. Oh, he was well-remembered at school and Reg couldn’t handle that? How terrible for him. Try being the black sheep of the family for five fucking seconds; all Sirius ever heard was ‘why can’t you be anything like your brother,’ from everyone in that fucking bloodline at one point or another, if he had a coin for every time he heard that phrase tossed about, he could pay for three perfect replicas of Priscilla with his amassed sum, and d’you know what he didn’t do? Put the blame on Reg, a literal fucking child. 

He looks back down at the book, briefly considers lampooning it somewhere ahead of him and seeing how far he can soar it into nothingness, but turns the page instead and has a look over the next. There was something about the springtime, he’s gathering; Reg either didn’t want to or didn’t have the free time to commit to a semi-regular schedule for the next entry is dated for June. 

_I graduated with honours tonight. I crossed the stage twice, once for my diploma and again for my awarded plague, and I’m thinking about hanging it in your room since you never even bothered to hang yours. You’re not using it anymore, are you? _

_While I crossed the stage I found myself scanning the auditorium for your head, and then I did a lot of the same from my seat — the ceremony did drole on after a while, so you’d have been bored out of your skull, but I would love to know what you had on tonight that was so important that you couldn’t have ducked into the back row for a little while and watched from there; were you giving some strange man a fine reach around in the park? I bet that was it. _

Sirius puts out a trumpet of a _pfft_. A good year and a half post breaking free? He probably was doing just that, but at the park? What year did he think it was, 1976? He can hear James’ voice in his ear like he’s out here with him, ‘_upgrade your references or don’t even bother,_’ and Sirius can’t even deny metaphysical James at that point; this is just lazy. 

Sirius turns the page, now entirely interested in where this is going to go next, and turns out, next one is dated for August, so there really is a pattern here; between the months of June and July, Reg got mouthy enough to write him scathing letters that he was likely never going to get his hands on, but not the springtime. Odd. A very odd man. 

_I spotted you at work. A barista now, hey? Interesting choice, honest work—_

“Ohh, I’m gonna—” Sirius starts, cutting off there to pound the underneath of his right fist into the book and therefore the table, and he really is lucky he isn’t being observed at the moment for he knows he’s got to look like a right loon. 

_—Saw you out front with a tray of what I’ll have to assume were samples, but you were doing this fruity little dance as you traipsed about the terrace handing them out to patrons so you’ll understand if I didn’t stop to say hello. _

“Good,” Sirius sends out. “I’d have thrown the whole tray at you, fucking creep.” 

Sirius flips the page with a rough hand, finding the next entry uncharacteristically soon after the last, dated for the fifth of September. 

_If I thought walking into a music program after you was tough enough, walking into a university program after you is another thing entirely. _

_It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, if you will. One the one hand, every professor in the building has the highest opinion of our father (remember him?) and naturally are of the opinion I’ll do as well as he did in his field, but on the other, the students all know you. :) _

Sirius shuts his eyes there, his stomach dropping as he grimaces at the not-so promising direction this one’s already going in before willing himself to just take it; he’s heard worse, been through worse. 

_—And to that, they know me because of you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you, it, the whole situation; the walls have ears and eyes and such, but I have to say that you gave me a very different story, but the general opinion is divided. Some of them say you shacked up with him for the grades you got — I’ve already been asked if I too am planning on doing any extracurriculars on the side to help me along with the rest of them and that was just lovely — and others say you merely did it so you could wander into class half an hour late with coffee in hand and your sunglasses still on and prop your feet up in back of the class without fear of getting disciplined for it. _

_Now, theory one, I don’t agree was the case. You’re very clever, Sirius; the least likely to need a boost as far as I’m concerned. The second theory does have some weight to it however; I’m sure it did have something to do with your need feeling just a tier above every other head the the room when it always has been very much about that for you. I, however, pose a different theory, and so far I haven’t heard anyone pinpoint your incessant need to dismantle everything our father built, and I find that a shame, I do, but it’s not surprising. _

_See, back in the music program, my classmates would go back and forth discussing the planning you must have done to pull off your “legendary” end of the year prank, but they didn’t really know you as much as they thought, did they? They had no idea how little you plan for anything, and neither do these new ones either. You don’t plan, not for anything; you don’t stop to think about the consequences of what you do, you just do whatever you like and manage to still look so surprised when it all comes crashing down around you. I don’t know how you thought it wouldn’t get out, Sirius; you know how much people talk._

_That professor’s gone, by the way. I doubt you’ll have spared much of a thought as to where your actions officially did lead — how could you, you were busy packing your stuff and dipping the second you got caught; you had a lot going on, I’m sure, but the good thing about this development is that I don’t have to run into the man in the hallways and for that, I’m thankful when I’m not all that sure how much authority I could give him, myself. _

_I suppose this is all another bit of thanksgiving unto you. Thank you, Sirius; I now have this to overcome along with the rest. _

Sirius takes a break there, scooting his chair back and curling in to set his forehead down on the edge of the table. Most of his vision is cloudy, minimized, and has a hunk of borzoi taking up a good amount of it, and after a few good breaths in and out, he reaches down to give Tango’s side a rub with his right hand, and he definitely pitches himself back to the image he has of he and Remus sitting in an alleyway, Remus trying so diligently to remind Sirius he's OK. 

This just doesn’t make any sense. There’s a sketch of him in here, he knows he didn’t hallucinate it, but how does somebody get from here to there; from scathing letters to a meticulous, full page sketch of the fucking person they’re crucifying? 

Sirius pushes up, scoots in again, wipes at his eyes with one hand and flips the page with the other; he’s not going to find out if he stops halfway. 

The next entry is short again, but smack dab in the middle of November the following year, which gives him quite the pause. Oh, what, he had nothing to say for nearly a year? Fuck this guy, there aren’t any patterns to find; he had no patterns. 

_Our father’s gone. Are you celebrating from all the way over there? _

Sirius feels his eyes roll so hard that it hurts. He sure did celebrate. 

_—Everything falls on me now. I’m it; you’re who knows where, and I’m the one who’s here to step up and take over. _

“Bitch,” Sirius sounds out, flapping his cigarette down at the page below him, “I gave you an out.”

It really is just amazing how much responsibility was shovelled onto him prior to his leaving and clearly years after the fact when he wanted nothing to do with it. That was the whole, entire point and Reg fucking knew that -- theyall knew it, he made that pretty fucking clear. 

He laboriously flips the page to get to the point where Reg would even bother sketching his full face out, and the next entry has easily the shortest gap so far, dated only a week further. 

_Fuck you, Sirius. If you didn’t want to come for him, you could have shown up at least for me. _

Alright, no. Nope. There wasn’t a world in which Sirius would have ever, _ever_ shown up to that funeral. Not a chance; he didn’t feel obligated then, didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it then, and he’s not about to kick his own arse for it now. 

Sirius flips the page as if to write that whole entry off, finding the next one dated for the following summer. 

_I haven’t heard a word from you in nearly four years, and I haven’t heard you speak for just as long—_

“Um, yeah, that’s the forward roll of time for you,” Sirius retorts, making a bemused face down at the page below him.

_—Some of it, I think I’m losing in my memory, but never the laugh. That boisterous, frankly arresting bark that apparently is categorized as a laugh hasn’t gone anywhere. You’ll call me a girl for this one, but I’ve found myself wondering if you laugh more now than you did, and there it hits me that’s essentially what you were going for, wasn’t it, and there, I do wonder if you were ever on a downward spiral; I imagine now you just keep on floating up and up and up. _

“Ding ding,” Sirius rings out. “Only took you how long to realize it?”

A window closes a floor above his and Sirius imps down in his chair a little, taking the notebook with him and hiding it over his face as he keeps on and the next passage is slated for August, the same summer. 

_Oh, Sirius; this would only happen to you. Thanks to Ol’ Alphie’s extremely generous gift of a purse with your name on it, our mother’s on the warpath. His children are on it, too, have you heard? This is the gist if you haven’t; they didn’t get nearly the amount that you did and none of them were runaways, so I’m sure you can imagine how passed upon they might feel just now. _

_I myself am rather torn about it; I understand their upset, but I doubt with just about everything I’ve got in me that you didn’t bank on this happening for a second. Your hands are clean, as far as I’m concerned; it was his money to do what he wanted with and he picked you to shower with it. He always did have a smashing time when you’d start talking cheek at the table. _

_Maybe it’ll be good for you. I don’t know how much you’re bringing in from the cafe or if you’ve moved on by now, but I’d rather you not end up starving one way or another. _

_Mother’s going to fight it. To her the stamp of approval that this gift is sets a terrible example for the rest of us and she can’t rest knowing she didn’t try to interfere. I hope you can find a decent lawyer, you know how theirs are. _

That, he did. 

Sirius flips to the next page, feeling cold underneath his skin; there’s little he can do with such a backhanded compliment, but that’s the Black way and that was the closest thing to ‘you do you’ that he’s ever really got out of Reg, and it’s going on a year late. For what it’s worth, he could have used that vote of confidence at the time, and for the most part, Sirius wouldn’t mind closing the book and going and huddling with Remus for however more time he’s got left because this, Reg effectively telling him he’s golden, is likely as good as it’s ever going to get, but this is it; this is as recent as last year. It’s the home stretch.

_Nov 3rd. _

_I’ve been wondering what sort of plans you have for the future. As funny as that sounds, you and plans, but I’m enthralled by the thought. Are you going to finish your degree elsewhere, have you already begun, or starting a new major altogether perhaps? Are you simply living out of Alphard’s wallet and taking it all as it comes by? Are you happy now, knowing whatever you end up doing, wherever that is, it’s not going to be an extension of them at all? _

_Me, I have a few plans. I shouldn’t. I find myself agreeing to them even though I know I won’t see them to fruition, and I do know how many ripples that’ll cause. Each time I sign a new deal, I know deep down just how many holes are going to need to be sewn back together in the name of the business, but I keep signing them, Sirius. I keep playing the part. What made you able to quit? _

_Maybe we were a lot more alike than I gave credit for; I know better, I know I can’t keep making promises I can’t keep, I know I’m going to fall short of the mark that is this a living, breathing machine that was created before I was even born, and I’m sick and tired of being nothing but a pawn for it — and if that isn’t you, I don’t know what is. _

_Happy Birthday. I wish you hadn’t split in November; it really clouds this time of year. _

Sirius finishes and flips the page so fast, it’s likely he’s got carpal tunnel now; his heart is doing some unearthly beating in his chest, but he needs to know if that’s the last of it, and no — no, thankfully, it’s not. 

_Nov 12th_

_I finally went into one of your cafe chains the other day. Not yours, ‘course, I doubt I’d get much further than the foyer before I’d get banned from the premesis, but I spotted a new one that popped up near the office and thought I’d give it a whirl while I hid from the rain. _

_I’ve had better coffee—_

Sirius snorts real loud for that one, grinning behind his left hand clasped over his chin as he keeps on.

_—I did like the feel of the place, though, and I liked the staff. Funny — the man ahead of me in line held up a bottle of something, I don’t know what it was, coffee or tea to go that he got out of the delicatessen fridge—_

Sirius snorts even louder for that incredibly generous description of their ready to eat and drink station, Good Cunt. 

_—and the barista tried to scan it through but something must have gone wrong with it for it didn’t scan and the man looking to purchase it said, ‘suppose it’s free then.’_

_I thought that was a bit much myself, just pay the five pounds and be on your way, but something about that worker's rather tight smile suggested this was not the first time that phrase had been uttered to him, and then I really had to know what the count would have been. The item scanned on the second try and the offender went off on his way, where I asked just how many times the bloke might’ve heard that, and he just huffed out a ‘more than is even acceptable,’ and that really made me laugh. No big boomer of a laugh, however, that I never really got the hang of, did I. _

_Do you hear that comment often, too? I imagine you do if you’re doing the same work, though I somehow have a sneaky suspicion you’re a tad less gracious about it than he’d been — don’t know where I’m getting that feeling from, though, it’s a mystery. _

Sirius gives a throaty trill; Reg was right about that one, definitely. He went from putting out a polite laugh in early days to straight up just blinking the phrase away and not addressing it at all; that is how often he’s heard it.

He flips the page with his eyes bright as he thinks of how to pass along the anecdote that Remus made an unbeknownst cameo in Reg’s burn book, but the entry on the following page gives him a pause, particularly for how illegible it is without a good squint. 

_I hate November. This one’s worse than the last few have been. I know it’s time. I’ve gone back and forth on what the quietest way would be, but I’ve ruled out some options; they’re either too loud, messy, or too in-your-face, and I don’t want to cause a commotion. I just want to sleep, Sirius. _

_I figure I’ve slept more this year than I have maybe my entire life, so why not go for one more? _

There isn’t even a date on this one, but Sirius can do the math. He can flip a page, too, finding the sketch of his very own visage taking up the entire page, and nothing else after it. He flips back to the last entry, reads it again, again, and again, and a horrible sense of understanding rises up his spine, a ball of fire bursts in his gut.

His phone rings out at that exact moment, spooking him right out of his skin and bringing him back to the scene he’s in, and suddenly he remembers he’s quite needed. He pushes half-out of his seat, fishing his phone out of his back right pocket, and swipes it, booking it back inside as he answers it, the notebook caught tight in the grasp of his free hand. 

“Hi,” Sirius pushes out, speeding through the kitchen.

“So sorry, I hit traffic on the way,” Peter’s mum says by way of hello. 

“Oh, no no, it’s fine,” Sirius says, rushing through the flat. “I’ll help you bring it downstairs.”

“Oh, would you?” Pete’s mum checks, but by the sound of it she’s already celebrating the fact and Sirius isn’t meant to keep insisting on it. “I’ll just park and be right on up.” 

The line goes silent as Sirius ducks into his room, in search of somewhere to put the thing when he can’t leave it lying around for James to decide he’d like a novella to read over dinner, but it’s like it’s burning his hand just from holding it, and he quickly yanks the top drawer of his dresser, stuffing it in there and pushing the drawer shut again. 

He gets to his front door first without the need for a staircase and the fact that parking on their street can be a nightmare, but Peter’s mum is quick on her feet so thankfully he doesn’t have to stand there too long disassociating with nothing but the chest at his feet for company. 

“Hi hi,” Peter’s mum says as soon as her head comes into view, sparking Sirius to stand to attention. “Oh, he really sold this.” 

Sirius realizes after a beat that she must mean Pete v. the chest and nods quite a bit with a full set of goosebumps up his arms and his hands crossed behind his back. “I doubt you’ll want my name to glimmer off the front of it, so you’ve full permission to rip that thing off if you so choose,” he offers. 

Peter’s mum hums a laugh as she gets around to have a look at the front of it. “I’ll see what I can do about that,” she says, not looking all that ruffled about it. 

Sirius helps her carry it down the stairs and load it into the trunk of her car, accepts the set of bizous she plants on both of his cheeks in parting, and gives her the best wave he can manage before darting back upstairs as soon as she isn’t looking his way. Even if she does look back and catches him bolting up the stairs at horse speeds, overall the woman has seen them all do some curious things over the years and he doubts it’ll phase her much. 

He checks his phone as he makes it to his stoop, clocks that he has a whole six minutes until he’d better head out, and plans on using them well. He heads inside, lets him back into his bedroom, and promptly lifts the covers on his bed, climbing up the mattress and planting himself up near Remus’ body, relishing in the fact that Remus is still so very much asleep for if he were awake, this would be a lot harder than it already is. 

Six minutes isn’t long enough, not nearly, and Sirius does debate calling out. He doesn’t have to show up for his last shift, doesn’t really need the reference, the most he’ll get is a slap on the wrist for not calling out sooner, and what’s Will going to do past that? Fire him? All he’d be losing out on is one last shift alongside David and—

Sirius pauses his right hand mid-rub of his clouded eyes, finds he can see a lot more after that last thought sinks in, and next moment he’s leaning up and in, planting a fierce parting kiss to Remus’ collar and working his way out from underneath the covers. 

He stops at the bureau, flattens the parts of his hair that are now standing up via static, and pulls it up and out of his face, tying it up in a bun. He has a last look over himself, shakes himself out, and asks the question, ‘do I look like a bloke whose very skin is cracking to pieces in real time,’ with a decided no. He’s made for playing a part. 

He doesn’t remember the walk to work, more so he remembers deciding Priscilla wasn’t an option when Remus doesn’t like it when he drives while distracted, and suddenly he’s found himself out front and has to assume his legs did most if not all of the work for him. Sirius wills them to keep helping him out as he makes his way in between the front terrace that’s just littered with folks. Will’s likely in back since Sirius can’t see him anywhere up front, Mary’s on, busy with turning over the pastry case, Ben’s milling about the shop bussing tables and just about done as far as Sirius can tell, and David’s manning the till. 

Sirius feels pulled in two stark directions, one being that he could simply slip onto the floor, whip his drink up in under a minute, and disappear into the back until he’ll be expected on the floor to clock in, but the other half of him is much louder than that and has him getting in line behind the man paying for a tea at the till. 

David eyes that as he hands the man he’s serving his receipt and Sirius steps up to till with perhaps too-pleasant of a smile. “How’s the day?” 

“Bustling,” David replies frankly. “A bunch of your fans have been stopping in for you.”

Sirius finds himself ducking his head a little to combat the fact that his stomach may well be a hitcher’s knot. “Yeah, I might’ve told a few people I’m just about done,” he offers. 

“A few,” David quotes, strictly suggesting it’s been non-stop. 

Sirius holds back a grimace, putting his arms behind his back and sliding his hands into the back pockets. The moment he does it, however, he sees a whirlwind of flashes showing him quite a few instances where he’s noticed Remus doing the very same thing when he’s feeling too small for the room he’s in, and it nearly knocks him sideways, having the understanding of why Remus makes himself smaller in situations he’s uncomfortable in lit up in front of him like this.

“What are you doing?” David asks, simply blinking at Sirius overtop of the till screen. 

Sirius feels oddly like he’s got a searchlight trained on him. “In general?” he asks.

“Here,” David reiterates.

“I’d like a coffee before I start,” Sirius answers. 

“Aren’t you just going to just stroll on up here and make it yourself?” David raises, tossing a pointed look to the bar that Will’s chatting up a customer. 

“Right, I could do that, but I could also just line up,” Sirius offers. 

David blinks, unimpressed. “It’s taken you how long to pick up on that?” 

“A fair few years at least,” Sirius allows, tilting his head back and forth idly, feeling his skin crawl. 

“I have no idea what you take in yours,” David alerts him, evidently waiting on Sirius to rattle his order off, which he does, smiling a bit to himself as he lists his modifications off in all their extensive glory. 

“Yikes,” David puts in about halfway through, penning them down. 

“Listen? It’s fucking tasty,” Sirius puts in. “Light ice, please. Like, extremely light.” 

“Why bother with any ice at all, then?” David quizzes him, though he does mark that down on the cup before walking it over to the bar. 

A gaggle of girls enter through the door and head up behind Sirius, which has him feeling odd about merely standing there, hoping for the conversation to keep going even though it’s time for it to die down. 

He waits for his drink to finish in the backroom where Will’s trapped on a conference call; in April, when Will took a week off, Sirius was given the job of being his pseudo-replacement, and for the most part, it was pretty easy, he just did a bit of ordering for him, answered emails, he never even had to do up a schedule for Will already had that taken care of before he set off, but the absolute worst part was coming in on a day off to dial into a conference call with every single manager in the district all sitting on their store phones while Rosmerta talked future promos and quotas and things Sirius couldn’t really find the strength to give a shit about. Some of the managers on the call kept their store phone’s on mute, probably scrolling their phones while absently listening like Sirius definitely was, while others threw up some of the most inane questions that really did fall under the category of common sense, keeping them all there longer than ever necessary, but the one lovely memory of that call was that one manager definitely forgot to hit mute and one of their employees could be heard swearing up a storm in the background of the call, and Sirius felt a near-spiritual connection to that outburst.

He dabbles in exchanging silent, miserable looks with him while keeping an eye on the monitor for Mary to set it on the hand-off station and heading up front to swipe it off of the counter and take it out with him for his pre-work cigarette, which, in the end, might’ve been more enjoyable if his hands would quit shaking so much.

He spends his last few hauls psyching himself up to start this shift out fresh, open-minded, and with the drive to not be so horribly aloof throughout it. He heads back inside, leaves the quarter that’s left of his coffee in back to come and sip off of when there’s enough of a lull to, and pulls his apron off of the hook in back, tying it around his waist for the last time. 

It had been very true that Sirius passed along to a fair chunk of his favourite regulars that this coming Wednesday would be his last shift, so the fact that the first hour of his shift is littered with visits from a whole lot of them, which really just adds to the tornado ripping through his stomach when the fact that he’s evidently done well here, attracts all sorts of people, has the charisma to keep them coming back even just to say a short goodbye should make him feel incredible. It would have, if the last hour of his life hadn’t occurred, but all he keeps taking in are the plain looks David keeps adopting every time someone so much as alludes to Sirius’ parting, and all that does is rattle Reg’s words around in his skull, has him pouring over all the times Reg must have heard so many good things about Sirius and all the times he must’ve waited to hear just one good anecdote about himself, and that — that just keeps Sirius trying to talk to David where he can.

It isn’t easy, there’s people everywhere, the cafe is slammed for a good chunk of Sirius’ first hour on shift which poses an issue with potentially mingling in between orders. And then there’s the fact that both Will and Mary are certifiably a lot, the former keeps popping up front to get some floor-time in, is chipper as can be once he’s free from his conference call and despite being mere hours away from losing his star employee, Mary is absolutely woeful about losing her work wife and muses on that for a good while and that does get Sirius glowing a bit, but David stays right out of it which only gets Sirius trying more to mingle, and every time Sirius tries to include David in something as run of the mill as the weather, David gives him a look, Mary gives him a look, Will looks like the ground is unsteady under his feet, and fucking yesterday Sirius would have given himself a fucking look; this isn’t normal, but he can’t stop himself from at least trying. 

Sirius gets a short visit from James nearing four o’clock, who’s just stopping in to a) get one last look at Sirius’ apron-donned self and b) to fuel up before making his way to Lily’s for the night, but James Potter popping in after today’s whirlpool of shit is not something Sirius planned for. He never plans, though, does he.

The long and short of it is that James can read him like a fucking book if he isn’t careful. He’s not one to pry sordid feelings out of him, thank Cunt, but he’ll give Sirius a thousand Looks that Sirius will have to keep pretending he’s not noticing, and right about now, on the cusp of something greater than the sum of Sirius’ parts, Sirius can’t fucking be greater than he is if he’s coming apart at the seams. 

A trick he’s learned over the years in regards to James’ reading comprehension is that he has to act just right; not too lively or James’ll think it’s a cover, and not too numbly that James’ll be able to pinpoint the storm raging behind Sirius’ eyes, and Sirius walks that line to utter perfection, he’s happy to report; peppering in shoulder-shimmies and some allegedly fruity dance moves that, to James, have always been just another part of Sirius’ whole, and that does feel good to reminded of.

In some ways, he does breathe easier once James has gone, but maybe it’s got something to do with that guilt thing Remus often talks about. Once the clock hits four, Will’s just about done for the day and beckons Sirius into the back for a well-intentioned send-off and that’s at least something to cling to in the middle of a storm, how good of an impression he’s managed to make in such a relatively short amount of time working together. 

Sirius heads back onto the floor after that, resuming his signature post at till, and looks back over at the bar where David’s stationed in time to catch him open the container of vanilla bean powder at bar and scoff loudly as he scoops a few spoonfuls of it into a blender pitcher.

Sirius waits there, presumes they’ll find out soon what got him red now, and he’s right about that one; as soon as David hands the frap he’s making off, he rounds back on the two of them, displaying a hand toward the container. 

“Why doesn’t anybody refill these?” he lodges. “It’s not rocket science.” 

Mary drops the large, aluminum spoon reserved for scooping large amounts of coffee beans into the grinder onto the counter with a click-clack that echoes out and openly suggests she’s quite peeved already, and Sirius watches with side-eyed wonder as she strides over to David and has a look for herself. 

A click of the tongue. “It’s not even at the halfway mark,” she returns, lifting her hands in plain bewilderment. “If we open a new packet just to fill that then we’ll just have a half-pouch of it hanging around taking up space instead of just, I don’t know, waiting until we actually need to refill the container again; how’s that for rocket science?”

Sirius presses his lips together and lifts a hand to pass it idly over the back of his neck, caught tight between the realms of loving that clapback to the ends of the earth, staying completely out of this one, and — horrors of horrors — helping David out here.

Fat chance that could ever go over easily; in his peripheral he can see David fly a hand in his direction, hearing Sirius in the phrase even if Mary was the one who uttered it. 

“You have to stop taking whatever he told you as law,” he tells Mary. “He’s gone now, so none of his tricks should count anymore.” 

“Definitely right here, actually,” Sirius says, bending back the clip on the cap of his marker at his waistline. 

Mary puts out a tight, humourless laugh and lifts her hands, opting out and looking to Sirius. “I need a break.” 

David puffs up grand at that. “I’m shift lead, so telling him that is—” 

“David, it’s fine,” Sirius cuts in, giving a smoothing gesture with his hands. “It’s not like we’re slammed anymore, she can go.” 

David openly stews over that, but to Sirius’ surprise, he doesn’t dig his heels in. He does, however, condition Mary before letting her off the hook. “Take the garbage out before you go,” he directs. 

“Get in one of the bags, then,” Mary returns within a beat, and fucking hell, why does today have to be the day Sirius had to have a long, long look at his behaviour from the ages of, say, sixteen to twenty-three, why? That was so perfect and seamless a reply that Sirius has to duck down below the counter and pretend like he’s sifting through the drawer down there for a new sharpie to keep it together. 

“Just do it?” David returns to her, quite finished with all this, despite creating it. 

Mary gives him one of the most flourished bows Sirius ever did see before setting off for the floor and David immediately looks away from Sirius’ plain but pointed stare in his direction, picking up a cloth and tidying the bar area with it instead. 

“You don’t have to talk to her like that,” Sirius mentions. “Like, in general, you might want to try talking to her less like that or at all, but especially on shift.”

“I’m not talking to her like anything,” David denies, keeping his gaze trained on his work.

“You are,” Sirius assures. “She’s a shift lead too, so I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that you’re somehow above her in rank.” 

“She isn’t shift lead today,” David sends him. 

Sirius lifts his hands in replacement of a white flag. “Well, they pay her same as you for the exact same title either way, so,” he says, weighing his hands now. “One day she’s going to hit you with a solid right cross, and you’ll have completely asked for it after talking to her like a piece of trash for weeks on end.” 

“You giving me a lesson in how to direct people around is laughable at best,” David returns, his attention remaining on cleaning a section of counter top that’s already shimmering. 

Sirius sighs through his nose. “I definitely don’t talk to my coworkers like you do,” he denies, and he doesn’t feel like that’s inaccurate. “I really don’t know why you lean so hard on what you think is acceptable behaviour here, but I’m also so curious as to what it actually is that’s got you wound so tightly — like, what do you actually think the vanilla bean powder being down to the halfway point is going to do to the balance and structure of the earth’s rotation? Let’s start there.”

David scoffs, opens his mouth for a retort surely, but he closes it right quick as Sirius heads over to him, tensing visibly and making Sirius back up a step. “What did you think I was about to do?” he asks, utterly perplexed. “Pop you right here?”

“Who the fuck knows with you,” David returns on a dime. 

“You’re swearing on the floor, David,” Sirius tutts, and David pushes out a laborious breath for that, turning away from him to resume cleaning the counter top. “You know that’s clean, yeah?” 

David scoffs grand. “Why are you over here?” he demands. 

Sirius hums noncommittally when the answer to that would take years to explain; instead he leans against the counter, reaches past David, and flicks the offending container of vanilla bean powder with his right forefinger. “Do you really think Will cares about the state of this all that much?” he asks. 

David stops his cloth arm from going round and round on the counter in front of him to aim his one-word retort directly at Sirius. “What?”

“Eloquent,” Sirius deems it. “I’m genuinely asking you that.” 

“Of course he cares,” David returns. 

Sirius grimaces there, taking a quick breath through his teeth. “Here’s the thing, David--”

“What, I’m not Piece of Shit David today?” David snarks. 

Sirius’ stomach sinks. “No, so hear me out, OK?” he tries. “There is such a thing called reading a room properly, and more to that, there’s reading the person you work for. Puffing Will up to be anything other than just another bloke who simply got a job managing a cafe does even less for you than it already does for everybody else here, and I don’t think you’ve actually stopped and thought about the fact that you’re employed by someone who literally is too busy with other things to care if the volume vanilla bean powder container is lacking just a bit.” 

“It’s less than halfway,” David counters. 

Sirius tilts his head, leaning it in closer to David. “What’s my point?” he quizzes. “Come on, you’re smarter than this; what was I just saying?” 

“You were saying that our boss doesn’t care if the cafe is stocked or not,” David translates.

“Yeah, I meant specifically this situation, but if you want to go general then I’m afraid it’s already too late to start over again,” Sirius lets him have. “You want to know what Will doesn’t like, though? I’ll tell you for free.” 

David pushes out a mild to medium scoff, but if Sirius is liberal about it, that could have been a laugh if the man weren’t so tightly wound. “I wouldn’t pay you for it anyway.” 

“Nah, probably not,” Sirius allows. “So, here’s the scene: you start at two, you show up for your shift at exactly that, take your time putting your apron on, footing your work shoes on, leisurely stroll up front, not helping to ease the load off of any of your coworkers who are already suffering just having to be here—” 

“Man, you just really want to get out of here,” David retorts.

Beat. “Maybe so,” Sirius accepts, but works to keep his nerve. “That right there is Will’s biggest pet peeve, and I know that, because I used to do every single one of those things before he showed up and I caught a few looks from him in my direction early on, read the room, and realized that the five minutes prior to my shift are what counts to that man; it’s a question of ‘are you ready to go when you’re needed,’ and if you’re not, he’s simply not impressed with you or your work ethic, so I complied with his demands—” 

“You still do that now,” David cuts in bluntly. 

“Not for the start of my shifts,” Sirius corrects, not taking the bait this time. “Breaks are neither here nor there, and Will hasn’t said anything about them in all my time here and I somehow doubt he’ll start now, but I was here ten minutes early every shift since I made that change; I give myself time to fuck around beforehand and not have to rush up front because I chose to walk in on the dot, and the man has loved me from there on out.” 

David’s eyes narrow to a dictionary definition of a squint. “Was that whole tale just so you could pat yourself on the back?” he asks, outlandishly thrown by that, and hey, at least the both of them are completely thrown now, 

“Why would—” Sirius starts, shaking his head clear to keep steam from wafting out of his ears; it’s exactly like talking to Reg, right up to the fact that what Sirius is actually saying isn’t penetrating that cement skull of his. “I’m telling you that Will doesn’t hold grudges, he doesn’t lord write-ups over our heads, he doesn’t have a ton of pet peeves, he has one and I gave you an example of how I figured out how to appease it and also realized what he doesn’t give a shit about, and my entire point, since you’ve right missed it, was that you keep going off the deep end over every little thing that’s off about this place even though nobody here, not even the bossman, is going to give you a prize for policing everyone around you. It’s not a good look, and I’m just trying to help you out so you don’t end up wishing you could have been even slightly more pleasant here once you’re finished with this place.”

“Then quit doing it,” David snaps. “I’m not interested in your help.”

Sirius has never been happier to see Stan the Man waltz into the shop for it not only gives him a prime exit from a conversation that’s literally going nowhere, but also gives him something to do other than completely self-destruct right then and there; a win/win for everyone involved. 

“Hey, hey,” Sirius greets, sauntering up to meet Stan at till. 

“Tell me it isn’t true,” Stan says by way of hello. 

“It is,” Sirius trills, plucking a medium sized cup off of the stack for Stan’s drink. 

“I don’t need you to mark it,” David puts in. 

“Here you go, then,” Sirius says, holding the cup out for David to come and get, Sirius is having a conversation that isn’t doomed. “Now, we’re projecting that our venue will be up and running by September, so by all means, if you get a hankering for a stiff drink, you come on by.” 

David heads over to snag the cup out of Sirius’ hands, evidently not appreciating the walking he has to do to get it. “I think I’ll have to take you up on that one,” Stan says, pulling his wallet out. 

“No no,” Sirius declines. “Put your wallet away, this one’s on the house.” 

“Ohhh, no,” Stan says at once. “I couldn’t.” 

“Oh, I insist,” Sirius maintains, shooing him off with a wave of his hand. 

He feels his phone buzz in the pocket of his apron, positions himself directly in front of the till to pull it out for a wee looksie, and lights up at Remus’ name displayed on his screen. 

“You’d better pay for this,” David says, out the side of his mouth and under the whirl of the steam wand. 

“I need at least a minute before you talk to me again,” Sirius says frankly, not looking at him and pulling up his new message. “You’ve completely filled my quote, and now you need to give me a full minute--” 

_Thank you so much for the extra alarm!! I needed the snooze xoxo_

Well, short and sweet never hurt anyone. Sirius beams down at his phone as he keys in a quick reply, initially aiming for a ‘_hope you’re feeling better_,’ and then adding, like, thirteen x’s and o’s onto the end of it because he wants to and can. 

Remus is quick with his reply, which is rather well and good when Sirius can tell the shop door just opened. He sneaks a quick peek at it, finds a simple ‘_Much better,_’ paired with a schmoozy kissy-face, and sticks his phone away in time to greet the woman who appears at the till, smiling brightly as he redirects his attention. 

One thing he’ll say for hearing from one of the only people he feels he’s making the right steps to keep afloat, is that he didn’t give up on Remus and look how well that turned out? Maybe he just needs to keep at David, maybe he just needs to stop giving up so easily, maybe he needs to stop being so fucking aloof all the time because apparently when he does that, he sends people to their graves, inadvertently or not. 

Problem is, Mary isn’t off until a whopping eight o’clock and after she gives him a helluva bear hug on her way out, that really just leaves a single hour for Sirius to make some sort of last impression, but this is the golden hour where everything you do counts toward you leaving on time and the two of them are either busy trying to get the place in order for the morning, and trading off customers that wander in. 

Once the shop is closed to customers and the two of them are shutting the place down, Sirius doesn’t even really know what to do with the feeling that time’s running out. He keeps second guessing himself on what he’s expected to do, what he wants to do, and he keeps losing count on his cash drawer so he effectively wipes his mind of anything and everything else going on in it just to get the job done. 

Once the till is closed down, he figures it’ll do him well to help David put away the lasts of the dishes, but the whole time he’s doing it, he just feels like a man without enough stones to fix anything; a minute goes by and Sirius loses that one, and the next, and then they’re huddled at the till clocking out, and David’s already scurrying off to set the alarm, so that moment’s gone now, too, and then they’re outside. 

Sirius filed out after David so he figures it’s fair if he locks up, taking a long breath in while his back is turned away, hoping with all he has that David hasn’t booked it in time he’s been turned to the door. 

He swivels on his heel, finding David hasn’t gone anywhere. “Well,” he says, tossing his keys up and catching them again in the same hand, “that’s that, then.” 

“Bet you’re feeling great about it,” David says, zipping up his hoodie. 

“In a way,” Sirius allows. “In any case, it was nice working with you.”

Even Sirius can hear the question mark on the end of that embarrassing collection of words, so it’s by no surprise to him that David replies with a snort, but the fact of the matter is, it sounds awful under the roof of the mall strip they’re under. “Yeah, you too,” David returns blandly. 

“Alright, I wasn’t actually being sarcastic there, you know,” Sirius points out. “Not all of this time together has been shit.” 

“Then I’m even more worried for what goes on in your head,” David returns. “I’m waiting for my ride, so you can head off—”

“OK, here’s what’s going on,” Sirius cuts in, his heart hammering in his chest, “maybe I don’t want to end this on a bad note, maybe I don’t want another era of my life to be shrouded in another nightmare scenario, maybe I actually just want to make things right before I fuck someone else up—”

“You can’t,” David cuts in, plain as all hell. 

“Why not?” Sirius counters, heat shooting up his spine. “I’ve tried, I’ve been trying all shit to smooth this over; I know you figured that out and you still haven’t given me the time of day.” 

“Oh, because you deserve that?” David says, blinking at the end of it, staring at Sirius like he’s gone so far off of the deep end there’s no saving him. “You’ve made this place hell for me, everyone follows your lead, you know; the second you wrote me off, so did they.” 

Sirius braces himself against the complete arrow to the chest that is. “I don’t have control over what everyone else does,” he maintains, but even he knows it comes out sounding meager at best. “I can’t control what other people—” 

“You can,” David enunciates. “You just didn’t want to, so you hung me out to dry in front of everybody, staff and customers, every chance you got, and worst of all, you preened over the laughs you got at my expense.” 

“I did not preen,” Sirius counters. 

“You sure did,” David serves him.

“I get it, OK?” Sirius puts down. “I gave you a shit nickname toward the end and it stuck — I’m gone now and I’ll tell them to quit it or just remove it from their vocabulary if you want, but you have to know I’m only razzing you—” 

“Razzing me?” David echoes elegantly, and the ‘tude being brought into this isn’t helping this one bit. “Well, then we’re squared to one; sleep well, Sirius.” 

Sirius puts out a profound scoff. “What, was I supposed to let you come at me every single time you felt like riding me? I gave it back to you, you gave more back, I gave some more; that’s how it worked,” he highlights. “Yeah, we weren’t ever going to be buddies, but it felt like a thing we were doing — it felt like a laugh, some of the time.” 

“I’m not laughing,” David puts it plainly. 

“Yeah, neither am I,” Sirius returns. “And you know what, no. You don’t get to rewrite this and act like you didn’t walk the fuck in here planning to make enemies; you blame me for turning the staff against you as if you didn’t storm in here and write them off as off-brand versions of me week one, so don’t come at me about how you can’t get along with anyone, that’s on you. Did you really think they were going to want to be anywhere near you with the way you are?” 

“Oh, this is just insane,” David tries, but fuck off, David, that’s not happening. 

“You’re right, it is; this is between us, not them,” Sirius schools him, pointing a stark hand toward the closed up shop they just left. “You came at me for everything I did in this fucking building for weeks; you wouldn’t even let me breathe without telling me how to do it better or quieter, and excuse the fuck out of me if I’ve got way past the point of being sick and tired of getting unsolicited advice on anything I fucking do from another goddamn fucking bigot; at least do some work to realize you were just as much the problem—” 

“Then it’s done,” David cuts in, lifting his hands roughly in a clear forfeit, the fucking coward. “I don’t know what you’re even doing trying to fix it now; we don’t even like each other.” 

“This is bigger than just you,” Sirius shoots at him, his voice echoing off the storefront. “I don’t want this hanging over me after I go, I don’t.” 

Sirius feels his whole body light up as David steps in and gets so far in his face with a forefinger pointed in it that it’s quite honestly audacious that he found the nerve. “You can’t just bully people relentlessly and expect them to erase it all just to make you feel a little better about it now that you’re out the door,” he pronounces, his eyes darkened over. “It’s far too late for that.” 

Sirius doesn’t see anything but red. He doesn’t see that he clocks David so hard in the gut that the man doubles over from it, but when Sirius can see properly again, David’s on the floor holding his middle and Sirius’ right hand smarts a bit, so he can put two and two together here. One thing he’ll say, it feels fucking good. 

He doesn’t look back as he strides down the path to the sidewalk and cuts across the street in between the cars; he’s home bound, in need of an address to order a lift to so he can get to the one person who well-knows what a sack of shit looks like and doesn’t think Sirius resembles one, and to get that much closer to getting the fuck out of this nightmare of a city that never fucking stops hounding him. 

He orders a lift to meet him out front, gets to his flat about six seconds sooner than the car does, but he’s speeding, isn’t he. He gets in the back seat, stone-faces the window on the way to Remus’ place, and fortunately for him he got a driver who’s apparently not interested in conversing at all and Sirius’ll give him five stars the second he can bother looking at his phone again. 

His right hand is shaky on the handle of his car door as he opens it, shaky again as he throws a thanks over his shoulder and shuts the door behind him, booking it up the path and in through the lobby door. He’s never made quicker work of the stairwell, nor has he cleared Remus’ hallway this quick, and he doesn’t even need to use his key to get in when Remus’ door opens on his first turn try of the knob. 

He gets himself inside, kicks his loafers off, and follows the light above the stove casting shadows over this side of the main room, rounding the partition at the entry and finding Remus sitting at the island, his back to the kitchen while he types away on his laptop. 

“You’re going to make so much fun of me for this, but I’m drafting a handy list for tomorrow's errands so I don’t forget anything important,” he declares, finishing the line he’s on before he looks up at Sirius with so much light in his gaze that it’s really fucking noticeable when his face drops. “_What’s wrong?_” 

Remus’ voice reaches an octave four times higher than his usual register with those two words, so Sirius really must look awful. He gives speaking a go, but that doesn’t go over well when his throat decides that closing up is the best plan; his lungs take over, heaving his chest up and out as his face scrunches up, his eyes stinging as they cloud over, and Remus is so quick about skirting around the side of the island and clearing the floor between them that it’s both arresting and relieving how fast he ends up in front of Sirius, keeping one step between them.

Sirius isn’t so good on his feet just now, he finds out when he tries to step into that bit of distance between them and ends up tripping on his feet; Remus catches him quickly, there’s that at least, but whatever amount of strength Sirius reserved all afternoon and evening just to keep him upright and going falls away at once and he’s got to clutch at the front of Remus’ work shirt just to keep himself from buckling underneath them. 

Remus automatically redirects their combined weight, leaning the both of them back a little to make up for Sirius leaning so hard against him, and Sirius sticks his profoundly tearful face down against the crook of Remus’ neck and just fucking sobs. It’s no good; he hates that he’s doing this to him. He can’t even speak, poor Remus can’t catch a clue as to what’s happened, and he’d get around to telling him eventually but his chest has to stop convulsing first, and his breathing — fuck his breathing; his lungs have just given up; it’s horrifying, sobbing without noise. 

Remus tries a few things, seems to not know what to do with him or his own hands; he tries passing them soothingly over Sirius’ back, then seems to think otherwise, lifts them to his shoulders for mere seconds before he thinks better of that and switches to holding him with one arm anchoring Sirius’ back in close to his chest, the other clasped at the back of Sirius’ head, and that’s it; Remus, just keep doing that.

Since he can’t seem to pull it together enough to voice it, Sirius lets go of the front of Remus’ t-shirt and winds his arms around him, reclaiming the shirt in his grasp once more at the back of it and squeezing him for it. 

“Do you want me to call James?” Remus asks, quietly near his left ear, and the absolute opposite of what Sirius fucking wants, good God, he just wants this; that’s it. 

He shakes his head erratically, best he can with Remus’ hand pressing against the back of his head like Sirius’ is the one that needs careful holding, and Sirius’ sobs triple in velocity over that, rendering him a more coughing, heaving mess than he already was, and the he most he can do is hold Remus down, anchor himself in one place.

Remus stays put, the good lad, doing a bit of this, a bit of that to get Sirius’ breathing back in order; he starts with straightening Sirius out so their chests are fully pressed together, winds his arms down and around Sirius’ back, holding Sirius tight to him as he draws in a deep, full breath, holds it for five seconds before letting go, and five seconds is a long time when your lungs aren’t working properly, but Remus seems determined to get Sirius back on on track. 

Remus turns his head, pressing his lips to the top of Sirius’ head and leaves them there, continuing to showcase what typical breathing patterns are by breathing through his nose instead, but the rise and fall of his chest are what counts. 

After the span of something like a minute of that, Remus puts a bit of movement into it as Sirius’ breathing evens out, starting a slow sway back and forth on the spot, and sure, Sirius’ breathing is getting better, but the waterworks just flow harder with that choice. 

Remus lets him do that for ten seconds or so before he interferes, leaning back so that Sirius has to lift his head, and Sirius might’ve called him a jerk for it if Remus didn’t start pressing small kisses underneath Sirius’ eyes, two or three under the left one, three or four under the right, the touch of his lips careful, as if testing whether that’s a direction Sirius is alright with going in, and Sirius unwinds his fists from Remus’ shirt once and for all, slipping them out from between Remus’ sides and arms to slide them up in between them, clasping his hands on either side of Remus’ face and leaning into each further press of Remus’ lips, thinking of all the times he held himself back from bursting like this in front of him and calling them wasted. 

Sirius’ throat gains second life and the most pathetic noise comes out of it and by mercy Remus doesn’t hold it against him. A sobering thought creeps up his spine as he wonders why he'd ever think otherwise; if there was one person who would wholly understand that words can fall short, it'd be Remus. 

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says finally, chancing at opening his eyes, and it’s a good thing he’s brave now and again because Remus’ imploring frown paired with the minute shake of his head is something to be desired. 

“Don’t be,” he says, quiet in between the two of them. “It’s not like you at all.” 

Sirius huffs a meager laugh, leans up to touch his forehead to Remus’, and shuts his eyes again, reminding himself that this is someone to bask over. Whether Remus knows he’s doing it or not, Sirius doesn’t know, but Remus doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, inadvertently lets him continue for a little more before Sirius feels a gentle tap on his back. 

“Here, come sit,” he coaxes, backing up slowly on his feet and taking Sirius along with him. “Do you want the couch or the island?” 

The island’s closest. Sirius hums, directing Remus toward it and separating the two of them before taking the stool across from Remus’ set up. Remus does a dual move there, coming in to leave a kiss on top of Sirius’ head as he reaches to shut his laptop with his left hand, sliding it to the side. 

“Can I make you something?” he asks, smoothing a lock fallen from Sirius’ updo behind his left ear. “Coffee? I’ve tons of it.”

Sirius shakes his head. “No.” 

“No?” Remus repeats, looking left, right, and back at him. 

“I’ll take a tea,” Sirius says, reworking his mouth around a reluctant smile as Remus reels a bit at that. 

“I—” Remus starts, looking between Sirius and the kitchen perplexedly, “—have oolong obviously, but I’ve also got your typical English Breakfast, I’ve some earl gray, and I also picked up this herbal one I spotted; passionfruit, and it smells exactly what I think paradise must smell like.” 

“Sold,” Sirius says, turning his head and pressing a kiss to Remus’ right shoulder. 

“OK, I’ll be quick about it,” he says, leaning down to leave a kiss on his lips, and Sirius watches him patter toward the kitchen with a clear mission ahead of him, leaving him feeling so in love that it almost hurts. It hurts to think about telling him, when he thinks of everything he could lose if Remus doesn’t see him the same way after it. 

Deja vu creeps up his spine as Remus gathers the fixings, his back turned toward Sirius and a lot like it’d been a fortnight ago, and knows with a festering, heavy weight in his chest that he can’t get away with keeping this shit from him anymore, even if it’s this murky. Not if they’re this serious, and certainly not if Remus still isn’t quite sure where to step, what to say, what to do other than whip something up for him just to sit there afterward, wilted and scared for him and tearing his hands apart waiting for Sirius to throw him a single fucking bone. 

It hasn’t been all that equal, has it. Sirius can lay claim to the face that he’s nursed Remus back from some dreary fucking places, and a lot more often these days, but it isn’t equal at all. Maybe all Remus needs is a little reciprocation on that front, even if it could warp Remus’ view of him; if he comes out of this with Remus still on his arm, if Remus still thinks there’s a glimmer of good in him after everything he’s ripped apart and stomped all over in the name of trying to win himself some fucking freedom, then that might just be --

“Do you want yours steeped?” Remus puts up. “I’ve never made you a tea before, I don’t know how you’d take it.” 

“I’d let you just pour it down my throat, if I’m honest,” Sirius gives him. 

“OK, well, I won’t be doing that,” Remus mentions, turning back to the counter, “but I assume that means you don’t mind either way.” 

“Smart lad,” Sirius offers, keeping his hands clasped together in his lap; if he loses this, how comfortable it can be even in clear turmoil, he’s not sure what he’s even going to do next. 

By the time Remus is leaning in to set two mugs down on the island, Sirius must look like certified garbage all over again for Remus simply stops once his hands are free again and stares at him imploringly from where he is, frozen in place across the island. 

“I can call James,” he brings up again. “He’ll fly over here the second he knows something’s wrong.” 

“I know,” Sirius returns, clasping his hands over the warmth of the cup in front of him. “He’ll also bend over backwards to find any excuse for the sake of me and my pride, and I don’t deserve to hear it from someone who won’t tell me if I’m actually fucking flawed, but you — you’re Switzerland.” 

Remus slowly sinks down onto the stool across from him, watching Sirius with firm trepidation. “I’m pretty sure I’m not Switzerland when it comes to you.”

“You say what you feel, what you think is right, and you say it with tact,” Sirius raises it. “And right now, I’d rather hear from you than him.”

Remus looks around wildly, as if he’s looking for the person Sirius is speaking to because of course it couldn’t be him. “I’m not buttering you up,” Sirius tacks on, insistent. “It’s just the truth; you’ve talked me down the most effectively every time I’ve needed you to, and you don’t do it out of obligation, you just are plainly the best person I know; I need it to be you.” 

Remus gives out a consolidated breath, cupping his hands around his own mug now, too. “I’m glad you came,” he says. “I don’t want you to do this by yourself.” 

Sirius shakes his head roughly, his throat tight. “I can’t do it by myself,” he puts it straight, his eyes already starting to well up again, the fucking nerve of them. “I tried and it all just fell through my fingers. Again.” 

“Did something happen between now and earlier?” Remus asks, cutting off with open disorientation, and fair enough really; last they spoke, Sirius felt like he was on top of the world, probably looked a lot like it, too.

“Pete’s mum came for the chest today.” 

Remus blinks once. “When was that?” he inquires. 

Sirius waves him off. “You were out cold,” he insists, “but I had to empty it so she could take it and um--” 

Sirius presses his lips together, his brows cinching together, and Remus gives a sigh through his nose. “Was there more?” he asks, but something about the frank note to his tone suggests he already knows the answer. 

“Oh, there sure was,” Sirius affirms. “A whole, diary of Reg’s to be precise, and since we may as well be as direct as we can be, I thought I was snooping at his most personal thoughts and was totally fine with that, no guilt in me at all about it, but it was really more a collection of letters written to me spanning just days after I left until right up to the end, and it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

He stops there, watching Remus lift a hand to rub it over his eyes, feeling the exhaustion in that motion like it’s in his own body. “I know,” he tacks on, shrugging for it. “I shouldn’t have looked through it, but I thought it was fair game the more I read; they were written _to_ me and like the fucking idiot that I am, I went ahead and read every single entry, knowing that I was about to be ripped apart — and he roasted the shit out of me; worst thing I've read a long time, and that includes the scathing one from my mother after I split and that was a rough read. I mean? What the fuck is wrong with me, do I just get off on pain?” 

“Oh, mm mm,” Remus hums to decline, giving a solemn head shake. “No, I love you and I’m not about to give you shit for looking.” 

“It was one of my worst ideas, Remus,” Sirius insists. “Easily top five.” 

“Well, I’m not here to deny you what makes you you, OK?” Remus puts up. 

“What do you mean?” Sirius asks, woefully stumped. 

“Ever since I’ve known more about him, I’ve known that all you’ve been trying to do is remember him well,” Remus presses. “Before the funeral, at it, after it, and how are you supposed to do that when that relationship ended abruptly, after years of animosity, while you were still estranged, and you don’t have the resources to repair it anymore. Who am I to rag on you for this, I can’t do it.” 

Sirius breathes substantially tighter with each try for air. “Even with all that, I literally asked for this,” he says, displaying his hands over tear-streaked visage. 

Remus pushes a heavy breath out. “Of course you’re going to devour anything that remotely could give you something good to cling to in memory of him, this is not the least bit surprising to me,” he says. “I just hate how many times you’ve dipped your feet in the waters and had them snapped at; that’s why I’m upset. I can’t protect you from any of that.”

Sirius wants to take every word of that sentiment and tattoo them onto his back, keep them with him for as long as he lasts, but he feels like he gets kicked at the center of his back with the sole of a boot for even entertaining the idea of clinging to them. 

“I need you to know the bad stuff, too, or else I’m not giving you the chance to” Sirius tries, but his throat is so dry that he needs a gulp of tea in order to even get back on track to speech patterns. He goes for a sip, and a gush of flavour takes over his entire mouth. “Oh — this is fucking fantastic, good find.” 

“Isn’t it?” Remus puts out, letting his hands fall from his mouth in a burst of true excitement before he seems to gather himself, wiping his expression clear and sitting up straighter on his stool. “Sorry, go on.” 

Sirius sniffs once, nodding. “I fucked that kid up worse than my parents ever fucking did,” he says, able to just put out there now. “Those two mashed that kid’s brain from the get, I know that, but they were there, and I wasn’t.”

“OK, but we’ve been here before,” Remus comes in, gentle as a creek. 

“No, please,” Sirius bids, not even bothering to wipe his tears away at this point, it’s unavoidable. “The first batch of letters were dispersed out over all of the milestones he hit that I completely missed — that I didn’t even entertain showing up for and he knew that; that’s how shit a person I am, he hated me so fucking much and he should have, I fucking left him there—” 

“You had to,” Remus puts in, concrete and concise. “If you need to hear it again, that’s OK; we all need to be reminded of things we feel unsure about, but you had to leave, Sirius.”

“Fine, yeah, I would have died young in that house, I know that,” Sirius implicitly states, “but I—”

“No, then we’ve hit the nail on the head, haven’t we?” Remus cuts in directly, and Sirius knows that was really fucking mean to just lay down there, but Remus is not making it very easy for Sirius to hate himself. 

“It should have mattered more to me what could have happened to him; I should have tried a lot harder to drag him out of there,” Sirius tries again. “I knew it last year and I really fucking know it now; even he if he didn’t want to go with me I should have pulled him out of there myself, I shouldn’t have given up on him so easily.”

“You can’t make anyone do anything, Sirius,” Remus puts in. 

“I could have tried harder,” Sirius cements. “I ran off and I wrote him off as dead to me, and I just let him take on all that responsibility we both got saddled with while I, what, sought some fucking freedom? He never got that; I did and I traded his for mine.” 

“I don’t like that read of it at all,” Remus says plainly, readjusting his hands on his mug.

“Well, I don’t much like it either, but a spade’s a spade,” Sirius puts it plainly.

“That’s an awful lot of responsibility, I’m not taking that away from him,” Remus insists, playing with the handle of the cup of tea that he hasn’t taken one sip from yet, “but that’s an awful lot to put on yourself too; especially with the way you were treated.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sirius stresses. 

“Of course it does,” Remus returns, absolutely not cooperating with him on this one. “You were driven out.” 

“Remus, please, I appreciate you doing this but I’m not done yet,” Sirius emphasizes. “They got worse the more they went on, and not that he just hounded me harder and harder; the language changed. It wasn’t all roses, he still held such a firm grudge against me and he made sure to make that clear.”

“Then I just think it’s important to remember that he wrote those at a time where he was upset,” Remus puts in carefully. 

“Not these ones,” Sirius denies. “There entries were filled all these backhanded compliments littered throughout and I’m not even surprised about that; we were raised on taking others down a peg while feigning admiration for them; they set us up for that real good, but even in the middle of all that Black magic, I could read the love on the page — he loved me so much, Remus; he even drew me, on the last page, a full sketch of me, here to here—” he shows Remus by sticking one hand over his head and one halfway down his neck, “—and he had such a talent for it that I didn’t even know about, and it broke my heart seeing it after—” 

Sirius stops there, choked over getting closer and closer to the punchline, but Remus just waits for him to sort it out. “The last entry reads like a suicide note,” he says faintly. 

There, Remus finally goes for a sip of tea, his eyes wide over the rim of his cup while he keeps his gaze trained downward, and he gives speaking a shot once he’s swallowed. “Are we sure?” he asks, looking up at Sirius again. 

Sirius does appreciate the usage of the word ‘we’ in this case, but the question makes him smirk humorlessly. “I mean, he didn’t say it outright, but he alluded to it,” Sirius puts it. 

“OK,” Remus says, uncertainty lining his voice, “but alluding to and penning a note are different things, aren’t they?” 

“Right, but he turned up dead — mm, days after that one,” Sirius theorizes, stroking his chin for effect. “I’m just reading between the lines here.”

Remus’ shoulders drop a notch. “Sirius, I’m not trying to discount you, but I—”

Sirius winces, dropping his gaze to the island counter. “No, I know,” he backs off, chiding himself for getting mouthy with the one bloke he shouldn’t. “It’s just a gut feeling, Remus. It’s the way it was worded, the way it was written — it was barely legible, and the ones before that were like reading someone dragging their feet live, but years after the fact; he didn’t want the responsibility any more than I did by then, he really didn’t, and fuck, Remus, I hate that I can’t discredit this because I’d love to go on without knowing it, but it makes the most sense; he was twenty — graduated with honours, was loaded, set for life, and also the face of a front for one of the shadiest fucking operations out there.”

Sirius stops, he supposes to wait in case Remus has something else he’d like to put in, but Remus just blinks. “OK,” he nods. “Bit cryptic, but not all that surprising to hear.” 

Sirius smirks humourlessly again. “And even I assumed he fucked over the wrong person in a deal, but I had no way of proving it,” he insists. “The obit was so vague and no one in it was going to talk to me about what went on, were they? I just accepted it as fact, I lost my brother to a scuffle, and when you grow up around that you almost have to accept it, but my gut’s on fire with this one, Remus, and that’s never a good sign.” 

“Then I believe you,” Remus puts down. “But I can’t pretend that I’m equipped for this; I don’t know what the right words should be, I don’t know how to help you along, so I really think I should call James over—” 

“Remus,” Sirius cuts in, lifting his gaze from the contents of his mug to meet his eye. “If you do that, here’s what’ll happen: he will tear that flat apart looking for that notebook when he finds out it exists, he will painstakingly go through it with a highlighter and drum up a fully-fledged counter argument, and he’ll destroy him just to make me feel better.” 

“Sirius, I think he knows better than to attack him right now,” Remus says. “I really think James is more empathetic than that.” 

“He’s empathetic to me, and that’s it,” Sirius stresses. “He’s hated Reg since the beginning, he blames him for most if not all of my undoing, and he will stomp all over him just to hold me up, and I can’t hear a bad word about Reg right now or I’m going to explode.”

“Maybe you should talk to someone who isn’t so close to it?” Remus suggests. “Or so close to you.” 

“No,” Sirius says, hating that idea more than he hates the idea of ringing James up and dropping the news. “I came to you, Remus; you.” 

“Well, I’m never going to blame you, so I’m James 2.0 in this case,” Remus puts up, lifting his hands disparagingly. 

“No, you’re not,” Sirius insists. “James will cite his position with sources and combat Reg’s truth by bringing a load in-text quotes in to pick apart, and he’ll spin the entire narrative around on its axis so that I don’t end up the villain of this tale, and he will come for him.” 

Remus opens his mouth, but leaves the room without his voice, like he’s petrified to say what’s on his tongue. “Just say it,” Sirius sighs, bracing himself. 

“Reg’s truth is his truth, yes, but it isn’t _the_ blanket truth,” Remus puts down, moving his hands to his lap now, folding and unfolding unceasingly, no doubt. “Nor is it yours; you have your own, so as fucking horrible as this is for you to contend with, you didn’t do this to him.”

Sirius feels the colour drain from his face, but he thinks it has more to do with fear than with shock. “No, Reg wrote a lot that was true about me,” he admits. "It's the truth."

“Then we’ll work through what he wrote, I promise,” Remus allows, “but are you saying he wrote that you were to blame for it, because I can tell that's where you've landed.”

“Not — he didn’t write that, no,” Sirius allows. “He wrote a slam book to me; wrote all about how he experienced growing up underneath my foot, and later the focus was more on him, our parents, and the way he experienced that house and how it followed him around years and years later, but it clearly took him a long time to work out that he was severely damaged by all of it; them and me.” 

“OK,” Remus nods. “And you were raised in the same family, same house, but a completely different experience overall that still weighs on you, so your truth remains whether or not you read that notebook today; neither of you grew up in a fair circumstance, but you aren’t the villain here; _that’s_ the truth.”

Sirius attaches his teeth to his lower lip. “I didn’t stop it from happening.” 

Remus shoulders sink in a way that just has Sirius feeling like garbage for speaking it, but then he’s up out of his seat and skirting around the island to get to him, and it’s so much — too much, to have him still coming to him even after this, stand this close to him over this. Sirius scoots a little closer to him on his stool, lifting his arms and hooking them up around Remus’ neck while their heights are so off, and presses his face against Remus’ chest, and there’s the sobbing again. 

“It’s alright,” Remus says, almost answering Sirius’ thoughts for him. “I love you, and you can feel every other way about all of this, but you have to go easier on yourself, OK? I need you to.” 

“I’m not just horrified, I’m fucking _livid_ with him,” Sirius puts out, muffled against Remus’ chest. “I hate that he didn’t even try to get a hold of me, even just drop in unannounced — he could have figured it out where I lived, it’s not like it’s hard, but then I can’t even sit with that for long because I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have opened my door for him; no fucking way.” 

“Oh, you’d have let him right in,” Remus says heavily. “I’m sorry, but that’s you.” 

Sirius shakes his head roughly before lifting it. “No, I hated him,” he presses.

“OK,” Remus says, nodding once. “You’d still have let him in.” 

“No, Remus,” Sirius stresses. “He told me I deserved the shit I was getting on the way out, he looked at me as I was leaving like I was sick, like I needed help. I was finished with him. I’d have hung up on him the instant I heard his voice over the phone, I’d have ripped any letter from him to shreds—”

“Well, you did just read an entire series of diary entries written to you, so I don’t know if that’s all that truthful?” Remus raises, a warm, firm hand pressing over Sirius’ back. “You’d have read letters from him, maybe not early on when everything was so fresh, but you’d have been brave enough to eventually; I think today says that for us already, your loyal right down to your bones — and I know that might not even help right now because that’s a double-edged sword, feeling like you could have done something if you’d just known more, but you’re not a mind-reader; for all you knew, he was happy, Sirius.” 

Sirius fucking bends in half with that, but Remus whispers in his ear and holds him together. He can’t make out the words but he knows they’re gentle — too gentle for him, and even as he thinks Remus shouldn't have to get his hands dirty like this and wills himself to pull it together he can’t do it. He keeps hiccoughing and sputtering and sobbing, and it feels like he’s ran fifty miles with the way his chest is heaving again, feels like he's getting out years worth of guilt and mess he convinced himself he could move past that’s just been ratcheted up to a thousand so suddenly it’s like he’s been hit with a bullwhip, His hands are filthy, but Remus doesn’t think it, still holds him delicately like he so often does, still whispers that he's got him, over and over again until Sirius is nothing but a silent, aching pile of bones slumped against him.

“I’m so tired,” Sirius puts out, barely above a whisper, but Remus hears it anyway. 

“Do you want to lay down?” Remus asks, cupping his right hand over the side of Sirius’ head, whisking his thumb Sirius’ left temple, and what a move, hm; wonder where he learned that one? 

“Don’t we need to get the laundry done?” Sirius asks, contended but fairly bemused.

Remus is silent for a whole beat. “I think we’re well past that point,” he puts it faintly, tapping Sirius’ cheeks with his thumbs before letting go of his face altogether. 

“Well, we have to do it, don’t we?” Sirius raises. 

“Yeah, I just figure I’ll wake up a little earlier than planned and go get it done in the morning,” Remus forwards. “You were right; there’s plenty of time, nothing’s going to go topsy-turvy if I leave it until tomorrow.” 

Sirius half-smiles, half-frowns for the direct quote. “Wake me,” he bids. “I want to go with you.”

“See how you feel in the morning,” Remus conditions. “You might want to rest.” 

Sirius nods weakly for it, lifting his head to meet Remus’ eyes minutely, and takes in a better breath than the last thousand he’s taken over the last bit. “I want to come with,” he cements. 

Remus looks him over, lifting a shoulder. “OK,” he grants. “If you change your mind tomorrow, I won’t hold it against you.”

Sirius nods. “You’re good that way,” he offers. 

“Finish your tea,” Remus coaxes, sliding Sirius’ mug closer to him. 

Sirius reaches for his mug on that note, finding the request fairly easy to comply with when this tea is fucking delicious. He drains a good quarter more in seconds, then slips off of his stool and goes around Remus to bring the mug to the sink, drinking the lasts of his tea as he goes. He tosses the tea bag into the bin underneath the sink, rinses the mug out, and leaves in the drying rack, while Remus seems to have more tea to work on and seems fine with taking it with him to the room with them. 

Remus leads the charge, going in first and taking a quick right to bring his mug around the edge of the bed to set it on his nightstand before turning on his lamp and doubling back toward his dresser. Sirius, on the other hand, goes right up the middle of the bed, planting himself down and working himself underneath Remus’ comforter. He’s made fun of Remus for keeping a comforter on the bed in the dead of summer, but right about now he finds it rather comforting to cocoon himself in it. 

Remus looks up while he tugs on his pyjama trousers. “Did you want something to change into?” 

“I’m OK for now,” Sirius says, quite literally wrapped in Remus’ comforter. 

Remus eyes him from where he continues hobbling into the trousers, sending him a wee smile from over there, and quickly finds a shirt to pull on, coming to climb up the bed to nestle in on his side beside him, reaching to thread the fingers of his left hand through Sirius’ hair, methodically slow and just the right sort of intimacy, Sirius feels. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Sirius admits. 

“That’s OK,” Remus says, going for a wee sip of tea. “We can lay here until you do.”

Sirius forwards him an imploring frown, curling into the shape of Remus’ side and shutting his eyes for a few beats, relishing in the sweetness of how natural the hand in his hair moves, even if he’s got a strong inkling that Remus’ brain is going at a mile a minute while trying to seem rather fine with whatever Sirius chooses. 

Sirius flashes back to the scene in the main room, flashes back to watching Remus putter about the kitchen trying to get Sirius at least somewhere close to soothed, cycles back through the evening to locate the pit in his stomach, and chooses to talk. 

Here goes that. “I hit David.” 

“What?” Remus bursts out. 

Sirius nods. “Square in the gut.”

Remus lifts his hands from his mug altogether, covering his mouth with them, making his dinner plate sized eyes all the more show-stopping. “Do I want to know what happened?” he says from behind them.

Sirius puts out a puff of a breath. “I mean, it’s all connected, isn’t it,” he offers, putting up a tight grin, quoting the very man before him. “David is essentially Reg incarnate, but I didn’t notice it right away — I don’t go through life seeing Reg in every single stickler I meet or else I’d have done that with you, and you’re much more fun than they were.” 

“I—” Remus starts. “Thank you?” 

“Mhm,” Sirius gives for a pardon; that’s a truth that’s not difficult to speak. “James noticed it first, told me, and then it just became impossible to ignore; I mean, there were moments where he sounded just like him.”

“That’s—” Remus tries, “—I can’t even imagine.” 

“It was a lot,” Sirius nods, helping him out. “It was never any of the good parts about him, only how quick he was to combat me on fucking anything, and even then I felt there were times where it felt playful? Like, one time he really went at me around James, and then I came back in from a puff and James was filling a _psh-psh_ bottle with water from the mop sink and his plan was to spray him every time he came at me like he were a cat,” Sirius admits. 

There’s something about making someone as fair and balanced as Remus Jean Lupin reluctantly laugh about something so juvenile; it means a lot, seeing someone that concerned with impartiality unable to avoid when something he’s just heard is objectively funny. “Oh, that’s so him,” he says, shaking his head with a plain smile on.

“It was the best time I’d had at work the whole of last month, and I counted David as a part of that,” Sirius admits. “And I really have to say, I thought he was kind of in on it? There were parts of that shift where I swear I saw him actually being a normal human being; he’d like, toss a bitchy take at me and then scurry to the other side of the bar to get out of my spray radius, and it felt like the way Reg and me could be, back in the day; his good side, I mean. His spunkier side.” 

Sirius’ voice went weirdly quiet on that last part, and he definitely experiences peak embarrassment before Remus to wilt with that. “Come here,” he coaxes, opening his arms for Sirius to scoot up in between them. “You’re so lovely, even when you’re not even trying to be.” 

Sirius goes with it no questions asked, scooting over to attach himself to Remus’ middle, the lower half of his face pressed to the front of Remus’ left shoulder. “Today I fucking tried, believe me,” he returns. “I don’t know what I thought I was doing, it was stupid; I’d just finished reading the whole book and it’s like I thought making amends with him would somehow make things up to Reg, but I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking; David fucking hates me, I bullied him for weeks.” 

Remus hums pointedly above Sirius’ head. “I’m not saying you should have hit him, but it was a two-way street,” he forwards. “I was very much present for some of it, so let that count for something, OK? You’d be minding your own business and he’d come looking for you.” 

“OK, thank you,” Sirius sends up, squeezing Remus a bit tighter for the trouble. “He refused to admit that, too, and d’you want to know what he said before I popped him?” 

“A bit, yeah,” Remus admits. 

Sirius takes in a breath and sighs it right back out. “All last month I thought I was being tortured by having to hang out with Reg incarnate every other shift, and that’s rough, having to spend time with someone who only has Reg’s negative qualities wafting out of him, but we were closing up tonight and he wasn’t having any of it, and in that last thirty seconds, it’s like he went that much further and turned right into my mother,” he says, hearing how kooky that sounds, putting it to words. “And it doesn’t make any sense, he’s got nothing to do with the fact that I’m messed up beyond belief — he just gave out a collection of words, they shouldn’t have set me off, but everything in my life these days is just parallel after parallel, like I have to keep reliving garbage just because I actually have some good going on in my life.”

“OK, we’ll come back to that because apparently that’s this summer’s entire theme,” Remus vows, “but you have to tell me what he said first, I’m suffocating over here.” 

Sirius pushes a breath not unlike a horse against Remus’ shirt. “He straight refused to let me off the hook, and hit me with a ‘it’s far too late for that,’” he says, monotonous. “And I remember hearing that before, do you remember that?” 

Remus makes a noise like he himself has just been popped in the gut. “Sirius, you can’t get at yourself for a trigger like that,” he says of it, rearranging his arms around Sirius’ back to cement it, almost. “That was beyond your control; I’m not saying you should be going around smacking people—”

“I punched him gut,” Sirius puts in again, so they’re understood. 

“—OK, I know and I don’t love that,” Remus puts in, “but I will just say it; if he even tries to press charges, I’ll have to have a word with him and I don’t want to have to do that, so we better both hope our hardest that he just takes it and moves on.”

Sirius shuts his eyes, breathing in and out of his nose, taking in Remus’ scent and relishing in his absolute mysteries. “This is why I came here,” he says candidly. “You don’t let me off the hook when I’ve fucked up, but you don’t hang me out to dry either.” 

Remus passes a soothing hand over Sirius’ back, humming mildly, pressing a kiss to the top of Sirius’ head. Once that’s done, however, Remus does pull back, trying to get a look at Sirius’ face, so Sirius sort of has to lift his head, commit to looking at him straight on. Remus studies him for ten seconds or so and breathes in, poised to speak. “Do you think this trip is going to be too much for you right now?” he asks, absolutely chewing on the inside of his lower lip. 

Sirius shakes his head as fiercely as he can make it. “Absolutely not,” he says outright, and Remus lets go of his lower lip, but takes on a tight grimace that just slaps Sirius sideways. “That was an isolated incident, Remus.” 

Remus lifts a hand between them to set it over where Sirius' heart should be, “but the timing of all of this might actually be wrong this time.” 

“No,” Sirius returns, reaching up to clasp it over the hand on him. “I told you I’d show up for you, so just trust me; I’m going to blow this out of the water, and your mum and dad are going to fucking love me.” 

Remus takes in a deep, but tentative breath. “They already love you,” he instills, “and I don’t want you fighting so hard to be so fucking perfect that you don’t even see the wall before you hit it.”

“So, the answer is to leave me behind to hit it here?” Sirius puts up, breathing shakily underneath Remus’ hand. “Please don’t punish me for this.” 

Remus gets his hand out from underneath Sirius’ to lift the both of them to the sides of Sirius’ face, holding it steady. “I’m not,” he says; quiet, like a secret. “I’m checking in.” 

“Then listen to me, please,” Sirius says, working to speak calmly. “Today has been a Day; worst I’ve had in awhile, but I’ll bounce back; you’ve seen me do it, you know I can, so you need to just let me try to show up for you, OK?”

Remus makes a deep frown. “I just don’t want to ask too much of you right now,” he insists. “I want to do the right thing for you.”

“Then you gotta let me try, Remus,” Sirius puts it plainly. “It’s the least I can do, and I’ll be good as new tomorrow, you’ll see.” 

Remus pushes a long, resolving breath through his nose and leans in, pressing a full kiss to Sirius’ lips and making it that much headier by tracing his left thumb underneath Sirius’ chin. “You don’t need to bounce back perfectly,” he stresses, eyes over-bright in the dark. “It’s exactly as I said last time; if you need a break, for any reason, you just take it, OK? And I’ll be right there, anytime you need me. Deal?” 

Sirius sniffs hard, nodding against the welling of tears at his eyes, again, and presses his face against Remus’ chest, needing to shut his eyes and power down for at least six years, but he’ll settle for a few hours if his brain can settle down enough to allow it. 

“Get some sleep,” Remus says, reading his damn mind. 

Sirius nuzzles his face against Remus’ chest, eager to have Remus as a pillow for as long as he’s permitted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw's for mentions of child abuse, neglect, in-theme blends!verse-typical Black Family troubles and the fallout that comes with, homophobia and all-around bigotry, and allusions to depression and suicide. if any of this sounds too rough right now with all that's going on out there in the world or feels too personal to read a piece of work tackling these issues, by all means, please do back out here, there will be no hard feelings.


	20. 20.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> given the nature of the prior chapter and what went on in it, the tw's for that one will p much remain from here on out.

Sirius blinks in the relative darkness of Remus' room; sure, the streetlights outside give off enough of a glow for him to be able to see around him decently, but he has a feeling he'd be able to make out just about everything within eye-shot even if the room was pitch black, he's had time for his eyes to adjust. The fact that he's even awake still is a bit rich considering how fatigued he is. He can't say for certainty how long he's been laying here – hour, maybe two? Enough time to adjust to the dark, to try a few position switches to see if that might be the ticket to a sleepscape, but that didn't really work out. Instead, Sirius has found himself lying flat on his back with hands cupped behind his head, studying the ceiling and thinking he might actually be able to see every divot in the ceiling's surface.

The question of whether Remus knocked out before him or not can be answered quite quickly if he glances beside him and does a little investigating. He's had plenty of time to see, observe, listen, and learn the signs that pinpoint whether Remus is out cold, and aside from the fact that his eyes are shut, his breathing patterns are nowhere near as lulled as they would be if he were conked out.

Sirius breathes in long, waits a few beats with it held in, and lets it back out in a rather horse/Remus-like puff. “Well,” he says, matter-of-factly, “I sure can't sleep.”

Beside him, also flat on his back, Remus pushes a breath out of his nose that might've been a laugh on a different occasion. “Neither can I,” he says, a notch above a whisper.

Sirius can see well enough to be able to tell that Remus' eyes are open now, but that's about all the movement amounts to. No matter, Sirius can move for the both of them, if pressed. He does, rolling toward Remus' frame. He ditches the blanket wrapped around him, hitches his right leg up over Remus' body, and budges Remus' knees apart so he can lift up and and plant himself in between them, and the next few seconds are really just about Sirius settling in on top of him.

The few seconds following his indulgence are a little terrifying in that there really is no telling whether he's picked a bad moment to drape himself over Remus, or whether Remus is going to be in the mood for a human blanket, but on the other hand, Remus slides his arms up and around him, hooking his wrists together at the small of Sirius' back seconds later, seemingly fine with the spot Sirius wound up. Feeling more than a little welcomed, Sirius lets himself settle in, crosses his arms over Remus' chest, and rests his chin down on them, keeping Remus' eye in the dark; it isn't particularly easy to see his pupils from here, but he can see pure white surrounding his irises, and that's enough for the moment.

“Well, we know why I can't,” Sirius mentions, tilting his head to the side plainly. “What about you?”

Remus shoots a slow breath out the side of his mouth, uncurls his right hand from around Sirius to lift it, and Sirius waits with supreme engagement as Remus brings his forefinger right on up to Sirius' face and taps the tip of his nose once. “I'm really glad you're laying down because this is a shocker, but I'm worried about you,” he says, lifting a shoulder to pair with the most circumstantially flat expression, leaving Sirius ducking his head down against his own arms and wading through a series of breathy gusts.

“I don't know who you are anymore,” he raises playfully, peeking up at Remus from behind his own arms.

Remus' mouth twitches in the low light before he cups his right hand over the back of Sirius' head. “You know how the ocean is so vast and cavernous that we really only know about five percent of what's hanging out down there?”

Sirius takes a sober breath in through his nose, blinking twice. “Is it really that low?”

Remus nods faintly, though his affirming hum is a bit more prominent. “That we've discovered just yet,” he says.

Sirius lifts his gaze and sets it over Remus' head, trained on the wall behind the bed. “That's unsettling,” he whispers.

“Exactly,” Remus accepts. “And similarly to that, I'm feeling rather unsettled because I know maybe five percent of what you were made to read today.”

Sirius drops his gaze to Remus, gives him a light but sheepish frown for the kind but pointed hint. “Do you think I'm sick?” he asks, letting him in.

Remus blinks once, lets go of the casual hold he's got on the back of Sirius' head, and brings his hand in to touch the back of it to Sirius' forehead. “You are a bit warm, but don't forget you were wrapped in a comforter for a few hours there,” he offers.

Sirius pushes an amused breath out of his nose, kneading Remus' hand gently since it's there. “I didn't mean it literally, but I do love that you checked,” he passes along, turning his head and leaving a kiss on the side of Remus' wrist for a dot of punctuation.

Sirius finishes up with that just in time to catch Remus' double-blink. “Sick as in, touched in the head?” he checks, waiting on a reply apparently and getting a stoic nod for it. “Then no.”

“You don't know why I'm asking,” Sirius mentions, his mouth set to a right-facing frown.

“Would that really change my answer?” Remus raises, putting his right eyebrow higher than the left, and it is sweet that he's being a bit wry about this, it is, but Sirius is telling the truth here, whether Remus is too sweet to know it or not.

“Stunted, then,” he amends.

“Stunted how?” Remus checks.

Sirius pushes a flat breath out. “As in, somewhere along the way, preferably when I was young, I should've been taught empathy as a concept and how to achieve it, but I never actually was,” he elaborates. "I was taught a shitload about consequences, that I can say, but never for the sake of others around me."

Remus gives a light, throaty trill that Sirius can feel under his own chest. “Did he write that to you?” he raises, his mouth twitching.

“Well, he didn't say, 'you, Sirius, have zero empathy,' but that was sort of there, between the lines,” he reiterates. “He made sure to point out that I don't think ahead, rather I just act, and I don't much care how my actions will affect others, and if you pair that up with the way I still tend to handle things, it's rage first, callousness second -- I've a stunning lack of empathy toward anybody but myself.”

Remus nods once, his lips now pursed together until he gives opening his mouth a shot a few beats later. “Well, I wonder how well he really knew you, then,” he says, plain but gentle about it. “I would go as far to say you can be a tad too empathetic sometimes, but that's the nature of a bleeding heart, I think.”

Sirius can really only sit with that for, oh, milliseconds before his gut won't let him continue. “I'm different with you.”

Remus shakes his head once. “You're not.”

“I'm different because of you,” Sirius stresses. “You can ask James.”

“No, I'm OK,” Remus insists, and the patience wafting off of him is honestly a little harrowing. “You had that trait long before I ever turned up and I'll bet you a foot rub that James would agree with me there.”

“I didn't,” Sirius puts down.

Remus gives him a determined look. “My first day at work you were already trying harder than necessary to make my transition into a cafe setting easier,” he maintains. “I was a nobody to you and you were still—”

“That doesn't deserve a round of applause, Remus,” Sirius mentions, a plain look on.

“Are my hands moving?” Remus raises, and no, they're not. “You were nicer to me than you were expected to be, especially toward the end when I was having none of it with you.”

“You're oddly sexy when you were tearing into me,” Sirius whispers. “We've been over this.”

Remus huffs for that. “OK, you want more receipts?”

“You got any?” Sirius goads, gesturing for them.

“Well, you might not remember because it was a small moment, but I remember it well,” Remus puts down. “I was just getting the hang of the basics in drink making when Lily headed home and I was on bar, quietly panicking, and I got an americano and just blanked; I couldn't remember how many shots went in what size, I looked up and around for the universe to show me a little mercy, and you were already looking over at me, ready to help in your own Sirius way.” 

Sirius can't say he's prepared for the details of the smile that makes it onto Remus' face; it's quiet, bright, and perhaps if the lighting in the room were a bit better, there may be a touch of rouge dancing across his cheeks. “That's oddly serendipitous now, having you right there as the answer to my mercy call, but at the time you just held up three fingers from across the kiosk and didn't take the mickey out of me for clearly having a moment, and even in my first-day jitters and my lust-ridden panic, I thought that was really sweet.”

Sirius shakes his head quick. “I couldn't just leave you to the wolves,” he maintains. “You just needed a quick reminder, I thought.”

“And you thought right,” Remus assures. “Small example, I know, but I really appreciated it even if I clearly didn't show it at the time, and I don't know that you were even trying to be nice there; I think that was just you, as you are.”

Even as a new butterfly hatches and flitters around, Sirius' stomach goes ahead and breaks its flight pattern by twisting and turning and refusing to let him have even this. 

“I was different when he knew me, Remus,” he insists, and Remus gives a frown for his tactic falling flat. “I appreciate you trying here, but I was; I'd strut about, doing whatever the fuck I wanted, and refusing to take the blame for anything — nothing was ever my fault, nothing; even if some things were, I wouldn't even give it the time of day.”

Remus is quiet for a few, short beats as he takes in some air, but if Sirius is honest, there's something about his expression that breathes thoughtfulness. “I can think of a few things off the top of my head that wouldn't be anywhere close to your fault,” he mentions. “We've gone over a few already, so if we're going back around or you're onto something new, either way I'll need a little more before I just blindly follow you into character assassination.”

Sirius pushes a deep breath through his nose that catches a wayward strand of his hair and brings it on back toward his nose on his inhale; his eyes going wonky with tears as his nostrils light up and he has to rub at it to quell its itch. “There were a few recurring themes going through the book, but one pertained to how he felt about the two of us,” he says, rubbing his nose harder for good measure and sniffing anew. “A lot about how shit it felt for him to come up under me after so many other people already knew who I was — and it's not like this is the first time I was hearing it, it wasn't; he used to hate the way he stacked up against me in piano class, communion class, confirmation class, the music program once he got in, everywhere he went I got to first and that followed him everywhere – which in itself is almost hilarious because he could have all of those, I wasn't doing anything with them.”

Remus snorts there. “Honestly.”

Sirius wholly appreciates the input. “He was obviously better at all of that than I ever was, and he fucking knew it, too; he kept pointing out all my rough edges compared to his fine-point ones,” he keeps on. ”He knew he was classically better at all of that than me, but my reputation preceded me and ruined things for him all in one go, but now I know that uni was the worst for him to come into after I got done with it.”

Remus puts out a _tch._ “Why would it have been?” he asks, his gaze attentive but highly bemused.

Sirius works a frown from left to right. “The whole affair with my prof might not have gone as smoothly as I made it seem,” he divulges.

Remus shifts underneath him, like the topic itself is squirm-fodder. Sirius drops his gaze as Remus exhales heavily, and his throat stings when Remus lets go of his hold at his middle. It's the longest five seconds of his life, watching Remus reach up behind his head to fluff his pillow out, and once he's settled back with his shoulders propped up against it, Sirius can breathe easier again realizing he's won himself a captive, but pensive audience. “OK,” he says, putting his arms right back where they were before, latched around Sirius' middle. “How badly?”

“Real bad,” Sirius says, not all that able to make it more than a whisper. “Worse than I even knew at the time."

Remus nods minutely in the low light. “Alright,” he accepts. “I'll still love you when you're finished.”

Sirius’ jaw starts feeling a lot like that anvil he’s in the market for. “You don't know that.”

“No, I do,” Remus passes along.

Sirius' breathing hitches. “I know I made it sound like a whimsy, unconventional analogy for you to apply to yourself, but it was at the time,” he stresses. “I was so removed from it, not that it's an excuse—”

“Well, depending on just how badly that whole thing went, removing yourself from the situation by acting like it wasn't a huge deal could make some very real sense,” Remus comes in, and Sirius just falters. “I'm not changing my mind on you, no matter what you're stalling over.”

Sirius briefly ponders on whether doing this from under the bed where Remus can't see him would be easier, but then again, moving now doesn't seem easy at all. “It was more a scandal then a quick fling,” he puts down. “And word travelled fast once it got out, but I honestly thought the rumour would get shut down as quickly as it showed up and apparently it went down the chain and into Reg's class where he got heckled for it from the moment he walked in the door – and I know the news blew the roof off our house so why the fuck wouldn't it have carried over into his school life, too, but I really didn't think he'd get so much flack for it.”

“OK,” Remus grants, nodding for it. “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.” 

Sirius chews on the inside of his lower lip, but even as he does it he knows he hasn't got the right to look this sheepish; he did all that, caused the ripple effects, now isn't the time to keep avoiding the blame. “I had the grades to get into the program, but I didn't need them,” he admits, knowing somewhere in his gut that Remus wouldn't love that on principle, but where's the lie? “My father was a regular guest-speaker on campus, they loved the man, and he loved coming in for seminars with all these future entrepreneurs he could help mold, and I can't pretend that having a surname like Black didn't get me in there; I bet they didn't even look at my transcript for long, just saw the name and put me in the approved pile.”

“And into another place you didn't actually want to be,” Remus finishes, frowning a little.

Sirius blinks once. “That, yeah,” he accepts, his throat tight. “I hated being there; I didn't like anybody in my class, they weren't my people, my father would strut around the place near-weekly and wouldn't even look at me when he was there, and getting in with Jack felt like the only way to pass the time there.”

“Jacques,” Remus sounds out, half-piqued, and maybe also to be funny, and Sirius'll take it when this tale isn't going to get any funnier as it goes.

“We can totally call him that if you want,” he offers.

“Not sure I'll be able to take much of this seriously if we did, and I want to,” Remus imparts. “Forget I said it; you needed something to pass the time.”

Sirius nods for the probing. “I barely noticed the term going by, not when I was out of the house at least,” he says. “We met up a lot outside class, his office, sometimes his house if the wife wouldn't be home; I can't pretend like I didn't get a thrill out of it – I liked that part.”

“OK,” Remus grants, distant about it, by the looks of it, and it hurts a little, but fair this is likely trudging on discomfort for a stand-up chap like him.

“I wasn't an idiot about it, mind; I didn't go telling anyone in the class, I didn't like anybody there; I didn’t even tell James I was seeing him,” Sirius divulges, “but I wasn't shy about visiting his office whenever I knew he'd be there, I wasn't shy about sleeping in and skipping his class while he went in to teach it because I figured I could get the rundown once he got back, and I really wasn't shy about coming in late, kicking my feet up in back knowing I wasn't going to get punished in a way that I wouldn't look forward to later on – I didn't fucking care, I liked all of it.”

Remus nods, maybe because Sirius stops there, or maybe because he's really trying not to pile onto him; Sirius doesn't know, but the silence in the room spooks him into talking more. “And this isn't an excuse, OK?” he prefaces. “It's not, but it might explain some of it so I'll risk saying it, but I think back now and I wonder if part of me wanted it out, or wanted my father to find out and it's not going to make sense to you, I'm sure—”

“Sirius, I'm just listening, OK?” Remus comes in, smiling tightly. “You don't have to wrap it up in a nice little bow, you can just speak it however you like.”

Sirius nods once, taking a different route. “He hadn't even spoken to me since they found out I was one fruity kid,” he puts down. “He didn't say a word to me for two years, just let my mother do all the screeching and reshaping of me to no avail while he sat back and let it all happen, and as much as I hated him for not even flinching through some of those lessons, I really hated how cold he was – nothing I said or did would pull a noise out of him; he was a wall and I was not even a picture frame in the same room, and then when it finally did come out during exams, he sure remembered I existed then, I'll tell you that.”

Sirius didn't notice Remus' hand moving until his right one turns up by Sirius' left ear, and there Sirius falters with the quiet trace of Remus' thumb over the shell of it and the deep frown etched on Remus' face. “Sorry, go on,” he insists. “I'm just nervous.”

“We can take a break,” Sirius offers, feeling like a bottle of curdled milk.

Remus shakes his head. “No, I can handle it,” he says decidedly. “You had to, it's my turn.”

“I could give you the PG version?” Sirius raises.

“Somewhere between R and PG-13 would be alright with me,” Remus tacks on.

Sirius nods once, restructuring. “He found out during my exam week, I don't know who he heard it from or if he just strolled by a couple of students with my name on their tongue, he never said as much, but turns out, not everybody loves special treatment or me getting top marks without even showing up half the time,” he details, pairing it with an weighing gesture of his hands. “He called me downstairs once he got home and I found him in his study nursing a brandy, the usual things, but the second he saw me he fucking blew and it was like years worth of suppressed anger came out of him; he pitched that brandy glass straight across the room and I had to do the duck and swerve to avoid the shatter.”

“Jesus Cunt,” Remus huffs out, already perturbed by the looks of it.

“Mhm, and I'm there, knowing I'm fucked while he's just rampaging on and on about doing what's right and all that was wrong with me that stopped me from being right, how I'd been spitting on his name ever since I could walk, how I did it to get back at him and ruin the power our name had,” Sirius puts out, into a certain groove he knows he gets into when he needs to soften a blow. “He was finally emoting, only it was everything my mother'd been screeching at me for years and nothing I said mattered.”

“What do you mean?” Remus says. “What did you say?”

“Literally anything that'd get him off of me, I was fucking terrified,” Sirius presses. “He was fast and irate – not a good combo and I fucking tried to say anything that would make him back off, but he didn't want to hear any of it because it was all excuses to him; it didn't matter that I'd already put an end to it when Jack started talking about running off with me, it didn't matter that I'd written his exam after breaking it off and would pass with flying colours even if he was sore about it, it didn't matter that it could get played off as a rumour that I was sure the other students would forget about in a week – none of it mattered because his reputation was at stake and he didn't want to hear me babble excuses at him, and it wouldn't have mattered if I didn't bolt that night or not because he made it fucking clear that if I didn't walk out that door that day he'd throw me out of it; I wasn't his kid anymore.”

Remus' grip on him went and tightened somewhere in there, but Sirius can't say for sure when it was; all he really has is a vice grip at his middle and an appalled look trained at him that he can physically see Remus trying to quell in real time, but it's no use; with a dad like Lyall, this kind of shit is unfathomable. “I'm sorry that happened to you,” he says, Remus Lupin to the end.

Sirius shakes his head fast, his breathing rapid. “No, don't be,” he says. “It kicked me awake, made me actually look the bull in the eye and realize I had to leave – who was I staying for? Not either of them, not to keep getting the shit kicked out of me, I was there for Reg, and I tried to get him to come with me — if you're to know anything, please know I tried—”

“I'm never going to forget that you tried, how's that?” Remus puts in, trying for a smile, but it is a tight one.

Sirius nods solemnly, wants to continue, but if he even puts sound to the words he remembers hearing out of Reg that day, he's going to fall apart. “It wasn't enough,” he says faintly. “Reg thought I was spiraling, and why would anyone go with someone they thought was doomed?”

“Sirius,” Remus comes in, quiet but concise.

“He dialed back on that read some years later, I have the proof now, but back then?” Sirius raises, nodding again. “He thought I'd detonated the bomb myself and walked right into the blast for shits and giggles, and then what? Left him and everyone else to deal with the rest of it, walked out on him, and look where he ended up?”

Remus squeezes Sirius at his middle. “You couldn't predict the future,” he reminds him. “You've got a frighteningly accurate sense as to what's coming around the corner, I'll admit that, but you couldn't have known that he'd end up doing that – you couldn't, and where he ended up has nothing to do with this.”

“No, but I could have seen it coming if I thought about it more,” Sirius puts it. “At the time, he wanted to be the shining star of the family so badly, as if he wasn't already, so fine, let him have all the responsibility, and I walked out that door knowing he was all they had left to shape — that's neglect, Remus. I fucked him so hard leaving him there—”

Remus' right hand comes up and covers Sirius' mouth in an instant, leaving Sirius frozen and Remus shaking his head once. “I know this is far more than just complicated, but sometimes you need to put yourself first,” he stresses. “I'm so proud of you for leaving, OK? I am, and the rest we can deal with, but—”

Sirius puts out a humourless laugh. “Right, 'cause I really dealt with this so well before,” he placates. “Reg called me the fuck out in that book saying I'm incapable of feeling anything close to blame for it, and I can't even deny him that – I didn't care. He wrote that Jack wasn't even at the school by the time he started there, so either he left the job himself or my father made fucking sure he got sacked, and I didn't once stop long enough to wonder what even came of him and where my actions led; I didn't, and Reg knew I didn't.”

“My,” Remus puts in, a quiet but pointed echo nonetheless.

Sirius dials it back a sentence or two to locate Remus' issue and his shoulders drop once he finds it. “He didn't seek me out, Remus,” he admits, but he gets a plain, disagreeing hum for it that makes him have to spell it out. “I saw him first day of classes, liked the way he looked, liked how he knew and revered my family and more importantly that my father really liked the bloke, liked what it'd mean if I got him, and I really liked what it'd mean if we kept at it just out of plain sight – I liked it all, I did, and I didn't once think about him when it all came crashing down, I fucking didn't.”

Remus pushes a laboured exhale out. “He was your teacher, Sirius,” he emphasized. “I can tell it was all very heavy at the time and you might've felt completely a part of it back then, but he was still the adult in the situation.”

Sirius shifts off of Remus, feeling odd being on with the direction this is headed, and roots himself on the mattress beside Remus’ right hip. “I was of-age,” he clarifies, proverbially showing his dirty hands. “I mean, a good two years over age.”

“So, you were eighteen,” Remus considers, nodding once. “And how old was he?”

“I knew what I was doing, Remus,” Sirius stresses.

“That's not the answer I was asking for,” Remus denies.

“Oh, fucking fine,” Sirius huffs. “He was turning thirty that January, that doesn't make him a monster.”

Remus makes a face like it does, actually. “Oh, but you were for getting caught up in it?” he raises. “He should've been able to hold off, and I don't know how he slept at night, personally.” 

“Super well seeing as he didn't coerce me at all,” Sirius stresses. “If anything, I egged it on more than he did.”

Remus shakes his head slowly. “Sirius,” he chides. 

Sirius sends a heated breath through his nose. “You said you wanted to know what I was dealing with,” he returns. “This is just a fraction, but it's a big one so we're going to have to have a calm discussion about this and we can't do that if we're wagging fingers.”

“I think I am being rather calm,” Remus returns, a plain stare aimed at Sirius. “I don't care if he was so confused about his sexuality; you go to a therapist, go to a club, get your rocks off somewhere else, you don't pick one of your students to drag down with you.”

Sirius sits back, half-impressed, but half-stricken by the savagery on display here. “But — if his wife found out, that's her gone, if he lost his job then that's his livelihood, and his reputation's out the window,” he lists off. “You really think he deserved any of that?”

“He shouldn't have been anywhere near a classroom,” Remus answers, clear and concise. “And now, I'll just have to hope that if he is walking around out there, he's not working at a job shaping brand new adults.”

Sirius' hair sticks up at the nape of his neck, rubbing his palms back and forth over his thighs. “I was a willing participant, Remus,” he stresses. “I was; I gave consent, I knew what I was doing, and I was happy to keep it going on the sly until he tried slapping a ring on it—"

“Sirius, I was in a classroom setting last term, was I not?” Remus raises, putting a pause on Sirius' hands by anchoring his wrists down. “And with what I'm studying, is it in any way possible that I could have some idea of how a professor should behave? What do you think, am onto something here?”

“Your practicum was for secondary,” Sirius says, dialing the snark back a bit. “That's a different thing entirely than uni.”

“I still had so much time to observe how those kids looked up to their teachers,” Remus keeps at it. “Sure, some of them couldn't care less about the person speaking up front, but plenty of them did and I saw how engaged they were, how impressionable, and if you're heading a class, you don't fuck around with the power you inherently have in a position like that, you don't.”

Sirius expels a tight breath, his eyes stinging at this not going anywhere near the way he approaches it. “It was as black and white as that,” he emphasizes. “And he really didn't deserve to get caught up in the Black family and spat out again, he didn't—”

He cuts off quickly as Remus does a heavy sigh/scoot-forward maneuver, moving in close and reaching to wipe at Sirius' tear-streaked face with the pads of his thumbs. “You're allowed to regret the way it all fell apart, OK?” he puts down, replacing his thumbs with a faint kiss to both Sirius' cheeks in turn. “You are; it was awful, I see that, but there's no blame to put on you and I want no part in it.”

“Remus,” Sirius pushes out, heavy in head and heart.

“I'm sorry, but I don't,” Remus keeps to it, not sounding all that sorry about it, to be frank. “I'm not coming along on this one either, and if it were the other way around, I know you wouldn't let the blame get anywhere near me, so why on earth should I let it get on you?”

Sirius pushes a half-sob, half-sigh out. “You'd never get caught up in something like that,” he huffs, rubbing the heels of his palms underneath his eyelids.

Remus waits for Sirius to finish with that before he lifts his shoulders minutely. “Who knows. If I'd had so many authority figures in my life drop the ball with me the way they did you, I might've looked for love just about anywhere I could find it,” he offers. “It's not fair that you had such a hard start, it isn't, and it could be easier for you if you could just shoulder the whole blame and be done with it, but hearing you trying to is breaking my heart.”

Sirius drops his hands to his lap, staring at him imploringly. “Remus,” he puts out, certifiably shot through the heart with an arrow.

Remus comes in exponentially close, pressing his forehead against Sirius'. “Do you want to know what I don't blame you for?” he prefaces, and Sirius shuts his eyes and gives out a weird noise that is neither a confirmation or a denial when he knows Remus is going to tell him and he's going to end up flattened by it anyway. “You needing to look out for yourself after you got out, you turning that situation on its head and distancing yourself from it enough to even use it to help someone else who's in shambles, and you wanting to kick yourself for it now; I don't blame you for any of it — I can’t, so what if we tried to find a middle ground for this one?”

Sirius nods for him to continue, not trusting his voice right now. “Well, looking back on the way you once talked about this, you had a strong understanding that the man asked far more of you than was fair to, can we agree on that still?” Remus raises.

Sirius sniffs again, harder now, and nods harder than that even. “OK, good,” Remus accepts, speaking where Sirius can’t. “And in that case, I don’t think it would be unfair for you to keep to that; you did the right thing for yourself in putting an end to it and you know what you have now? Extreme validation from someone else on that front, and I’m sorry I didn’t say that back then.” 

Sirius pushes out a fast gust, shaking his head silently. “But I’m saying it now, for what it’s worth,” Remus cements, and this bloke has no fucking idea how much. “You were right to say what you did back then and you’ve a right to think it now; you didn’t owe him anything and he’s the one responsible for his life possibly falling apart, not you.” 

Sirius pushes out an even more embarrassing noise and certainly does try to scramble off of the bed en route to hiding under it, but Remus catches his left wrist before he can touch his feet to the ground, openly bewildered. “What are you doing?” he asks, frowning deeply. 

“I don't know,” Sirius expels, a whole new sea pouring out of his eyes again. “The floor — I can’t handle how nice you’re being about this.”

Remus seems not to know what to do with the fact that he's succumbing to a laugh. “Sorry,” he apologizes, covering his mouth with his free hand. “You're too much.”

“You are,” Sirius returns heartily, wiping roughly at his eyes.

“Careful with those,” Remus bids, squeezing at Sirius' wrist before letting it go.

Sirius huffs grand at the direct quote leveled at him, drops his hands in a dramatic fashion, and makes himself meet Remus' eye. “I’m so sick of crying,” he sighs out.

Remus’ chest moves with the conceding breath that leaves him. “I’ve been there,” he cements. “Do you feel a little bit better, though? I sometimes do, if you're there even more so." 

Sirius gives a grumble, but he can’t quite deny that he isn’t feeling a lot more loose without that weight on his chest. “I’ll feel even better after a cigarette,” he offers. 

Remus nods intently. “I’m sure,” he says. “Do you want me to come with?”

“I wasn't going to give you a choice,” Sirius levels with him, maneuvering himself out of bed.

He moves for the hamper, lingering by it as he peels his shirt and jeans off, dumps them in there, and heads for Remus’ dresser with just his skivvies on. “I'll pay for one of the loads, alright?” he raises, pointing at Remus once before turning for the dresser.

“Sure thing,” Remus replies, scooting to the end of the bed.

Sirius pauses, tossing a half-smile over his shoulder as he fishes in the second drawer for Remus' best jumper. “Not one complaint, hm,” he says, turning back to use his eyes for the job. “You must really want to bring my spirits back up.”

“And I do,” Remus says, pushing himself to his feet. “What are you looking for?”

“Your billowy jumper,” Sirius says, continuously sifting through the door.

“You'll have to be more specific.”

“The one we can both fit into.”

Remus gives a hum of understanding. “Oh, I put it in the closet.”

Sirius looks round as Remus heads for it. “Why's it in there?” he asks.

“It takes up so much space, I could hardly close the drawer,” Remus offers, sliding the closet door open. He pulls the requested jumper off of a hanger and walks it back over toward Sirius' grabby-hands, smiling small as he hands it over to him. 

Sirius makes quick work about pulling it on, letting the hem of the jumper fall to his damn knees, and already he’s feeling that much better. He can see well enough to tell Remus took a fine full glimpse of Sirius’ look, but it’s the new grin on his face that has Sirius stepping in close to him and leaning his head up to press his forehead against Remus’, relishing in the fact that Remus is still looking at him like a new book fresh off the printer. 

“I can’t believe you’re still looking at me like that,” he says, quietly between them. 

Remus pushes a breath out of his nose, moving his forehead against Sirius’. “I don’t know what would get me to stop,” he says, and Sirius’ eyes, the traitors, well right up again, but that is officially too much weeping for tonight. 

Sirius straightens up with a pronounced sniff, shakes himself out, and clasps Remus’ left hand, tugging him along toward the doorway. They get just past the island when Remus squeezes his hand, pulling them to idle there. “I’m just going to get water, do you want one too?” 

“Not after your ocean point,” Sirius sends him. 

Remus snorts, lets go of Sirius’ hand after another squeeze, and heads for the sink, huffing little, breathy laughs through his nose as he goes. 

-

Sirius wakes with the bleariest set of eyes he’s had the displeasure of owning in a long while, but the film over his eyes disappears right quick as he contends with the amount of light in the room. By first glance toward the window he can’t think it’s any time before noon when the sun is beating right into the room from above and shoots his arm out to the left, intent on shaking Remus awake and making him aware of just how much they slept in, but his hand only meets the mattress. He looks left, finds he sure is alone in bed, and in an instant he’s certain Remus let him sleep in and went off on their errand day without him. 

Sirius climbs out of bed with a pit in his stomach, torn between liking and hating this development, and pads to the door, pulling it open and coming out into an almost empty flat. The cat’s still here, sprawled out on the island, so for that Remus must still be in the process of getting his laundry done. Sirius turns for the bathroom, not loving the image of Remus lugging two huge bags down to the laundromat himself when he’s got two well-working hands to help out, but the thought goes right out of his head as he focuses on the bathroom, and far more importantly, Remus’ body laying still on the floor of it, a pool of blood expanding underneath his head at a pace that stops Sirius own blood from running.  
He’s in the room in seconds, his knees hit the floor with a smack he can’t think about right now when the most important thing right now is to find out whether he’s responsive, but the pool keeps growing as he taps Remus incessantly, but he won’t move a muscle. Next, he works on keeping his own breathing steady while investigating just how big the cut on his head actually is; last time it was smaller than it looked, but there’s more blood here than there was then and Sirius can’t see the extent of it when there’s red everywhere. 

Maybe he’s just in shock and he just needs actual help, a phone would be good, and after patting Remus’ pockets in hopes of finding his phone in there, Sirius comes up empty handed and reaches for the bathroom counter, pulling himself shakily to his feet and wincing at the red fingerprints he leaves behind on the edge of it, and before he can bolt for his own phone he gets a staggering view in the mirror that isn’t even quite him and the voice that comes out sends revulsion right up his spine. 

“Again, Sirius?” 

Sirius takes a breath like he’s just swallowed a gallon of water down the wrong tube, sits right up in bed, and clutches at his chest with a hand, feeling his chest heaving up and down beneath it as he studies the room around him. Sun’s up, that much he’s gathered, but the tint in the room isn’t quite like it was and that’s really the only difference he can spot when Remus isn’t beside him again. 

Sirius fumbles with the comforter down by his legs, pulling them out from the tangle he managed to get them in with the blanket, and trips up as he heads for the door, pulling it open in a snap and faltering as he spots Remus in the kitchen, stooped as he pulls a frying pan out of the drawer under the stove. 

There, Sirius breathes and blinks, making sure he’s actually seeing him, and Remus rises to his feet, sets the pan on the stove, and looks over his way. “No,” he puts out, pulling the tea towel hanging by the stove and flapping it in Sirius’ direction. “You weren’t supposed to wake up yet.”

Sirius falters again, eyeing him quizzically from across the main room. “What’s happening?” 

“I was trying to bring you breakfast in bed and guess where you’re not?” Remus puts up. 

Sirius pulls his lower lip into his mouth, steps forward, and pads over to Remus even though he’s getting a firm look of warning as he’s doing it. He gets to him quickly, lifts his arms to hook them around the back of Remus’ neck, and pulls him in tight, pressing his left cheek against Remus’ right one. 

“Well, now there’s no surprise,” Remus fusses.

Sirius shuts his eyes as he breathes Remus in, smelling the faint scent of Remus' shampoo and reaching to touch the damp, fine hair at the nape of Remus' hair. “You OK?” Remus asks, smoothing back a section of Sirius’ astounding bedhead, having a peek at him best he can, no doubt. 

“Now, yeah,” Sirius says, pulling back to look at him straight-on. “I dreamt you went off without me and then you weren't there when I woke up and I really thought you were gone.” 

Remus’ lips twitch a bit. “I did think about it,” he admits. 

"Treacherous lad," Sirius deems him. 

"Just to let you sleep in," Remus implores, “but then I thought breakfast in bed would be better received.” 

“Good intuition,” Sirius offers, going in for a quick kiss before eyeing the scene beside them. He curls his hands into fists, taps them together, and points to the stove with his forefingers next. “How long would you say this’ll take?” 

“Fifteen, twenty?” Remus figures. “You could rest some more.” 

“No, I’m gonna have a rinse, then,” Sirius says, tossing his right thumb over his shoulder. 

Remus nods for that. “Now get,” he shoos, waving him off. 

Sirius smiles brightly, loving this feisty mood he’s found Remus in, and leaves another quick kiss on his lips in parting. “Can I get another cup of that tea?” he asks. 

Remus looks as if he’s not sure what to do with him anymore, but his smile suggests he’s fine with that all the same. “Sure,” he says, his smile brightening even more. “I never thought I’d see the day.” 

Sirius bobs his shoulders with a little tune as he heads for the bathroom, though he stops short when he gets near the room, struck there with how vivid the room had looked just minutes ago. He shuts the door behind him, blinks the image of Remus lying lifeless on the floor out of his head as quickly as he can, and eyes the mirror sidelong. It's only him looking back, and looking a right fool on top of that. He straightens up, shakes out, peels Remus’ jumper off before maneuvering his legs out of his briefs, leaving both hanging from the hook behind the bathroom door for now. 

He heads for the tub, pushing his right hand past the edge of the shower curtain to turn the taps, and once he likes the temperature of the water free-flowing out of it he toggles the shower rod and bursts it to life. He slips in behind the curtain and merely stands under the stream for a time, lulling his head back and forth and letting the warm water fall over his neck and shoulders before anything else. 

His body goes next and once that’s all taken care of that leaves him with the question of what sort of treatment his hair deserves today. Overall, probably nothing fancy given that he’s a walking piece of shit, but — and this is a big one — having his hair silky-smooth will make it that much nicer for Remus should he decide to play with it at any point over the day, and that boy deserves the world. On that note, Sirius breaks out his fancier brand shampoo and conditioner and lets the scent of coconut waft over him, and once both have been rinsed out, he’s happy with the decision for damn, his hair is smooth; it’s going to get played so much with he can hardly wait. 

Once out, he hangs a towel around his waist and wraps his hair up in another, and smiles to himself as he hears Billie Holiday crooning in the other room, and that’s a lovely little addition to the morning, he has to say. He stands at the counter and works on brushing his hair out nice and neat, working all the snags out of it, and then takes a towel to his hair once again, messing it up real good so it’ll dry with some wave to it, and exits the bathroom once he’s done, feeling refreshed and perfectly cool what with the light breeze wafting through the flat from the perch door being propped open by a shoe. 

His timing couldn’t be better for Remus is just taking his plate out of the oven. Sirius veritably jigs over to him, pumped to devour this gift of a meal even more so when he gets a glimpse of the pile of scrambled eggs and bacon on his plate, and grins as he reaches up from below to take hold of the plate. 

“Careful, it’s hot,” Remus mentions. 

Sirius waves him off with a hum, but then the yelp he puts out as his hands touch the hellfire that is the bottom of the plate could probably be heard all the way up the hall. “Jesus Cunt,” he puts out.

Remus pulls the plate back and away from him, balancing it on one hand while inspecting Sirius’ with the other. “I’m sorry,” he frowns, tracing his thumb over the underneath of Sirius’ right palm, but Sirius is a bit busy watching Remus’ effortless hold of the plate that might as well be a fireball like it’s nothing at all to really care about his own fingertips just then. Remus looks quite sheepish as Sirius lifts his gaze to meet his. “Let’s not, OK?” Let’s have a good day.” 

Sirius nods, lowering his hands. “Yeah,” he says, but even he knows it was feeble at best. 

Remus sets the plate on the counter by the stove top, steps in, and presses his down-turned mouth to Sirius’ lips. “I’ll let it cool while I finish up the dishes and bring it in there, OK?” he offers. “You go sit, relax.” 

Sirius chases his mouth, leaving a longer press on Remus’ lips. “Are you going to use the breakfast tray?” he raises, a wry smile on. 

“Well, I have to, don’t I?” Remus mentions, a pointed look on.

“Mhm, you do,” Sirius chimes, swivelling on his heel and heading for the room. 

“Don’t put clothes on just yet,” Remus sends after him. 

Sirius swivels back around toward him again, his right hip cocked. “Oh?” he asks airily. "Hoping to get lucky?" 

Remus answers it with a simple once-over and that’s a fine answer indeed. Sirius heads for the room with a renewed skip to his step, clambers onto the bed, and crawls up the middle of it, settling up at the top of the bed and leans back against the wall behind it, idly twiddling his thumbs while he waits. Remus, always a fan of cleaning as he goes, gets the remnants of the meal he just made all washed up and set in the drying rack before bending to pull his new oak breakfast tray out of the cupboard it now lives in. Sirius’ phone chimes over on the island and Remus looks up and around, spotting it. 

He picks up the tray and heads to the island, plucking Sirius’ phone up and setting it on the tray, and carts Sirius’ plate, tea, and phone into the room. “The service around here is just lovely,” Sirius mentions. 

“Wait until you’re done eating and you’ll really be leaving a glowing review,” Remus says, leaning over the side of the bed to hold the tray out to him. 

Sirius almost (almost) suggests they switch the order of events and leave the food for a refueling, but Remus clearly put effort into this and for that, Sirius’ll have at it. 

“Did you eat?” Sirius asks, setting the tray down beside him on the bed. 

Remus hums to affirm as he moves to sit cross-legged across from him. “I had too much toast while you were in there,” he says, moving for the doorway again. “Believe me, I am full.” 

Sirius nods for it, looking over his phone real quick, and finds a short text from Mary-Mary-quite-contrary. 

_Did you actually pummel piece of shit dave or is just saying that? _

Sirius pushes a sigh through his nose and chooses breakfast over answering that. He leaves his phone aside, picks up his fork to have a bite of the scrambled eggs on his plate, and his eyes clouding over with wonder.  
Remus comes back into the room with a mug of his own and moves for the bed again. “What’s in these?” Sirius asks, pointing his fork down at the pile of egg on his plate. 

Remus smiles a bit, moving to sit cross-legged. “Baking soda,” he whispers, holding his tea under his chin. “It’s my mum’s trick; makes them all fluffy.” 

“I love your mum.” 

“I know you do.” 

The gaze the two of them exchange here could easily be categorized as schmoozy, but that’s fine by Sirius. “What’s the plan then, boss?” he asks, leaving his fork on the tray and picking up a piece of bacon to munch on. 

Remus smiles the way he always does when he gets that particular nickname; all sheepish and joyous and verklempt in one tiny look. “Well, this,” he mentions, gesturing an open palm toward Sirius’ breakfast. “And sex, if you are actually up for it—”

“Am,” Sirius puts in.

“Love that,” Remus extends. “And we should lug the laundry down there, get that done, lug it back here, and then we’ve got the cat to drop off and a few more last minute things to grab before we leave, and then I can fully pack.” 

“Love it,” Sirius says. 

“I might need your help getting her into the carrier,” Remus mentions, fiddling with the nail on his right forefinger. “Only the minute she sees it she goes right into hiding.” 

Sirius smirks. “You handle the carrier and I’ll scoop her up like a ball and lob her in there before she even realizes it,” he details. 

“Deal,” Remus returns, smiling for him before going for a sip of tea. “How are you feeling?” 

Sirius waves the strip of bacon at him in reply. “Great now.” 

Remus smirks. “Did you sleep OK in the end?” he asks. “You seemed to knock out pretty quickly once we got back in, but I wasn’t far after you either so I don't know for sure.” 

“Yeah, I did OK,” Sirius offers. “I woke up a few times; weird dreams.”

“Hm?” Remus probes. 

Sirius nods, holding a half-piece of bacon over his plate. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see you than I was just there, and that’s saying something,” he admits. Remus gives a minute noise around a sip of tea, pushing to swallow it quicker than he might have otherwise. “I meant what I said, hey? The trip’s about us, not just me; I might have a moment now and again, but I'm really going to try here, OK?”

Remus nods for that, his eyes owlish over his mug, but that’s the comforting sight Sirius has to go by. “Can you finish that soon?” Remus raises, gesturing his mug toward Sirius’ plate with a budding smile. 

Sirius does as bid, making quicker work of his food before downing his perfectly cooled cup of tea, and makes a satiated grunt at the end of it. “How is it so good?” he raises. 

“I don’t know, but my knees buckled when I found it,” Remus tells him straight, reaching to take Sirius’ tray from him. 

“Would you say you like it better than the oolong even?” Sirius checks, following him out of the room but veering off to get to the bathroom. 

Remus puts out a thoughtful breath as he carries the tray to the kitchen. “Not quite,” he deems it. “Oolong’s been tried and true for a long, long time, but this one’s probably the best I’ve found since.” 

Sirius hums in acceptance, pushing a line off toothpaste onto his toothbrush. He brushes while Remus does up the last of the dishes, and he’d probably feel worse about letting him handle the load if Remus didn’t actively enjoy getting dishes done and out of the way; small things, as he’s said.

Sirius finishes up, smacks his lips in celebration, and leaves the bathroom as Remus is heading back toward the room from the kitchen, and Sirius makes a beeline for him, pulling him into a full kiss before tugging him back toward the room. There are a lot of things Sirius knows he won’t grow sick of here; Remus’ face is one, his lopsided smile another, his dinner plate eyes of course, the way Remus breathes against him when they’re lips are on lock, and sometimes, like right here, it feels like Remus unwinds with that breath, like the tension his holds at his shoulders fall away, and while Sirius doesn’t have much experience with retaining tension the same way Remus does, he knows exactly what heavy feels like and he knows exactly how it feels to feel light again, even for a little while. 

Remus should get a medal for the simple act of lowering Sirius onto things, he’s decided. Be it a bed, a couch, the floor, you name it; there’s a palpable care that bleeds through any lust the man’s totting, a care in how he moves over Sirius, a care in how he pulls Sirius back in for more lip service, and here Sirius is drowning in all of it, leaves him moving his lips in time with the unhurried pace of Remus’ own as if they haven’t got a full afternoon of plans ahead of them, and relishes in being pinned between Remus and the bed and not looking to go anywhere else for now. 

He thinks he’ll let Remus decide the pace they’ll go at, Sirius just needs Remus out of those pyjamas — as fit as he looks in both, Sirius’ skin is burning up; he needs skin on skin, needs Remus’ skin on his. He tugs up on the hem of Remus’ shirt while their lip-lock keeps going, knows he’ll have to put a pause on it to let him out of the shirt, and relinquishes him enough for Remus to brace himself on his knees and pull the shirt off while Sirius works on signaling that the flannels need to go too, tugging down on the waistband of them. 

With some tricky maneuvering, Remus rids himself of his sleep clothes and Sirius reaches up to grab onto his arms, looking to get a little more of those lips on his, but Remus has other ideas, flashes him a quick, beautifully lopsided smile, and drops down, working his way down Sirius’ body with his mouth dragging warm open-mouthed kisses over Sirius’ chest along the way, but Sirius squirms underneath him as soon as Remus gets any lower than his navel, pressing haltingly at Remus’ shoulders. 

Remus’ own chest is heaving as he comes back up for air, his brow knitted together as he searches Sirius for clues, and Sirius beckons for him. “Come back here,” he bids. 

Thankfully, Remus listens, pushing himself back up the bed and lowering himself back down on Sirius, and Sirius doesn’t waste any time not relishing in the weight of Remus’ body on his, leans up and pulls Remus’ chin down toward his, and drinks him in again. A blowie’s grand and all, but there’s no explaining how good this already feels and he’s not about to try to defend it; he’s going to feel it instead. 

Remus puts a contended breath into their lip-lock somewhere around the full minute mark, and Sirius swallows it, puts a similar one back in return, loving every second of it. Remus braces more of his weight onto one side, giving himself the freedom to reach his right arm up and lock his fingers up in Sirius’ hair, and the little noise Remus makes against his lips before feeling his locks freely has Sirius breaking the kiss via a happy, huffy little laugh; so grateful he gave his hair the right sort of treatment. Remus tips Sirius’ head back with one, tiny tug on Sirius’ hair before catching him by the smile, and Sirius’ hips lift into it almost of their own accord, his fingertips digging into Remus’ bare back as he holds Remus down on him, and there he pushes his own knees apart so Remus might slip right in there and do something about how hard he is. 

Remus is all about that decision, as it is, seeing how quickly he uses his free hand to tug at Sirius’ towel until it falls open, and once it does Remus uses the same arm to hitch hips up, waits as Sirius moves quickly and hooks them around back of Remus’ own hips, and there, if they wiggle around a little — and they do, a hilarious amount of wiggling until Sirius huffs a laugh and just reaches in between them to align their cocks for both of them, and there, they both breathe harshly into their kiss, Sirius rocking up to meet the friction that pulses every time Remus’ hips rock down and meet his, and Sirius keeps putting these tiny, tight breaths out of his nose as Remus picks up the pace of his own, garnering Sirius to work to meet them head-on, and then Remus’ right hand tightens, deep in Sirius’ locks, and Sirius pulls his mouth off of his and breathes tighter still, eyes shut tight as he fucks up against him and tugs Remus’ hips back down to meet them, gripping his hips like they’ll disappear if he doesn’t. 

Remus lets Sirius drive his hips down on his for some time, nipping and nuzzling at Sirius’ lips, tousling and toying with Sirius’ hair, and it’s all so fucking much, Sirius feels like he’ll bend in half trying to satisfy just how hard he wants Remus to drive him right home, and then, he doesn’t have to ask for it, Remus simply hooks his free arm that was his balancing tool, hooks it in and around Sirius’ left hip, raising Sirius’ leg a little and gripping hard at Sirius’ thigh as he drives him against the mattress, faster than Sirius was even hoping or prepared for; he can hardly catch his breath between each interval as the friction between them reaches a peak, and all he can really do is hold onto Remus for dear life and wait for the summit and—

Sirius puts out a staggered, wounded breath as Remus drops Sirius’ leg and wrangles himself down even with the confines of Sirius’ legs around him and sends a prominent huff/shush hybrid after Sirius repeats his offended noise, dropping down and taking Sirius into his mouth in a quick swoop, and well, fuck, y’know? If he wants to do it, by all fucking means; get it, Remus. 

Problem is, he was already seconds off from losing his load, and he gets, what, ten seconds of Remus’ prize-winning fucking mouth on him before he’s arching into wet heat, and then his hips go haywire as he writhes through it. Remus, champ that he is, hardly blinks at the erratic stutter of Sirius’ hips, works with them instead and only pulls his mouth off of him after Sirius slumps back against the bed. With that, Remus props himself up on his elbows with his feet up in the air behind him and crossed at the ankles, smiling politely down at him as he pokes his tongue out over the left corner of his lips before he passes his right wrist over the spot just in case his missed anything. 

Sirius peers up at him, his chest heaving as he gives speaking a try. “Care to explain yourself?” 

“I didn't want us to have to shower all over again?” Remus provides. 

“Why are you so smart?” Sirius sighs out. “Give me a fucking minute and you’re toast.” 

Remus smirks through his nose, nods for it as he lifts out from between Sirius’ legs and drags himself up the bed, pressing a highly automatic kiss to Sirius’ right shoulder before he lets himself fall back on the bed, his own cock standing to firm attention and making Sirius’ plead for an extra minute seem rather wasteful, now that Sirius has this good a view of it. Sirius shortens his pause to just over ten seconds before he deems himself ready for the challenge, rolling in and scooting down the bed, and the way Remus makes room for him between his legs comes off as rather obliging; Sirius flashes him a grin he knows Remus loves to see on him before starting in, his hands pushing up, over, and along the skin at Remus’ hips, pulling them in, drinking him in while Remus pushes out a deep, wanton breath before dropping his hands back where they ought to be, wound up in Sirius’ hair and anchoring him right back down again. 

He likes that he can almost see a progression chart hovering above them, displaying where they’ve come from and where they are now in regards to this; how Remus used to be so nervous about snagging even one head on Sirius’ head in a state like this months back, how that hard line’s morphed since, how it turned into something that was acceptable only at Sirius’ bidding, and onto what they have happening here; Remus seeking that intimacy out for himself and somehow picking the best time to root Sirius in something this tangible, this alive, and even with every horrid thought that passed through his head last night and into the morning, even with that terrible wake-up; this is growth, this is love, this is worth every moment of doubt and insecurity along the way. 

Remus makes a noise above him that sets Sirius’ toes curling, gets him humming back, swerving down on Remus’ cock and aiming to put him right into a frenzy; working for more of that kind of music. Remus’ hands stutter along Sirius’ scalp, getting this halfway to a head massage before he seems to lose trust in himself; the grip in Sirius’ hair loosens, his hands start to retreat, and Sirius lifts his hands from Remus’ slipping away, and Sirius lifts his hands from Remus’ jutting hips and attached one to each of Remus’ wrists; he’ll hold them in there himself if he has to. 

Sirius keeps Remus’ gaze until Remus arches his back on the bed, tipping his head back against the mattress, and Sirius relishes in what he feels as he pulls the orgasm right out of Remus even as his hands curl into fists up in his hair, the surge of love he has for this too-kind man that he gets to even be near this much and the absence of anything close to fear; this is what safe feels like, a calm in the middle of a storm. 

"Shit," Remus puts out quickly, reaching to grab at Sirius' wrists. "I really tried—"

"Woah," Sirius puts out, anchoring Remus' hands down by holding baring down with his own wrists. "You're fine; you did everything properly." 

"I pulled too hard," Remus stresses, the words quiet as a mouse. 

"Well, I don't agree and I'm the one with the thing about that," Sirius provides. 

Remus finally lets himself breathe at a normal pace — if heavy could be considered one, and for them, it rather is. Sirius goes with Remus' quiet urgings, wiggling down and curling in between Remus' left side and arm, and effectively noodling out. "Can we take ten to just chill here?" 

"Oh yeah," Remus grants, turning his head and leaning it down to leave a kiss on Sirius' own. 

Phase one of the days’ plans begins with the two of them dressing, upending Remus’ hamper into two duffel bags, and once that's done with Sirius grabs the clothes he left hanging in the bathroom, firmly intent on bringing that massive jumper on the trip. He comes back into Remus’ room, smiles as he finds him sitting at the end of his bed with one of the duffel ready to go beside him. 

“Are you taking that with you?” Remus asks, a wry smile on.

“Sure am,” Sirius returns, moving for the duffel still sitting on the floor near Remus’ feet and stuffing the jumper and his briefs from the night before in it. “Might wear it on the train, might not, haven’t decided yet, but it will be in my possession either way.”

Sirius pushes off of the floor and hoists the sash of the duffel over his right shoulder, heading out of the room for the entryway. “Should maybe wait and see what the weathers like to decide,” Remus advises, not far behind him by the sound of it. “I saw your luggage; there’s no way it’s going to fit in your knapsack and you could end up melting in it if you’re stuck wearing it the whole morning.”

Sirius braces his left hand against the wall as he foots his shoes on. “I have hips to tie the sleeves around if that’s the case, don’t I?” he raises, nonplussed about having to keep it on his person.

“Is that what they're for?” Remus puts up, wandering off into the main room of the flat with a smile on, Sirius can tell. 

“The list is extensive,” Sirius returns, straightening up.

He waits for Remus there, who turns up again with his sunglasses on to get his own shoes on, and from there it’s full steam ahead, or more like they wander down toward the laundromat at a semi-leisurely pace what with their bags slowing them down from their usual rather speedy walking pace, but Sirius isn’t really in a rush, is more in this for the fun of getting even the most rudimentary errands done so long as Remus is the one he’s doing them with.

About a block down from the establishment, Shania’s call bursts out from Sirius’ back left pocket, causing a lady walking just up the sidewalk from them to jolt and whip her head round to look for the source of the noise.

Sirius pulls his phone out, taps over his new message, and clicks his tongue.

_YOU HIT DAVID?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

He thinks about responding this way, but he thinks ringing James will be easier and take much less time than a constant series of messages back and forth. He presses to dial his number, lifts it to his ear, and James picks up before the first ring even goes through, already spouting off. 

“I’m gonna shit myself,” he declares.

“Maybe don’t?” Sirius advises. “And he'd better not be going around telling everybody about it.” 

“I don’t know is, I was tipped off by Mary who was trying to get the deets out of me,” James returns, “which really gets me wondering why I’m only hearing about this a) right now, and b) from a secondhand source.” 

Sirius sends a dry look sideways at Remus. “It only just happened last night.”

“And?” James demands. “That’s over twelve hours of me walking around in the old world.”

“Sorry, the what?” Sirius checks, smiling wryly.

“The old world being the one where David wasn’t clobbered versus the new one where he was,” James details. “l like this new world much better, it’s like the air’s cleaner—”

“I didn’t clobber him,” Sirius corrects, “and if he’s going around telling people that, then I'm wishing I did.”

“I chose that word, sweetie; sorry it wasn’t up to snuff,” James passes along.

“Well, pick a different one, ‘cause I really don’t need this following me around,” Sirius returns. “I didn’t attack him; he got up in my face and got popped for it, that’s it,” Sirius insists, “and if he told Mary about it, chances are he told Will and if he hasn’t stopped there, wonder who else he’ll mention it to.”

“For getting popped?” James raises. “Man’s been asking for it since he could talk. Hell, I can vouch for that — want me to pop him, too?”

Sirius huffs loudly, stopping as they make it to the storefront and moving right past that offer. “We’re just getting laundry done, but if you’re at the flat we’ll be by for my things and sure wouldn’t say no to a lift back to Remus’ place.”

“I think I’d drop to the floor if you did turn one down,” James returns. “You bringing the queen over?”

“Well, I wasn’t planning to get up and carry her over tomorrow morning, funnily enough,” Sirius answers.

James sends a series of nonsensical noises through the line. “l’m excited, you knob,” he returns once he’s done with the noise dump.

Remus, lingering by the door to the laundromat, walks up by Sirius’ right and tugs on the sash of his duffel. “Here, you give me this and I’ll go on ahead—”

Sirius turns his head toward him and shrinks his neck down so the sash won’t slip off his shoulder. “No no, I’ll get off.”

“You can keep talking,” Remus insists, reaching to separate Sirius’ chin and shoulder to better slip the sash off of his arm, but Sirius nabs hold of the sash before the maneuver can be successful. 

“James, duty,” Sirius passes along.

“I know, she calls,” James accepts. “Just one quick thing?”

“Make it snappy,” Sirius warns, having a light game of tug-of-war with the strap of the duffel.

“_Did you ever know that your my hero…_”

Sirius sends a _pfft_ back to him. “Thanks, hon.” 

Sirius hangs up while James is still going strong, sticks his phone back into his back pocket, and leans in to leave a smooch on Remus’ mouth. “Sorry, I’m back.”

“You could have kept talking,” Remus fusses, swivelling around and heading in through the shop door.

“He’s giving us a lift,” Sirius relays, following him inside. “There’ll be plenty of time to gab then.” 

Remus leaves it be, if not for the fact that he’s already onto his next fussing topic. “Is he going to make this hard?” he asks, stopping not far inside the joint.

“...James?” Sirius asks, letting the door fall shut behind him. 

Remus huffs, and it’s extremely difficult not to find it cute despite his frustration. “David.”

Sirius lifts a shoulder before he has to step further into the place as the door opens from outside. He takes hold of Remus by his free arm and leads him down toward the front desk, comfortably linking them by the crook of their elbows. “I don’t know if he will, he just seems to have a big mouth; he’s at least told Mary something and that’s how James found out,” he relays, feeling the tension in Remus’ arm at full blast and leans in close to Remus’ right cheek. “Hey? Don’t; good day, remember? We're not letting David ruin it.” 

Remus pushes a relenting breath through his nose, nodding as he brushes his free hand over his face. He shakes his head clear before tugging Sirius toward the line of a few folks waiting to get some loose coin from the owner. “We’ve got to get a move on.”

And they do. Two massive loads and way too many coins later, the two of them can be found lugging their fresh bounty of clothes back up to Remus’ flat, and then phase two of the plan begins: getting that cat in her carrier.

The task is both not as bad off as Remus hinted it’d be but also just as somehow; Sirius had a good handle on Mestophales, doling out cuddles with a secret intention attached to them but the cat couldn’t tell that until she spotted the carrier and then she really did take off out of Sirius’ arms and had to be caught again and herded back into the cage, but once it’s all said and done, Sirius thinks this’ll be a fine memory to keep in his bank.

Sirius orders lift from Remus’ and when the car turns up they stick the supplies in the trunk and the cat carrier in between them on the middle seat. Along the way, a Bollywood playlist accompanies them on their journey while Sirius plays a gripping game wherein he sticks a finger near-ish to the front of the carrier, lures a furry paw out from between the bars, and must snatch his hand back before the cat manages to catch it. Remus appears reluctantly amused as he watches the show from the sidelines, though Sirius is happy to note that Remus partakes in the game once before they arrive at the flat, and while that’s not nearly enough times, at least he got to see it once. 

Once there, they file out on opposite ends of the car and head round to the back of it to grab the cat’s things out of the trunk. Remus sticks to carrying both the kitty litter and the litter box while Sirius continues his role as transporter of the queen and hangs the bag of food they brought along by his right wrist. 

Mestophales talks quite a bit on the way up the stairs and Sirius lets out a conceded sigh as he gets to the second landing. “Hard life, I know,” he muses

A door opens and shuts above their heads before a series of thunderous footsteps echo through the stairwell and for a few good moments Sirius is convinced James heard them coming and decided to come running to see his new house guest, but alas, it’s only Hank, stank-facing the two of them the second he rounds the corner and sees them. Sirius lifts his free hand and gives him a jovial wave, which has the desired effect in that it clearly gets Hank’s blood boiling along with accelerating his already harsh speed just to get past them, so it was worth doing.

The two of them move up the final stretch of stairs single file to let Hank torpedo down past them and fucking Remus doesn’t even wait until he’s out of the lobby to comment, the fucking legend. “I don’t know if it’s too early to call it, but I don’t think he likes you,” he says, tossing it over his shoulder at Sirius. 

Sirius’ snort echoes off the walls of the stairwell. “Don’t think he likes you either anymore, honeybun,” he returns. 

“Well, he really ought to seeing as I helped him avoid getting pummeled by a deck chair,” Remus raises, heading in through the front door. 

Sirius heads in behind him, knocking the door shut with a hip and stooping to set the carrier down on the ground. He unlocks the latch, opens the door, and while he certainly was prepared for Mestophales to bolt out of it and hide somewhere until calm set in once again, but she merely saunters out of the thing and down the hall, leaving them behind as she heads into to the living room. 

Sirius snorts, looking Remus’ way. “Shafted.” 

“She needs to investigate,” Remus offers, holding up the litter box with his right hand. “Where should this go?” 

Sirius considers it for a few beats before pointing down the hall opposite way toward the art/whatever room and Remus walks the litter box over there. “I’ll put it within view of the door so she gets used to where it is, and if that becomes an eyesore he can move it off to the side,” Remus figures. 

“You got it, boss,” Sirius says, not fussed either way. 

Remus sets the kitty litter container down first before pouring a fair amount of litter into it, leaving the bag nearby it. “What about the food?” he asks, rising to his feet. 

Sirius hums thoughtfully, hoisting the bag of food up on his left hip like a super heavy baby, and having a glance up the hall the other way; Tango isn’t much of a thief when it comes to the cat’s food so that isn’t the trouble, but it’ll crowd the kitchen up somewhat if both pets’ dishes are in there. “Alcove?” he suggests, looking over his shoulder as Remus comes back up the hall. 

“Oh, that’ll be nice,” Remus offers, Sirius heads there, dropping the bag of food by the windowsill for now, and soon becomes quite distracted by the cat, sitting tall and proud in the center of the coffee table and lets out a throaty trill. Remus isn’t far behind him and puts out a similarly flattened noise, and then footsteps sound up the hall from the kitchen, and James enters the room from the other end, halfway through a purple popsicle.

James spots the cat in no time at all, giving a curtsy and pulling his treat from his mouth. “Your highness,” he greets, sporting a very purple tongue, and lifts his gaze to the two worthless humans in the room. “I assume that table’s no longer outs for the time being?”

“First spot she claimed,” Remus offers. “Expect a few more from here, but yeah, I would get used to watching the telly from over her head.” 

“Small price,” James says, stepping in to give her a scritch around the ears with his free hand. 

“So, I fed her this morning so she should only need another cup-full tonight,” Remus relays, reaching into his back pocket. “I brought what I had at home along, same with the cat litter, but I may have undershot it a little, so just to be safe I’ll--”

Remus trails off as he pulls out a fresh note from his wallet and holds it out, but James simply pretends like he isn’t sure what this paper thing is. “James,” Remus says, unimpressed. “I think it’s on to cover the supplies, you’re doing me the favour here.”

“He’s really not,” Sirius puts in, giving the cat a whole lot of loving in the meantime. 

“He’s right; I get a cat out of this,” James tacks on. 

“Well, it’s there if you want it,” Remus says, setting the note down by the cat on the coffee table, but Sirius has a strong feeling that if the cat hasn't batted it off the table before they return the money will still be right where Remus left it. “Why don’t you find me some sort of gift that screams James while you’re there and we can call that the payment?” James raises. 

Remus lets out a lengthy sigh. “Because you were already going to get a souvenir, James." 

“Well, then that is all I’m accepting and that’s that,” James declares. “Fine, but I won’t be taking payment for this arrangement."

Remus turns on his heel and heads for the front hall again, en route to Sirius’ room likely. “We’ll see,” he trills, pulling his phone out of his back right trouser pocket as it rings out in the room. "It's my mum, can I take a sec?" 

Sirius sends out a _tch_. "No, whose she anyway." 

Remus works his mouth around a smile and heads off to the kitchen. "Are there any more popsicles?" Sirius inquires. 

"Yeah, plenty," James affirms, sitting down in the center of the couch and flying his hands all over the cat's fur. 

"She puts up with a lot from us, hm," Sirius raises, heading down the hall for the popsicles. He isn't even past the bathroom when he hears Remus put out an excitable trill and then he books it to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway like he's ready to catch a ball. 

Remus looks his way, brightens even more than he already has, and drops his phone away from his mouth. "They sold," he passes along. 

"Congrats, Hope," Sirius calls out. 

"What's happened?" James calls from the couch. 

"They sold of some of their land," Sirius calls back. 

James sends a whoop back up the hall. "James sends a whoop along," Remus offers her. 

Sirius heads for the fridge as Remus falls back into conversation, leaves a quick kiss on his lips as he's going by, and opens the freezer, pulling one out to waggle at Remus, who nods distractedly. Sirius turns back to the freezer, holds the popsicle up and under the overhead light in the room, squinting past the white paper. 

"OK, I will ... and thank him for us again, OK? ... Alright, see you soon, " Remus says, and very soon his voice comes from quite close behind Sirius. "What are you doing?" 

"Trying to see if it's pink or orange," Sirius explains. 

"Does it matter?" 

"Orange tastes like actual garbage, pink is perfect." 

"Then just hand it over to me if it's orange." 

"And what if the next one's orange, too?"

"Go up the middle and find a purple one?" 

Beat. "Genius." 

Sirius hands the first popsicle off to Remus, and lo and behold, it's pink. "Wait, no," Sirius pleads, ducking his head through his mirth. 

"You're so much," Remus huffs, smiling as he hands it over. 

Sirius passes him the unopened one in his other hand and shuts the fridge before the two of them head back to the living room for a well-deserved popsicle break. Once that's taken care of, Sirius heads back to the kitchen with their sticks to toss and fetches the cat two bowls, filling one with water and the other he leaves empty for her next meal. 

Sirius knows he can be of so little help in either direction and heads down the hall toward the kitchen, looking for a bowl to put Mestophales’ kibble in. On his way back, he stops by Tango laying hogged out on the kitchen floor and kneels down beside him, leaving the empty bowl on the floor to free up a hand to give his stomach a rub in farewell. 

“Sirius,” Remus calls. “We're starting." 

“Coming,” Sirius chimes, pushing off of the floor. He heads back to the living room, sets the bowls down by the cat food, and heads back toward the front hall with a series of full-handed claps. “Alright, let’s do this.”

“Wait, let me take a leak before we’re off,” James conditions, passing Sirius on his way up the hall and jabbing him in the left side for no reason other than because he could, by Sirius’ calculations.

Sirius kicks his left leg back and thwacks something on James’ person, but the sound is enough that Sirius doesn’t really need to look back for a confirmation. He heads into the room and falters as he finds Remus looking around his room with a calculated stare. “Top drawer,” Sirius says, hanging by the door. 

However Remus might feel about being fully read in that moment, he leans into his curiosity after verbal permission, heading for the dresser. Sirius tries to keep his eyes off the book as Remus lifts it out of the drawer, averting his gaze when he really doesn’t need to see it again, and he doesn’t really even know what to do with the light of his life holding proof of some of the worst parts of it, but then Remus pushes a few quiet gusts of air through his nose that sound a little too much like laughter and Sirius has to know what’s happening. 

Remus looks up and over at him, turns the book on an angle, and showcases the doodle at the top of the book. “Right?” Sirius puts out in a emphatic whisper. “Who taught him how to be that funny?”

“I mean, I have a vague idea,” Remus mentions, turning the page. 

“Check the drawing in the back,” Sirius suggests and Remus heeds his advice, but then Sirius steps into the room and pauses Remus’ shuffling through the book. “Back up a bit.”

Remus follows instructions and soon comes across it, and the seconds that pass between them as Remus stares down at it are impossible for Sirius not to shuffle his feet through, especially once Remus finally looks up at him again, lifting the page with Sirius’ face on it just by Sirius’ actual face with a solemn expression on. “It’s really good,” he says, and Sirius nods, throat sewn shut all over again, but on the other hand, he can’t help but feel like the air in the room has changed some, like it’s thicker than blood to take in.

James sends out a hoot as he comes thundering back through the flat, and hey, it’s sure a good thing that he can’t go anywhere without alerting that he’s on his way via sound waves alone for it snaps Remus into action, making him shove the book back into place and the drawer shut again. Remus speeds over to Sirius’ closet for some reason, but Sirius can’t even question that motive when he needs to find something to make him look busy, and moves toward his luggage.

“Are you sure you got everything?” Remus asks. Sirius looks over his shoulder, finding Remus having a searching glance over Sirius’ closet, and it’s honestly so les affaires that Sirius is honestly really fucking impressed, and Remus impresses him all the time. 

“Yes, dear,” he plays along, lifting his guitar case and hoisting it onto his shoulders as James comes on into the room.

“I call knapsack,” he declares. 

“You get the suitcase,” Sirius returns. “We’ve been lugging stuff around all afternoon.”

“It’s not even one yet, ya dink,” James returns, moving to take the suitcase by the handle and rolling it toward the hall all the same. 

Remus heads for Sirius’ backpack, hoists it onto his right shoulder like he’s avoiding having to commit to putting it fully on only to have to take it off again downstairs, and flattens Sirius with a bright sunshine smile. “I’m really glad you’re bringing the guitar,” he mentions. 

“‘Course,” Sirius returns. “I’m bringing the big guns, you hear me?” 

“I’m hearing,” Remus accepts, leaving a warm peck on Sirius’ lips before heading for the hall. 

“Come on,” James urges from the doorway. 

“What are you so in a hurry over?” Sirius raises, following behind Remus. 

“I thought I’d pick up Lily from work since I’ll be in the area, but she’ll be waiting forever if we dawdle around here,” James returns, pulling the front door open. 

“Oh no, you’re right,” Sirius muses, following James and Remus out of the flat, “it’s not as if she's ever waited for anything before.”

James sends him a huffy _bah_ over his shoulder and lifts the suitcase in his right hand clear off the stairs so he can run it down the three flights down to the ground floor, while Remus and Sirius wander down at slightly more leisurely a pace. James heads down the front path with Sirius’ suitcase rolling behind him, skirts it over behind the car, and calls out to them quite loudly for the two of them being not that far behind him. “You’re going to have to take those in with you.” 

Sirius gives a dry look toward the sky, heading for the passenger seat with some information he didn’t need clarification on. “We’re right here, James,” Remus says for him, “and we figured that; your trunk is the tiniest thing I’ve ever seen. 

“For that, I’d stuff you in it if you could fit,” James returns. 

“Well, I guess you’re shit out of luck, then,” Remus says plainly, opening the door just off of the sidewalk and tossing Sirius’ knapsack in before he slides in behind Sirius’ seat. 

Sirius sticks his guitar case inside the car first, maneuvers himself in behind it, and props it up between his knees after he's sitting comfortably, rolling the window down to get as much of a breeze as he can manage. James finishes loading Sirius’ suitcase into the trunk and heads round to the drivers side, and Remus huffs from the back as James pays little mind to the passing traffic as he slides into the driver’s seat. “You’re going to get flattened one day,” Remus sends him. 

James waves him off with a hearty noise, sticking the key in the ignition. “Here,” he says, passing his phone off on Sirius. “You pick a tune while I steer this baby around.” 

Sirius presses James’ passcode in and thumbs away. “Why’d you come up this direction?” he raises after hitting send.

James spins the wheel, checks half-over his shoulder for a break in traffic, and pulls out of the spot James Potter style: not that smoothly and at an accelerated space to make it in time for the gap. “There was a huge pile up at the intersection and I said ‘no, thank you,’” he offers, cruising down toward the intersection in question. 

Sirius accepts that for the fair answer he feels it is and presses his thumb over _Blinding Lights_ as he spots it, needing some of that right this second, and from the sound of Remus’ charmed noise in back and the echo of James drumming his hands on the steering wheel in celebration, it seems he made the right choice. “Do you want to DJ at the wedding?” James raises. 

“I’ll make you a devastatingly good playlist, but I’m going to be wearing my dancing shoes, thank you,” Sirius chimes. 

“You should, though,” Remus puts in, leaving his stamp of approval. 

Sirius looks to him in his mirror. "It'll just be _Kiss Me_ over and over and over—" 

"Don't you fucking dare," James cuts in, though he got one hell of a beam out of Remus for it, so it was worth it. “I should make a list of songs I do not want to play."

Sirius hums noncommittally. “We’ll see if I follow it.” 

“Like, I’ll literally find you if _Come on Eileen_ comes on, I will come end you,” James manifests. 

“Hell, I’d do it too,” Remus puts in. 

James’ phone chimes from where it’s chilling on Sirius’ lap and Sirius lifts it in question. “Just tell me what it says,” he says, gesturing out the front window of the car. 

“I love that not fucking around with your phone is the one precaution you take while driving,” Remus puts up. 

James turns his head to aim a smooch back at him. “Love you too, sweetie.” 

“Watch the road,” Remus returns, splaying a hand out in between the two front seats and waving it around, and Sirius feels fucking giddy over all this as he thumbs through James’ phone and pulls up the text from Lily. 

“She’s going to be getting out a bit late getting out of there,” Sirius relays, setting the phone down in his lap again. 

James gives a frown for it before an idea dawns on him. “Well, can’t she just come to yours when she’s done?” he asks, aiming it back at Remus though he does show enough courtesy not to turn his head away from the front window. 

Remus gives a light, bemused noise from the back seat. “I mean, yes, but she was trying to get off before one?” he asks. “In what world?”

“She was trying to take a half-day to make up for the double she worked, but clearly something’s keeping her there,” James relays, slowing the car down for a stop. 

“She can come, so long as she doesn’t wander in after four,” Remus raises. “I’d really like to get a jump on errands.” 

“Where are you going?” James asks. 

“Boots,” Sirius supplies, watching a full-sized poodle trot along the sidewalk while they’re idling at a red light. 

“There’s one right near your place,” James puts up. 

“Well, I’m aware,” Remus mentions, “but I’d like to get the errands done before evening at least so I can still have time to pack and turn in at a reasonable hour.” 

James sends out a _pfft_. “You’re not sleeping tonight,” he maintains, making a right as the light changes. "You'll be too nervous." 

“I’m going to try, James, how’s that?” Remus returns. 

“We were up way late last night, he might actually start crashing back there if we don’t keep him entertained,” Sirius raises. 

"Relations as usual," James nods. 

Remus is very suddenly leaning up front and toward James’ left ear to speak over the tunage. “Hey, can we—” 

“Love it when you whisper in my ear like that.” 

”—Stop for coffee real quick?” Remus finishes, not whispering at all. 

James hums distantly. “We sure we want to do that?” he raises. “Piece of Shit Dave’s on.” 

Sirius almost feels his eyes rolling straight to the back in his head. “James, can we find a different name for him, maybe?” he raises. “Like, his name possibly.”

“Why?” James puts up, aghast. “That was _everything._”

“I know it was,” Sirius sends over at him, “but I didn’t know you were all going to start calling him that, so find another nickname or use his, but I don't want that one following him around there.” 

“Can we go back, though?” Remus comes in, a little perturbed by the sounds of it. Sirius turns his head to aim a rather curious look at him and Remus glances back at him and lifts a shoulder idly. “I just want to have a word.” 

Every butterfly living in Sirius’ gut take off in a frenzy while his gape/grin comes on in full display. “Stop. No. Don’t,” he offers distantly. 

James winds the car back through the parking lot of a gas station to get back toward the strip mall. “Do you want backup?” he asks, eyeing Remus sidelong.

Remus perks. “If you’d come loom beside me, I’m sure that’d help.” 

“What if it’s super busy in there and we can’t chat?” James raises, searching for a vacant spot in the lot. 

“Then I’ll tack my warning onto my order or I’ll send it over the bar,” Remus offers. 

Sirius sends out a guttural noise, so proud of this beautiful, exclusively mysterious specimen of a man. James snags a vacant spot and pulls the car into idle, turns the ignition off, and undoes his seat belt, opening his door with a flourish. Sirius does a set of shoulder-shimmies as he unbuckles his own seat belt, certifiably pumped. 

“Stay in the car,” Remus instructs. 

“What?” Sirius sputters. 

Remus gives him a plain smile and slips out the left-hand side door, shutting it behind him. James drops down so that he can see Sirius through his window and Sirius can see his dumb, joyful face. “Stay in the car,” he repeats daintily. 

Sirius dives across the driver’s seat, trying to get a hold of him, but James slides out of reach, leaving Sirius flipping him the bird and repeating _fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou_ after him while James frolics off to catch up with Remus, who’s already across the lot and heading inside the shop. 

This is just rude. Seeing something like Remus vaguely threatening a man on his behalf could single-handedly keep his spirits up at 100% for a solid decade, maybe more; it would be that powerful to witness, but no, he’s banished to the car. Unbelievable. He’s still stewing about it when the boys make their reappearance and he thinks about holding this grudge at least until they get back to Remus’ and maybe even longer, but then Remus turns up by his open window and hovers Sirius’ signature drink in front of him, and Sirius takes it pointedly before Remus moves to sit in back again. 

“And?” Sirius requests, arms folded over his middle. 

James slides in the passenger side, sipping on a fucking frap, yet again, like he’s a fourteen year old who just snuck off campus to get the thing and feels super naughty about it. “He’s not going to report it,” he passes along. 

“How do we know that?” Sirius raises. 

“Because he was quivering behind the bar?” James raises before tossing a thumb back toward Remus. “He did most of the talking—” Sirius looks back between the seats at Remus, who smiles while working on a piece of banana loaf, “—I mostly stood there and made sure to look burly when necessary to drive the point home, but I think I’ve a bit of a crush on your man.” 

“A bit of one,” Sirius returns, sipping off his straw via the right side of his mouth. 

James sticks his hell-drink in his cup holder and reaches to start the car, backing out of the spot and putting them back en route to Remus’ place. “Thing is,” Remus puts in, holding half of his banana loaf in his right hand, “I think what just happened could count as threatening him, so I may have just made it easier for him to lump all of us together in the report should he decide he’s still going to file one.” 

“It was more like intimidation than threatening," James amends, leaning over sideways to have a sip out of his heathen beverage while still piloting the car. 

"Still illegal, James," Remus chimes. 

"It was your idea, Remus," James imitates. 

"I know it was, but I didn't know what else to do," Remus defends. 

“Did he admit he was going to report it?” Sirius asks, though he’d _know_ already if he’d been _permitted_ to join them in their _intimidation tactic_. 

James shakes his head. “He didn’t even let him get to that,” he says, nodding back at Remus. 

Sirius looks round at Remus with an impressed face on. “I wanted him to leave you alone," he puts up.

Sirius faces forward, a wry smile on, and crosses his legs real quick. “What, do you want me to drop you off and just circle the block until you’re finished with him or?” James raises plainly. 

“Well, could you?” Remus pipes up, sporting a prize-winning grin in Sirius’ side-view mirror. 

“Yeah, really take your time with it, mind,” Sirius insists.

“You know what, for that, I’m not going to,” James puts up.

Sirius huffs after a new sip of coffee, pulling a face. “That guy can’t make this for shit,” he lodges, swirling the definitely not light ice floating in his cup. 

“Well, I would have gone over the counter and just made it myself, but I wasn’t sure Will would appreciate me doing that,” Remus raises. 

“Oh, but thinly veiled threats were just fine,” Sirius returns, grinning at Remus in his side-view mirror. 

“Nothing about that was thinly veiled, but OK,” James puts in. “And Will was in back; he didn’t hear a word of it." 

Sirius’ blood boils. “I hate that I will never know what actually went on in there, so you both know.” 

“We just told you what went on in there,” Remus returns, huffing a laugh. 

“It’s not enough, Remus,” Sirius sends to him. "I want to see you defending my very being."

“You’ve seen him fucked off,” James raises, tossing his left thumb back toward Remus. “It was like that, only he had to reign it in because Mary was working the till and the cafe wasn't empty, and Will’s around there somewhere, but he kept that aura about him certainly.” 

Sirius leans forward in his seat and pulls open the glove box with his free hand, shuffling things around in there until he spots the pair of sunglasses typically laying in there, and puts them on, turning away and staring out the window pointedly. “Oh, no,” James puts out gravely. "She's angry." 

“I’m not talking until we get there, and maybe not even then,” Sirius puts it, and James waves him off before reaching for the volume knob, turning it and letting _The Distance_ fill the car, and then Sirius can’t be all that stone-faced.

The spot out front of Remus’ building is blessedly free when they pull up his street and James does a wee cheer-routine with his left hand while pulling the car into the spot with the other. “That’s how it’s done,” he says. 

“Didn’t ask,” Sirius sticks in, undoing his belt and maneuvering himself out of the car.

He stops outside of the door, leaning in to pull on one of the shoulder straps of his guitar case, tugging the thing out behind him and popping the door shut. “Hey, it stopped making that funny noise, didn’t it?“ he raises, tossing a thumb back at the car.

“For a price,” James mentions, lugging Sirius’ suitcase out of the trunk. “Think I might have to trade the old girl in soon enough.”

Remus hums dejectedly. “Not the wagon,” he muses. 

“She’s a money pit,” James commiserates, hoisting Sirius’ suitcase over the edge of the curb and onto the sidewalk. “Can one of you get that?” 

Remus moves to shut the trunk door for him. “Can I come when you’re picking out the next one?” Sirius raises. 

“I was just going to kidnap you and make you come with anyway, so yes,” James returns, rolling the suitcase up the path while the other two follow along with their shares of the load.

“Sweet deal,” Sirius calls it. 

“What are you thinking of getting?” Remus asks. 

James puts out a thoughtful trill. “I’m not sure, really,” he puts up. 

“Oh, please one where we don’t have to crank the windows down manually?” Sirius raises.

“Rolling them down builds character, you lazy lump,” James returns. 

“Wonder where you got that one,” Remus mentions idly. 

“Wouldn’t mind one with cruise control, mind,” James breezes on. 

“That would be disastrous in your hands,” Remus raises.

“Yeah, who's the lazy lump now, hm,” Sirius puts up, moving up ahead of James to get the lobby door open. 

The walk upstairs is filled with hums and haws from the peanut gallery (James) about the weight of Sirius’ trunk. “Listen, I had to pack for all kinds of weather,” Sirius defends.

“Did you, though,” James raises thinly, lagging behind them on the stairs. “Oh, you guys go on, I am the bell boy after all.” 

“You really shouldn’t have said that James,” Remus mentions. “What else are we supposed to call you but the Bell Boy from now?” 

“This is the thanks I get for chauffeuring you around?” James raises. 

“Were you doing anything important over there?” Sirius raises, leading the charge out of the stairwell and down the hall toward Remus’ door. 

“It’s a work day, _Madame,_” James tosses from the back of their single file line. 

"Well, we gave you an excuse to have a break, then, didn’t we,” Sirius raises, stopping at Remus’ door to unlock it with his key.

He pushes the door open and puts the key back in his pocket with a prideful smile on, happy for any excuse to use it even when Remus is right there and could definitely use it himself, but Remus doesn’t seem to mind what with the sunshine smile he has on. “This is gayer than usual,” James mentions, rolling the suitcase in through the door.

“We’re just looking at each other,” Remus sends him, heading in after him. 

“Still the gayest look I ever did see,” James mentions. 

“You’re only pressed because he doesn’t smile at you like that,” Sirius returns, moving into the entryway and shutting the door behind him. 

“Oh," James puts out, having a strange look around the flat. "It’s weird not having her prowling around here.”

“I was just thinking that,” Remus puts up, leaving Sirius’ knapsack on the couch and moving for the kitchen, bringing a glass down from the cupboard about the sink. Sirius leaves his guitar propped up near the linen closet and moves into the main room, flopping back on the couch with his right leg draped over his knapsack while James lingers on the opposite side of the island from Remus.

Remus runs the cold tap run for about thirty seconds before stuffing the glass under it, filling it up in a short time. He shuts the tap, turns on his hell, and moves out of the kitchen while sipping off his water glass, giving James a quizzical look over the brim of his cup. Sirius moves his gaze over to James, finding that he does have an expression on that’s typically reserved for times where he’s pulled a prank and is waiting for the prankee to fall into his trap, and Sirius has a sly glance around the area just in case something's about to pop out, and quickly looks back as James veritably bowls something scarlet coloured across the island at Remus, making him snap to attention and barely manage to catch the thing between his free arm and chest. 

“Jesus Cunt, you madlad,” he sends out before looking down at the unmistakable ring box nestled there. Sirius’ whole chest lights up while Remus looks up real quick, a sunshine smile now aimed over the island at James. “James, I never knew you felt this way.” 

James snorts, putting his hands together wistfully. “Been bursting to ask since we met.” 

“How long have you been holding that one?” Sirius shoots out.

“Hm,” James chimes. “Tuesday?” 

“You shit,” Sirius sends him. 

Remus sets his water glass down on the island to have himself a look inside it before looking back up at James. “I’d refrain from rolling it across an island when you pop the question, but you did good, James.”

Remus’ front door opens and Lily’s distinct voice both rings out in a long-suffering noise and jolts the three of them to attention. Remus speedily pockets the ring box and reaches for his water, sipping it idly as James turns for Lily, moving toward her with his arms out. “No,” Lily says, but James continues toward her. “Don’t, I’m repugnant.”

James stops in front of her. “Excuse?” 

“I smell extensively of espresso roast,” she details.

“Is that supposed to keep me away?” James raises, moving in for the hug.

“Suppose that wouldn’t have, no,” Lily says, relaxing into it. 

Remus and Sirius find each other’s gaze, silently brimming with furor, and Sirius breaks into a lengthy stretch, speaking at the end of it. “They finally let you go?” he puts up. 

“Mhm,” Lily offers, letting go of James and focusing on Remus specifically by aiming a forefinger at him. “I have you down for thirty-five hours of vacation pay while you’re gone.” 

“Shit,” Remus puts out. “That’s more than I even figured I’d get.” 

“It’s in line with your typical work week,” Lily puts up while James wanders around the island to get to the kitchen. 

“I’m not used to even having vacation pay,” Remus says. “I feel a bit spoiled, I won’t lie about it.” 

“Yes, well, this is how the other half lives, dear,” James says simply.

“Oh,” Remus puts up, faux-inspired. “Well, now I know; thanks, James.” 

“No problem, love,” James returns. 

Sirius leans all the way flat on his back to give himself enough traction to roll up to a seating position, and pushes off of the couch with that. “Imma loo it up and we can go?” he raises, tilting his head at Remus. 

Remus nods, heading for his laptop on the island and bringing it out of sleep-mode with a couple of raps on the keyboard. “I’ll email myself the list so I’ll have it on me,” he tacks on.

Sirius offers a thumbs up and heads around the couch while Lily comes in with the questions. “What are we doing, where are we going?”

“Phase three,” Sirius offers unhelpfully, heading into the bathroom. 

“Just have to stop in at Boots and get a few things for the trip,” Remus offers, a little more helpful. “Nothing terribly exciting, but you can come along if you’d like?”

“And hang about watching other people shop?” Lily raises. “I’m in.” 

Sirius snorts, knocking the bathroom door shut behind him. Once done, Lily switches places with Sirius, citing she didn’t think it smart to use the loo at work lest she wind up getting trapped there any longer, and absolutely nobody has objections to that when the second the door’s shut Remus swiftly passes the ring box off to James. The group of four set off on foot toward Boots at Remus’ insistence what with the pharmacy’s proximity to Remus’ abode, and it doesn’t take much to convince mum and dad to comply when overall it doesn’t really make much sense to take the car. 

Remus has his phone out as soon as they’re heading in through the foyer, thumbing through his list, and Sirius grabs a basket while they’re passing the stack of them. “We don’t need to update the cluster package, do we?” he asks.

“Well, I was going to ask you about that,” Remus mentions. “I’ve already divvied out some melatonin to take with us and we’re obviously good on boosts so no need to grab more of those, but do you think getting another mask just for while we’re there would be overkill?”

“Nah,” Sirius says, waving that off. “Why would it be?” 

“Because there are two at yours and two at mine already, and this would make it five masks that we own between the two of us,” Remus illustrates, lifting his free hand plainly with a budding smile on. 

Sirius smirks out a laugh, nodding for it. “OK, might be a tad overkill, then,” he allows. “Can I veto that we take the pink one along with us?” 

Remus works to speak around a growing smile. “You may,” he grants, looking down at his list again. 

Lily gives a throaty trill from behind the two of them. “Look at you and your little list,” she says, prodding Remus’ back. “Bless you.” 

“Quit it,” Remus sends over his shoulder. “I like lists.” 

“I’m going to figure out how cloning’s done and get my hands on a shrink-ray, and once I do I’m going to find a tiny jar to keep you in,” she details, decidedly not quitting it.

“That wouldn’t be strange behaviour at all,” Remus returns. 

“I wouldn’t mind a tiny, portable Remus to chuck things at,” James interjects. 

“Alright, settle down,” Remus instructs. 

Sirius swings around and walks backwards so he can better see James strolling along behind him. “What would you even throw at him?”

“Small coin, trail mix, the bag of trail mix once it’s empty,” James lists mildly.

“Mm, so I need a break and we haven’t even started,” Remus puts in, reaching to tug on Sirius’ left arm and lowering his voice by a huge margin. “I might run and grab some more of the gels, can you go grab the lube. We’re getting to that point and I don’t want to have to shop for it once we’re there, you understand.” 

“Deal,” Sirius returns. Remus nods in thanks and strolls off toward the pharmacy section while Sirius as he heads for aisle four for the wall of lube. 

“Where’s he off to?” James raises. 

“We’ve found liquid gels work quickest for his muscle aches than Tylenol so we’ve switched camps,” Sirius offers. “And I’ve been tasked with essentials.” 

Lily and James don’t seem to question it until they reach the destination, where James lets out a snort. “You run out of it at a frightening pace,” he determines. 

“I don’t find it frightening whatsoever,” Sirius puts in, scanning the supply ahead of him. 

He reaches for their tried and true brand, sticking that in the basket hanging on his left arm, but pauses as he looks over the small array of portable lube options, some small, travel sized squeeze tubes, and that's an idea he’d like to bring to fruition if he can manage it. He takes one of the squeeze tubes off of the rack and pulls a pack o’ condoms off of the next shelf, tossing both in the basket along with their regular brand. 

“Are you going to war, hon?” Lily checks, a bright grin on. 

“It’s an on-the-go bottle,” Sirius describes, feeling as if that’s a fair reasoning.

James reaches into the basket to flick the box of rubbers. “Thought you were well shot of those ages back,” he puts up, openly confused by Sirius’ shopping. 

“Well, y’know what; I’d like to get done in the woods on my well-deserved vacation, thanks you, and this way I won’t have to clean up with a stray leaf,” Sirius returns, pausing short. “Which reminds me we ought to get bug spray while we’re here.” 

“Who says romance is dead?” James raises. 

“Oh, sorry sorry, I’ll say it in way you two would understand,” Sirius prefaces, heading back toward the front where he’s pretty sure he saw a featured display of bug spray and other outdoorsy items, “I’d like to have sex on a common area couch while we’re there and this way we can bang it out and go.” 

James huffs grand while Lily whips Sirius on the right arm. “When are you going to let that go?” she sends him under her breath. “It was one time." 

“That I know of,” Sirius returns, plucking a bottle of bug spray off of the shelf and tossing it into the basket. He heads around James and Lily, glances down the aisle in hopes of spotting Remus, and lo and behold, there he is, wandering up the aisle from the back of the store. “I grabbed bug spray, was that on your list?” 

“Sure was,” Remus insists, heading for them. “They’ll have tons there too, but I figured we’d pick up our own so we’re protected on all fronts.”

“Well, ample supply, then,” Sirius considers. “What’s next, boss?” 

Remus shuffles on his feet, his lips quirking. “Just more travel essentials, nothing exciting anymore,” he offers, beckoning them to come along. He takes the basket off of Sirius’ hands and leads them down toward aisle six where many wire baskets of travel-sized products are arranged by category and has himself a look over the options for mini shampoo bottles. Lily gets distracted by a display of nail polish nearby and lets out a wanton noise, giving out grabby-hands toward it before eyeing the array of colours arranged on the large stand, and Sirius feels compelled to wander over and have a look at the vast supply along with her. 

“I miss you so much,” she muses, waggling her au naturel nails over a few bottles of polish. 

“Are you not allowed to wear it?” Remus asks from up the aisle. 

“No,” Sirius puts up before doing an inspired impression of their district manager, if he does say so himself. “‘And what are you going to do when flecks turn up in a customer’s drinks?’”

“Well, you do tend to stick your fingers straight into the drinks,” Remus says mildly, tossing a bottle of shampoo into his basket.

Sirius tosses out a trill of a laugh, inspecting a vibrant bottle of rouge polish. “And what about it?” he offers, playing along. 

James turns up between Lily and Sirius and leans in to inspect the array of polish. “Well, you ever find yourself in the mood for nails the colour of sun-soaked vomit, you know where to look,” he says decidedly, reaching over their shoulders to lift a bottle of pale green polish so rank Sirius honestly doesn’t know how to handle it. 

“A shame they don’t have you naming the colours, James,” Remus says, now looking for travel soap by the looks of it. James snorts before attempting to set the bottle of polish back on the shelf, but that one knocks into three more, creating a domino effect, and soon the entire shelf is capsized. “Oh, good show.” 

“It was an accident,” James puts out while Sirius and Lily scramble to righten all of the casualties in various stages of mirth. 

“Just, please don’t help us,” Sirius insists, not needing the whole cardboard display to go down next. 

“Hands where we can see them, James,” Remus tacks on in support of that idea. 

“Yes, _dad_,” James sends him, wandering up the aisle the opposite way, likely to create a new kind of chaos some place else.

Lily and Sirius finish with the display soon enough, and James keeps his hands to himself for a good thirty seconds past that at least before an item further down the aisle catches his interest. He strides over to the left-hand side of the aisle, lifts a long, cylindrical object off of the shelf, and studies it with plain confusion lining his features. 

“What even is this?” 

There isn’t even time for one or all of the other three to give out an answer for James drags out a pronounced ‘_ohh,_’ riddled with newfound understanding, and Sirius, pretty certain they’re all about to get treated to a rather lewd demonstration, is not even slightly surprised James lifts it to his mouth, but he is completely surprised when James ends up blowing an outstanding toot through the tube, the noise echoing out through the aisle and likely over to a few others. Remus wasn’t prepared for it either by the looks of it for he immediately heads off down the aisle and takes a fast right, disappearing out of sight while Sirius is a little busy having completely forgotten how the intake of air works as he leans on the display of polish for support, and Lily’s decided that sprawling backwards on the floor and shaking through her mirth is the only thing left she can do just now. 

“Excuse me, miss?” James says, moving to hover over her. “Miss, you’ve fallen; do you need any help?” 

Sirius watches keenly as Lily lifts her hands and blocks her increasingly reddening face, shaking at double-speed through her plight, and slips away, up the aisle in the direction Remus ran off in, feeling all sorts of good about James finding someone so willing to let his antics fly free. He turns up the adjacent aisle, looking left and right for Remus, and spots him studying a shelf down at the other end of aisle two before heading for him. 

Remus either senses him coming or hears his particular foot patters coming, but Sirius does rather hope it’s the former. “How many places collectively has he been tossed out of?” he raises, looking back Sirius’ way. 

“Impossible to say,” he answers, sliding up behind him. He slips his arms around Remus’ front, leaves a sigh against the line of Remus’ left shoulder, and peeks over it at the shelf, finding they’re looking at an array of travel games. 

“You clever lad, you,” Sirius passes along before spotting an option for games that he cannot let slip away, tapping Remus’ stomach erratically. “_Mad libs, mad libs_—” 

Remus puts out a small laugh. “Done,” he says, reaching to lift the book of them off of the shelf. 

Sirius turns his head, pressing his lips to the side of Remus’ neck. “You’re the best.” 

Remus turns his head toward his and leaves a kiss on top of Sirius’ head before a series of exaggerated coos float over to them from down the aisle. Sirius straightens up and looks left, finding James and Lily steps away from them.

James lets out a substantial hoot and pulls the book of mad libs from Remus’ grasp. “Family sized?!” he puts out, having a flip through it. “There’s so many in here.”

Remus plucks it out of James’ hands, leaving it in the basket on his arm. “Exactly,” he says. “We’ve four hours on the road, give or take, I’m just thinking we might need a little something extra to get us there.” 

Sirius feels a jolt of remembrance go up his spine. “I need new earbuds,” he declares. “I’ll meet you right back here, ‘kay?”

Remus nods for it, but his quick double-blink suggests confusion as is. “What happened to yours?” he asks.

“One barely works anymore and then I end up hearing half a tune in one ear and bits and pieces of background conversations I didn’t ask for in the other,” Sirius puts up, backing down the aisle in the vague direction of the electronice. “Two minutes, not even.” 

Sirius heads there, taking a gander over the options, and while none of the ones available are going to hold out for longevity’s sake, they’ll do in a pinch and travelling without a pair would not be a smart move. He picks the one he likes best and works the first of the bunch off of the rod, heading back to the group. They’re exactly where he left them, already filling the first page of Mad Libs out by the looks of it, and Sirius perks at that but perks twice as much when the opening bars of _You Raise Me Up_ swell out through the speaker overhead; he smiles as watches Lily go still, saunters up on her right, and lulls his head to the side to meet her overcome gaze with a wry, intent one of his own.

“Don’t you dare,” she warns. 

“Dare what?” Remus asks, looking up from the book, his pen paused as he glances around at them all for any amount of context.

“They were assigned to perform this back in the program,” James puts forth, mouth twisted up. “Sirius was made to stand up there and sing it as it’s not the heaviest piano tune and he had the best pipes in the class."

“Did a number on that one, if I may just say,” Sirius puts up extremely humbly. 

“You may,” James allows, looking at Remus again. “He maintained at the time that he didn’t even want the song and yet on the day of the performance he went full worship leader on us along with the choir—" Remus takes in a substantial breath there, "—no, I mean that; he stood in front of them to lead the pack, going absolutely ham on it so it was clear that’d been planned behind the scenes, and then he threw his suit jacket off after the bridge ended which was not anything he did in any of the rehearsals, and legend has it you could see Lily’s tears from across the auditorium.” 

Remus gives a sunshine smile, turning to Sirius with an overcome noise. 

Sirius bats his lashes at him easily. “I had to lean in,” he puts up. “And I could probably still bring her to tears in moments.” 

“I’m only human,” she defends, pressing her hands together in a pleading motion toward Sirius who’s definitely still prepared to begin crooning in about ten-ish seconds when the vocals are due to come in. “Not in public, Sirius; don’t.” 

“OK, I won’t,” Sirius says, lifting his hands easily. “We’re done here, then?” 

“I am, yeah,” Remus says, closing the book of Mad Libs and tucking it away in the basket. 

James huffs a laugh. “You made it seem like you had a laundry list to do,” he puts up.

“Earlier on, I did,” Remus mentions, pushing up the aisle toward the front, with the three of them following along, “and I didn’t actually do that; all I said was I wanted to get this done early.” 

“Fine, then I want to get food next,” James instills, 

“We can get food,” Remus says while Sirius takes in a substantial breath beside him. “Only can we—”

Sirius stops in the middle of the aisle and puts a fist up and out ahead of him. “_When I am down—_” 

“_No_,” Lily shoots out, taking off up the aisle. “Meet you out front.” 

Sirius shimmies up the aisle even though he really has no business doing that while the sultry tune plays overhead, but bitch, he’s still got it. James hoots after her, and Remus bumps Sirius’ left hip with his right one, looking quite enthralled by Sirius, if he does say so himself. 

“Did you really get the whole choir in on it?” he asks. 

“Pshh, sure did,” Sirius affirms. “They wanted us to do it like paper cutouts; come on now, if you’re going to do it, fucking commit.” 

“Was this before or after Bohemian?” Remus checks, moving for the open register at self-checkout. 

“Before,” Sirius delivers. “It may or may not have given me the idea for Bohemian in the first place.” 

Remus hoists the basket up onto the counter, sighing profusely as he flashes the bar code on the back of the book of Mad Libs over the scanner and putting it aside for now. “Why did I have to miss either of those performances,” he puts out weakly. “I’d pay to see them—” he cuts off quickly, blinking and reaching into the basket before lifting the box of rubbers with a quizzical look, “—what are you planning?” 

“He’s going to try to get done literally anywhere you’ll have him,” James passes along, hands held leisurely in his trouser pockets. “All over your house, the woods, the water, probably one of the vehicles, if he can swindle it—”

“OK,” Remus cuts in. “No vehicles.” 

Sirius huffs grand. “Live a little,” he says, lifting his hands.

“I do just fine without the fantasy of doing it in either of my parents' vehicles,” Remus returns, scanning the condoms all the same. 

“Interesting thing to note; you’ve no problem with the other ones I just listed,” James mentions. 

“Well, yeah, we’re going on vacation,” Remus says, scanning the condoms and moving onto the next item.

James snorts a big one while Sirius fucking _glows_ on the other side of Remus. “I’ll send you half of this, cool?” he raises, circling his hand around their basket of items he’ll definitely be partaking in, and again he’s got a sneaky suspicion Remus is working real fucking hard to keep Sirius’ spirits up for he doesn’t even argue it once, instead he simply nods, pays for the total with his card, and gives Sirius a bag to hold; turns out, ugly family history rearing its uglier head is all they needed to strike a compromise over the small shopping trips; who knew. 

He’s definitely has a strut going as they leave the shop, but he’s going to be getting some in the woods, and he’ll be working on the car thing; it’ll happen, he just has to manifest it into the universe and pray she’s willing to lob him a solid. They do get on the concept of ordering food once back at Remus’ place, but then it’s a lengthy process of picking what to get that’ll satisfy the four of them — or three, since Remus apparently couldn’t care less what the final decision is when he’s much more focused on lugging their duffel bags out into the main room and divvying out what clothing he’ll be taking on the trip and what he more washed in order to get his hamper back to a decent state.

Once the food arrives, Remus picks at his off and on while focusing more on packing, and in contrast the other three sit on the couch devouring their own portions at their containers on the couch, half-watching Remus sort his clothing and travel essentials into piles and then into his suitcase and travel bags, half-heckling him to pause and remember to eat now and again. 

Eventually though, they’re all nurturing food babies, Remus being the exception as he went a lot slower than them, but now his Remus’ suitcase and knapsack are zipped up and resting beside Sirius’ own luggage, so he looks rather pleased with that order of things. In contrast, both Lily and James seem to be restoring their individual and combined strength in order to make themselves scarce fairly soon and leave the two of them to it, a fact Sirius feels rather grateful for when he is a) zonked, b) about to give birth possibly, and c) would really just like to spend some time just the two of them before he’s got to be concerned with the rest of the Lupin fam. 

Sirius drags himself up and out onto the perch for a post-food cigarette, which does help in regards to the food baby if only for kick-starting his metabolism, but he’ll take feeling less like a buoy. He stands up after putting his cigarette out, catches James and Lily now dragging themselves toward the entryway, and heads back inside right quick, where both Remus and Sirius gather by the door for the goodbyes and good lucks. 

“Thanks for the ride back,” Remus says in final parting, head leaned out of the door before he slips back into the flat, shutting the door behind him and turning back to Sirius with a perfectly Remus smile — genuine and nervous at the precipice of something greater than he can probably even handle right about then, and that’s something Sirius can’t blame him for even slightly. 

Remus lifts his arms, waiting for Sirius to bring it in, and it’s not a long time; Sirius moves in quickly, shutting his eyes and enjoying the feeling of Remus against him. “Sleepy?” he asks. 

“In theory,” Remus puts down. “I’m not sure about practice yet.” 

Sirius hums, putting thought into an option they might both be into. “Can we watch _Gilmore?_” he asks, opening his eyes and leaning back enough to see Remus better. “I know we only just finished really, but—”

“Sure,” Remus returns, quite piqued by the feel of it. “Whereabouts did you want to go in?” 

“Pilot,” Sirius answers straight away, garnering a quizzical smile out of Remus for the decided tone. “It’s a perfect introduction; tells you everything you need to know about them, what you’re in for, it’s got cheesy slapstick, the kinks haven’t been ironed out yet and you can really tell, and—”

“The _Macy Gray_ references, the whiplash from the turn of the century soundtrack in general, the puffy coats, the outfits,” Remus lists. “It’s quite a packaged deal.” 

“It’s like you get me,” Sirius says, smiling up at him before lifting to leave a thank-you kiss on his lips and heading for Remus’ room. “You start her up.” 

Sirius heads for the bed, leaning over it to drag the comforter closer to him, and wraps it around himself while he walks it back out of the room, thinking Remus lucked the fuck out finding this twelve pound cloud of a blanket and that he might even trade Remus something when he leaves for Paris just to get to hold onto this thing; he doesn’t need the leather jacket, and he thinks Remus could benefit more from it anyway. 

Sirius pads out into the main room, rounding the couch where Remus is sitting, pulling it over his head and closing it over himself, looking like the Virgin Mary found a tie dye comforter for a veil. 

“Can I keep this when you leave?” Sirius asks, standing over him. 

Remus looks up from his laptop, blinking at Sirius' words before studying the picture in front of him. “Sure,” he offers, nonplussed. 

“Really?” Sirius checks, looking left then right. “You’re not just saying yes to everything I ask for because I’m a little blue?”

Remus shakes his head no. “I don’t know how I’m going to fit that in my luggage anyway, so I was likely going to have to leave it here and get one once I'm there,” he says, lifting a shoulder. 

He scoots to the left corner of the couch, lays across the length of it facing the laptop screen, and taps his right leg in a quiet beckoning. Sirius moves to wiggle up against him, relishing in Remus’ arms curling around his middle, warm, right, and keeping him from the possibility of falling off the couch; practical and versatile. “I’ll leave you the jacket in exchange,” Sirius offers, tapping the back of Remus’ right hand. “That way we both have something to hang onto while you’re out Frenching around.”

Remus huffs directly over Sirius’ right ear, making him smile so bright. “I’m not going to be Frenching anybody,” he returns. 

Sirius smirks as he reaches out to press the space bar, stating the show from the top. “Deal?” he checks. 

“About the trade or the Frenching?” Remus raises. 

“Both.” Push. 

Pull. “Deal.” 

-

Sirius wakes with a start, blinking his eyes open in the dark and turning his head to find Remus’ kneeling behind him. “Up,” he requests, giving him a wee shake on the right arm. Sirius sends a long-suffering noise to the ceiling. “I made you coffee.”

That helps, it does. The knowledge of where they’re headed helps too, but they have to get there first, and Sirius is still half-asleep and rather uninterested in leaving the warmth of his cocoon just yet. He rolls back onto his left side, though this time he grabs hold of Remus’ wrist and takes it with him as he settles in. 

Remus sighs through his nose behind Sirius. “Fine,” he says, settling in behind him. “I may have jumped the gun a little; you’ve ten minutes to snooze.” 

Sirius smiles minutely for the opportunity, smiles bigger when Remus’ rest his forehead against the back of Sirius’ neck, and lets his eyes fall shut. He can feel puffs of air over the skin of his neck, feels Remus’ chest move every time he breathes in and out, and catches a whiff of mint, feeling rather surrounded by warmth emanating from Remus behind him and the bed beneath them. 

“How did I get here?” 

“Existentially or physically?”

“Can’t tackle the first one without a coffee.” 

“You fell asleep at around ten and I knew your neck would hurt this morning if I let that continue, so I ushered you in here to avoid that,” Remus provides. 

“Good man,” Sirius offers. “Did you sleep well?” 

Remus hums a frank no. “James was right,” he gives up.

“We won’t tell him,” Sirius instills. 

“I can never sleep before a trip,” Remus sighs. “I didn’t sleep a wink the night before I moved here.”

“What did you do instead?” Sirius asks. 

“Read a little, finish the book I was on, lay there thinking,” Remus offers. “I couldn’t shake the feeling I was forgetting something either, but that’s also rather typical of pre-trip me.” 

Sirius drags his thumb back and forth over the inside of the wrist he holds captive. “Did we figure out what it was?”

“Triple-checked; can’t figure it out.”

“You didn’t, then.” 

“Rest assured we’ll find out the moment we get to the station.”

“How long do we have now?” Sirius asks, not looking forward to the getting out of his cocoon part of the morning.

Remus hums vaguely. “Under ten, over five.”

Plenty, but Sirius does have an inkling they’ve more time than Remus allotted in the first place. He groans over the irritation that comes immediately with the knowledge that it’s closer to four am than it is to five.

“I hereby declare this the new witching hour.”

“I’ll be sure to let the right people know of the change.”

“Bless your soul.”

Remus breathes a laugh through his nose, presses a kiss to Sirius’s skin, and Sirius shifts onto his right side instead, facing Remus. He looks much more alert than he should both for such an ungodly hour and someone who’s apparently been awake for sixteen hours and counting, and if Sirius is honest he definitely wouldn’t mind seeing that face mid-orgasm. 

Sirius moves his left arm to drape it over Remus’s right hip, circling his fingertips over the thin layer of cotton covering it. “How much time have we actually got?” 

Remus’s eyes drop to his hand and back up in a moment. “Half an hour,” he admits. 

Sirius blinks at the truth. “You lying fiend.”

“I wanted you to have a chance to eat something,” Remus defends. 

“You’re just writing the smut for me here,” Sirius says, his mouth twisting as he leans in and presses his lips against Remus’ neck. 

“Food,” Remus reiterates, breathing a touch heavier with Sirius’ lips working at his skin, “and please, spare me a protein joke; it’s too early for that.” 

“It’s too early for everything,” Sirius mutters, getting right back to it. 

“Not everything apparently—” Remus tries to put out plainly, but he takes in a harsher breath as Sirius adds teeth to the mix.

Remus lets it go for long enough that Sirius is pulled right out of his concentrated motions, pulling back as Remus gives out a wanton noise. “We don’t have time,” he stresses, though now Sirius would like to report that Remus sounds rather frustrated by it. “Once we’re there we’ll have plenty of time to ourselves, but for now you should eat something.”

Sirius nods, grumbling all the while, and Remus mimics him lazily as he pushes himself back from Sirius and soon off the bed as well. Sirius takes five to recoup, pouting about this development likely the entire time he lays there evening out, and drags himself out of bed to head straight for the coffee. 

He wants to help out, sure he does, but it’s far more entertaining to trade between munching on his cereal and drinking his coffee all while watching Remus putter about the flat making sure everything's in order, and helping would mean no puttering.

Once the bowl’s done, Sirius downs the rest of his coffee, puts his bowl and mug in the sink, and pads through the main room, squeezing past the array of luggage gathered in the entrance way to get to the bathroom. 

Sirius hears the taps in the kitchen running before he starts the shower and ends up spending upwards of a minute staring blankly at the various products in the shower before he remembers the reason he entered the shower was to effectively use it, and then does just that.

He hangs a towel around his waist, perches on the tub to towel out his hair with another, then stands at the mirror to load his toothbrush with paste and goes at it absently. He pauses a moment to pull his damp hair back, and perhaps it’s that he’s not with it enough to do any sort of mental blocking because the flashes happen one after the other without his say in the matter; the speed his head hit the oak table, not a moment’s chance to recover from the blow before his head was dug into it, his inability to comprehend how a woman so bony could manage to keep a sixteen year old trapped between his chair and the table’s edge all while hacking away. 

Sirius blinks back into the dimly lit room, places both his hands on the counter, and meets his eye in the mirror severely. There’ll be no more of this from here on out. 

The door opens and Remus turns up behind him to grab his razor out of the medicine cabinet and Sirius feels his blood run smoother, and God, even with his puttering and fussing about Remus’s presence is vastly necessary. 

“Figured it out,” he says, holding up the razor, and then an appalled sort of yelp comes out of him. Sirius glances at him in the mirror and finds an accusatory stare aimed at him along with Remus’s right hand pointing at a reddened mark on his neck that looks remarkably like a bruise with a row of teeth dragged over it. 

Sirius pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth. “That wasn’t quite the sound you made, but you can try again.”

Remus isn’t having it. “I can’t show up with this.” 

“Oh, hold on,” Sirius says with a wave-off, setting his tooth brush down for an intermission. “I came prepared, you know.”

He has to half-vault, half gymnastic it over Remus’ trunk to get to his own, then sprawls out on the floor, sticks his legs straight out on either side of his suitcase, and zips it open to sift through the netted pouch inside the lining. He finds his concealer after a little hand wiggling, pushes himself to his feet, and maneuvers back through the crowded entrance-way. 

Remus lifts his chin as Sirius gets to him, stretching his neck out so Sirius can pat the spot down and blend the concealer in. “Et voila,” he says, closing the packet. “Now no one will know a thing.” 

He tosses the compact out of the room and lands it on his opened luggage, and Remus gives him a quick peck in thanks and disappears, leaving Sirius to finish brushing his teeth. He’s only finished sticking the brush in its travel container when Remus returns fully clothed and holding his phone to his ear. 

Sirius lets out a sound like someone’s given the wrong answer at a game show and Remus jolts. 

“Absolutely no way,” Sirius says, shaking his head. 

Remus drops the phone away from his mouth. “What?” 

“You can’t wear that,” he puts up.

Remus pauses with his hand halfway pushed through his hair and checks the shirt for a stain that might have gone unnoticed, but when he doesn’t find one he looks more bemused than anything, and that in itself is ridiculous when he’s parading around in the corduroys like that wouldn’t be an issue. 

“You can’t walk around looking like sex on fire and expect me to act natural around your mum and dad of all people, and frankly I'm finding it rude that you’ve even done this," Sirius instills.

Remus shoves his hand over the receiver. “I’m trying to call for a taxi so would you get some clothes on yourself?” he implores. Sirius lifts both hands, heads back to his suitcase, and pulls out the Henley. “Oh, thank you, that’s really just—”

“You did this to yourself, Remus,” he sing-songs. 

He tugs on a pair of pants before slipping on the crowned favourite of his jeans and goes ahead and crouches down to cuff them at the lower calf for good measure, but no one has ever said that he isn’t petty. It’s as amusing as he expects it to be watching Remus glower and tap an unimpressed foot all while politely reciting his address, but mostly it’s hot so Sirius’s plan is all but a misfire for it’s him who ends up being the one adjusting the front of his jeans. Remus doesn’t notice the third prominent limb of his, busy speaking to the operator, but Sirius can’t say he would mind trying for a quickie after such a heated while frustrated gaze, but it would have to be _real quick_ and he doesn’t think he can get _that_ lucky just now. He unzips his suitcase once more, grabs the travel lube he stuffed in there once they brought their Boots haul back and works a condom out of the pack next, stuffing them on his right trouser pocket just in case Remus has a sudden change of heart somewhere along the way, Sirius wouldn't mind that one bit; sometimes a little waiting for it can make their inevitable magnetizing that much hotter. 

Sirius goes for Remus' jumper draped over the back of the couch so he wouldn't forget it and ties it around his hips, feeling a little too warm for it just now but that could change later on and he'd like to have the option available. 

Remus finishes up on the phone, pockets his phone, and moves to start closing the bathroom door. “Taxi’s on the way; if you want to smoke I would do it now,” Remus instructs, a little curt about it if Sirius is honest. 

Remus shuts the door to the bathroom and Sirius delicately heads out onto the perch with that, has himself a think while having one, and decides Remus’ temperamental mood can’t be personal; it’s outside influences coming in, nerves ratcheted up more than his regular default setting, and maybe there’s a little bit of sexual frustration bleeding in there. Fair enough, the lad’s only human; it’s almost imminent that Remus will lighten up once they’ve left the station and can’t feasibly worry about missing their train and can focus on taking out the other stressors one by one from there, but before that can happen there are just too many factors going at one moment for him to let himself relax completely, and this is exactly the time where Sirius needs to not be such a sensitive sack at a time where Remus should be allowed to be it. He continues building himself up as they lug their haul downstairs. Remus’s foot tapping and nail picking while they wait on the curb for the taxi to pull up the are code red: he’s got a lot on his mind, and on top of that, he’s dating a bloke who’s got a thing for pressing time and his buttons just to get a little huffing going, so Sirius keeps quiet as he helps the driver work their suitcases into the trunk, and keeps quiet along the way, slotting his hand in with Remus’ over the middle seat and letting Remus do what he’s just going to do. 

He leans his head back against the headrest of his seat after a while, but he doesn’t close his eyes. It’s too dark out, talk radio is playing up front and that always gets Sirius snoozy, and he’s got a strong feeling he could fall asleep in here if he isn’t careful about it. He stares aimlessly out the window beside him instead, a hazy film falling over his eyes for a time until he’s in a near trance-like state — at least until he quite suddenly recognizes the neighbourhood they’re cruising through, leading to the realization of what route they’re taking to King’s Cross.

He sits up straight, scooting to the edge of his seat. “Hey, can we take another way?” he asks, aiming it up front at the driver. 

“Can’t,” is all he gets. 

Sirius blinks, quite affronted. “Are none of the driveways up ahead good enough for you to pull into and go up a different way?” 

The man splays his hands open over the wheel. “I’m taking you the fastest way, what else do you want?” 

Sirius shoves himself back in his seat, defeated knowing they’re not even four houses away now. He knows he’s being horrible, but his skin’s crawling. He doesn’t want to fucking see those high windows that didn’t have bars on them but may as well have, but shutting his eyes ends up being a bad move when all it rally does is give a nice, dark backdrop for two trips trapped on the inside of those windows to stand out against. 

Remus’ thumb moving back and forth over Sirius’ own is really all that gets him past Grimmauld Place, but he keeps his eyes shut the rest of the way to the station, and there he has to open them to get a look at the total. Remus scoots forward with his card ready to go, and Sirius pulls out his phone and forwards the entire price of the ride to Remus’ account; he doesn’t want to pay the man up front anything right about now, but he doesn’t want Remus out the money for this shithead even more than that. 

Remus walks a step or two ahead of him once they’re rolling their suitcases behind them, leading the way through the revolving doors with his phone already out, his E-tickets at the ready. Now, Sirius did not see this morning’s awful mood paired this week’s horrid turn of events coming when he simply told Remus to hold onto their tickets back in May, it really just had to do with convenience, but he will say one thing: he’s glad he did it when he is simply not in the state to lead them anywhere. 

Remus gets their ticket scanned while Sirius hovers nearby and beckons Sirius along with him to check their baggage, which Sirius cannot wait to fucken do when he’s got his guitar case on his back, his knapsack loop hanging from his left hand and his suitcase rolling along behind him; he could really use a lightening of the load right about now. Along the way there, Sirius treated to a veritable brick house of a man pushing at his back to get through the crowd of too many fucking people ambling about, and Sirius does try to be cool, he really does, but ten seconds of rough brick pushing at his back is ten seconds too many and Sirius whips his head round, finding the culprit in a moment. 

“Could you not be right up my fucking arse?” he snaps, earning himself a scoff and shoulder-check for it as he blasts past Sirius. 

Sirius heads for the man, but feels a hand close around his left wrist and turns his head to find Remus giving him a pleading look. “What?” Sirius retorts. “I’m sorry, but if he’s going to fuck me, the least he could do is give me a cigarette.” 

Remus pulls his lips into a line and turns his head to hide his amusement, and even in his foul mood, Sirius knows that this is funnier than his pride will allow right now. “Come on,” Remus coaxes, leading him toward bag-check and thankfully toward the shortest line of the bunch. “Once you’re free of some of this, more coffee awaits you." 

Sirius grumbles in response, but allows himself to get tugged along since it’s Remus doing the tugging and he’s got such a gentle hold on him as is. Sirius gets in line behind Remus, leans over the protrusion of Remus’ knapsack, and sets his forehead against the back of Remus’ neck, having himself a recharge while automatically moving forward whenever Remus starts to step up. Remus wasn’t wrong; Sirius does feel somewhat better once he just has his knapsack on his back to work with, and the chance for coffee does indeed keep him going in an almost spiritual way; he can hear its call with every step as Remus seeks out their platform first and a free bench second for them to wait on. Remus taps Sirius’ left arm, nodding to a free one down the platform from them, and speed-walks to snag it before someone else does, which doesn’t take much extra speed when Remus’ legs get him most places at a snappy speed as is. 

Sirius stops a few steps from the bench, hoisting his knapsack onto it. “I need life,” he says, free of anything to carry for the moment and quite pleased about it. “Want anything?” 

Remus shakes his head, but Sirius, already backing up the way they came, gives him a Look. “Small black,” he surrenders. 

“Coffee?” Sirius returns, unabashedly shocked and pumped in the same beat. 

“Tea,” Remus sounds out, but his smile gives his away his wry amusement. “Small, please.” 

Sirius swings around and heads for the kiosk with a brisk sense of purpose. He knows he should have seen the Friday morning crowd coming, but he didn’t and hindsight doesn’t make sidestepping pockets of people along the way any more enjoyable by any means. He makes it there without kicking anybody, stares up at the menu board while waiting in line, and by the time it’s his turn he still hasn’t figured out the quickest way to ask for what he wants when he’s got to follow an entire other lingo than the pretentious lingo he’s been having to go by for years now, and decides he can’t do this. 

“I can’t do this,” he tells the barista standing there. 

“That kind of day?” she returns. 

“It’s five in the morning,” he supplies with a lift of his eyebrows. “There’s too many choices.”

“Enough said,” she allows. “Just want something easy, then?”

“I want the motherlode,” he corrects. “Biggest size you’ve got, iced, six pumps or scoops or what have you of whatever your favourite flavour is, I’ll probably like it fine, five shots. Light ice, please.” 

The girl nods, already typing into the till at a speed too fast for him, but at least she’s with-it. “On it.” 

“Small black tea, too,” he adds, pulling his wallet out. 

He pays with his card, dumps a handful of change he’s too tired to bother checking into the tip jar, and makes his way over to wait by the hand-off station, snags himself a straw and it really is a miracle he got the girl who’s on it enough to multitask this early on, fetching Remus’s tea while Sirius’s shots pour and getting back in time to pour the milk in. 

She finishes up with both drinks, sets them on the counter at once, and Sirius finds himself quite impressed by the look of what she concocted for him. He picks up Remus’s tea in one hand and his curious drink in the other and gives a farewell smile. “Thanks, doll,” he offers, turning away from the counter. 

“Don’t call me doll,” she chimes, and Sirius does a quadruple reel, heading back to Remus with enough of a quizzical look on his visage that Remus asks about it straight away. 

“What happened to you?” he asks, reaching for the tea Sirius is mindlessly holding down to him. 

Sirius moves to sit beside him, popping his straw against his right hip to get the paper off of it, and staring at the floor of the platform perplexedly. “I said ‘thanks, doll’ to the barista and she told me not to,” he details, looking up and sideways to Remus now. “Is — is that not — what’s happening, Remus?”

“Not a fan of pet names?” Remus raises. 

“I say ‘doll’ plenty and I’ve never been told to quit it,” Sirius puts up. 

“Well, today might’ve been the day you did, then,” Remus offers, having a trial sip of his tea. “I suppose any name could get grating after a while; Elise hates getting called ‘love.’”

“But I’m not doing it to _be_ a sleaze,” Sirius mentions, one eye narrowed as he looks back at him bemusedly. “It's meant to be endearing; I’m just trying to be nice.” 

Remus nods, swallowing a sip of tea. “And I’m sure the man who called her ‘sugar tits’ the other day thinks he meant well too,” he offers. 

Sirius pauses. “Say that again," he bids. 

“Sugar tits,” Remus repeats. A couple wandering by at that exact moment loom round at them, sending a world of a look their way. Remus sends Sirius a Look while he succumbs to a breathy fit. “Did you plan that?”

“I fucking wish I did,” Sirius insists, wiping at his eyes with his free palm. 

“Well, that’s enough of that,” Remus instills, lifting his tea to his mouth again, reminding Sirius he should try his concoction. 

Sirius does, taking in a breath after he’s done with it and staring off blankly across the platform. “I’ve been reborn,” he states. 

“Why?” Remus asks, not even looking at him; he’s just staring down at his phone like Sirius isn’t going through something wonderful over here. 

“I told her to make me something that would kick my arse and she fucking did,” Sirius says, shaking the ice in his drink. “This thing is fucking powerful.” 

“Well, if it gets you less snarky, I’ll take it,” Remus mentions. 

Sirius sends him a _tch_. “You’ve been snarky with me since the hickey, so whatever, pal.” 

Remus looks sidelong at him with a frown on. “I’m sorry,” he says, but it doesn’t sound woeful or self-loathing or brow-beating himself; it’s just an apology and Sirius doesn’t really want to harp on him for his penchant for apologies just now; what he’d actually rather do is pinpoint when Remus relaxed enough with him just to say it because it’s fair to and not because he’ll explode if he doesn’t, but that might take a bit to track down.

“Me too,” Sirius says, budging Remus’ right arm. “I’m just not good at being decent before nine.” 

“I know it was an early depart to go with," Remus takes on. "I should’ve just picked a later time, but I wanted to make the most of the time we have."

“And that makes sense, I’m just garbage in the morning,” Sirius insists. "Any morning, but especially this one."

Remus leans into Sirius' arm a little. “We’re leaving really late coming back, if that helps any?” he raises.

“It does,” Sirius returns candidly. Remus’ mouth twitches at the frank tone Sirius gave him and Sirius smiles back, swirling his drink in an uppity way. “I’ll be better after this.”

A little jingle blares out of the speakers littered about the platform, and an announcer that Sirius sure can’t understand comes through and speaks gibberish down at them. “That’s us,” Remus chimes, lifting off of the bench. 

“How could you tell?” Sirius demands. 

Remus waggles his phone down at him. “It’s time?” he raises, his eyes quite kind despite taking the mickey out of him. 

Sirius moves off of the bench too, hoisting his backpack off of the bench and half onto his shoulders. “Shit, we really did cut it close, hey?” he raises, following Remus out from the bench a little while their train pulls in. 

“Mhm,” Remus nods, blinking twice at him. “Could have been the reason for my snark.” 

Sirius pushes a musing breath through his nose. “Sorry,” he frowns. 

Remus gives him a plain, imploring look and lifts his right hand to tap Sirius’ cheek with his phone, an interesting maneuver for sure, but his hands are full and it could’ve been Remus’ tea, so he’ll take the phone. “You’re fine,” he allows, nodding ahead to suggest they move ahead and maybe even on from this point of contention, and that is a sentiment Sirius can get behind. 

Once the train, Remus abides by Sirius’ vehement insistence that they snag the back row where they can face backwards and have a blast to themselves along the way, but the prime seating is won by the sheer luck that nobody ahead of them went for it and not by force as Sirius maintained he’d be willing to take it with. There’s some waiting around that Sirius hates for sure, but he’s got Remus and he’s got his concoction to keep him at bay, and it turns out, he’d been right in his presumption that Remus’ mood would rise once the train begins pulling out of the station Remus looks to be a great deal less fidgety than he was, and he would, having nothing left to do but sit and wait to be delivered home; the rest is peanuts. 

Sirius figures out that the air circulating on board may be too chilly for Remus’ liking for Remus pulls his artfully rolled up quilt out of his knapsack, returns Sirius’s amused expression with a little, uppity smile, and places it over his lap with a dignified flourish. Sirius bites the inside of his cheek, not entirely sure he hasn’t made this person up in his head because he is entirely too much, but his smile fades when he realizes where Remus is actually going with this. 

He knows he can’t entirely blame Remus for resting his head against the window and pulling his quilt up over his shoulders in preparation for the siesta he’s clearly seeking out, not when he pretty well pulled an all-nighter, but Sirius is also fucking wired now that The Motherlode has kicked in, is left with his right leg jiggling, and wishing he’d snagged the window seat when he had the chance. 

He watches the city pass by them even if he hasn’t got the window seat, then watches the outskirts, but after a while a collection of trees starts to look like any other collection of trees from the window of a train and he has to admit he’s rather bored with it. He wonders there if he’s just a few ingredients short of enjoying the simplicity of a view, and then that thought leads to the feeling of a bur stuck to the walls of his stomach when he has to wonder if he ever really figured out how to enjoy something like, feeling whimsy. 

James pulled him along when Sirius was younger; saw the spirit and mischievousness inside of him early on, helped cultivate the habit he’s now almost infamous for in finding the oddities and humour in the smallest things, but whimsy? Sirius spent a lot of years shitting on that feeling whenever he saw somebody else wrapped up in it, didn’t trust it, and maybe that’s just who he is — petty, jealous, and too much of a coward to slow down and actually enjoy smaller, quieter moments when they’re so often paired with the feeling of loneliness and that's never been kind to him. He's gotten better with it, someone wandered in and almost made him powerless to it, but Remus — he’s great at whimsy. Yes, there can often be a storm going on inside of him at any given point, that brain fires quicker than Sirius can keep up with sometimes, but Remus knows how to find and enjoy the simplicity that comes with something whimsy; put a warm cuppa in his hands, a quilt over his shoulders, and a book in his lap, and the bloke would be happy as a clam. He falters more often now, his ailment throwing a wrench into that, but when Sirius met him? He was so quick to find even the slightest positive in a day, be it that he caught the bus on time, got the good machines at the laundromat, got a wee bit more in tips that week and could splurge on a medium tea one morning of the next on; hell, he probably learned how to spot the small things by a woman who gets immense joy out of bringing home a gargantuan bath for the birds in her garden.

That might have to be what his background goal should be on this trip, Sirius considers. He's should aim to pay attention, be present, learn how to take comfort in whimsy, or else it'll fly by so quickly and Sirius won't have really sat and enjoyed the smaller stuff, and more importantly than that even, he needs to find a way to take comfort in the quiet.

‘Course, it’ll have to be metaphorically speaking because a lady up at the front of the compartment starts putting out a laugh that’s more like a series of goose honks, so you know what, maybe he’ll try enjoying the quiet some other time; take a rain check on that one. 

Whimsy, though? That he can immerse himself in now, he just needs Remus' jumper on and he needs Remus’ phone so he can peruse his music library and find his studying music; those are _all_ whimsy, in one form or another. He stands to pull the sleeves of the jumper free of his waist, pulls it on over his head and flips his hair out from beneath the collar, and reaches up to bring his knapsack down from the overhead compartment, sitting down again. He freezes just after he’s put it in his lap, realizing there that the last place he knows he saw them was on the coffee table, and that’s where the memory ends. He huffs out a sigh, unzipping his bag to stare his misery in the face, and finds them right there at the top, tied together carefully so they won’t get tangled in the middle of all the commotion. 

Sirius pushes a different sigh out of his nose, frowning as he looks over at sleepy Remus, and leans over the arm rest in between them to press a kiss to his left temple. He sits back again, thinks about where he remembers Remus sticking his phone, hoping he won’t have to go digging in Remus’ trouser pockets for them, and piques as he thinks he saw Remus stick it in his carry-on as they were walking between the seats to get to their spot at the back. He zips his own knapsack back up, sticks it back overhead, and pulls Remus’ down just to get at the front pouch, and his memory serves him well for Remus’ phone is tucked right in there — and at full battery too; parfait, he may as well put the scenery going by to music and now he doesn’t have to feel as bad about knicking his phone for a little while. 

He scrolls around for a while and eventually settles on a revisit of the album _Cleopatra_ for two reasons: Remus bumped this album plenty of times while in the thick of a study-session and sonically speaking, they sound so much like Remus to him now that Remus and _the Lumineers_ are practically one and the same, and if Sirius needs Remus’ sort of energy right about while he can’t get the real kind, then this is the perfect compromise, and two) it seems like the sort of soft whimsy that’ll go rather perfect on a train heading away from the city at eighty miles an hour, and even more apt sitting next to a cozy, sleepy Remus.

Sirius finds himself swept up in it easily, finding the first few tunes fit like a glove for the occasion, and then he gets to the title track of the album, and that is precisely where his brilliant plan goes right to shit. He finds himself staring almost-unblinking out the window, missing just about everything on the outside of it, while he wonders how he never really paid attention to this one enough to know that this might’ve been a terrible idea.

It’s customary for him to swap out lines he doesn’t particularly understand or identify with; he does it with pronouns all the time, but particularly this is true of any old song in his own library that’s meant to pull on heartstrings. He discards what he doesn’t feel close to and simply gathers together all the lines and melodies that he does in order to let the song mean something to him, but this time around, some of the lines he's hearing are horrifyingly _him_ in ways he hates, and it isn't long before he feels like there might as well be a giant, gnarly finger pointed at him, damning him for all of the situations he blindly charged into. 

The tune slows to its end and Sirius remains still, hitting pause to stop the album from continuing. Feeling about as dignified as the muck on the bottom of a boot and more morose than he’s prepared to or even allowed himself to be on a trip this important, and lonelier than he’s felt in a long, long time; the exact opposite of what he was trying to achieve. 

He pulls his earbuds out, turns in his seat and lifts the armrest between them, pocketing Remus’ phone just to get it out of the way and leaning in to plant a myriad of kisses over the side of Remus’ sleepy face. Remus starts awake, making this tiny bemused noise that sounds so close to a cat being woken from a kip, and that really just makes Sirius’ transgression of waking him worth it. Sirius keeps at it, smiling into his kisses now, and he’s smiles even more when Remus turns in more toward him and blinks the bleariness away from his eyes, reaching up with his right hand to pass his thumb over Sirius’ left cheek, studying all corners of Sirius’ face in the span of mere seconds, and Sirius feels so much of the heavy weight on his chest fall away as Remus starts a bout of what Sirius could only describe as the sweetest, sleepiest kisses on this green earth.

Sirius would have to be in a coma not to shift half-way over him, holding Remus’ chin in place as he kisses him slow and steady, drinking in the taste and feeling of a warm cup on a chilly morning and relishing in the most sobering feeling he’s felt all morning.

They hit in and around the ten minute mark before Sirius does wonder how long and far he can keep this going for. It feels like part one of the answer could be a while if the pointed flutter of Remus’ tongue against his says anything about it, and Sirius breaks the kiss, hovering just out of reach of Remus’ lips, and darts his gaze down once, feeling like that is direct enough for Remus to have a fair idea of his intentions, but also early enough that going back to snogging would be a fine fallback plan.

Remus recovers from a few moments of hazy breathing by simply not breathing at all; a good sign possibly, but Sirius could also get jabbed in the stomach any second now, so he braces himself in case this backfires on him. Instead, he’s given the absolute pleasure of watching Remus turn his head and peer over the back of his headrest, scanning the area. Sirius does the same out of instinct and inwardly cheers at there being a good four seats distance between them and the next passenger, and she’s across the aisle and snoring away, so she’s out of the picture, and then he moves onto the rest of the passengers up ahead, finding them all in various states of sleep, reading, podcasting; who knows, but the point he’s focused on is that nobody in this compartment gives a shit about the blokes at the very back of it, and that’s a lovely thought. 

Sirius glances sidelong at Remus, giving him a coy look that’ll pass along the message that he’s up for it if Remus is, and tacks on a quick right eyebrow quirk because Remus has a strong thing for his brows that never truly sleeps, and Sirius would like to report that Remus tugs his lower lips into his mouth and nods profusely, glancing back over his shoulder once more for good measure, it looks. 

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Sirius assures, voice barely above a whisper. 

Remus gives him a specific sort of Look that plainly conveys that Sirius had better keep an eye out, and Sirius kisses him once before straightening up in his own seat, sets the armrest between back down and has a look over his left shoulder again, and with the coast clear as day reaches his right hand out and slides it underneath the edge of Remus’ quilt. 

Remus sits at attention at that and Sirius moves his hand a little closer, keeping his gaze on Remus for any cease and desist warnings, and winds up biting his own lip as Remus shifts his knees further apart. If that wasn’t already incredibly exciting news in its own right, Remus sets his elbows down on both armrests beside him and lifts the quilt up and much closer to his chin, making it seem like he’s just super chilly, that’s it, that’s all. 

Sirius’ skin buzzes as he gets his hand over Remus’ rather rigid cock, giving it a quick cup over his trousers when he just can’t help himself, and lifts his hand to work at the button one-handed, but listen, if he can tie a cherry stem together with nothing but his tongue, his fingers aren’t half bad at smooth operations either and that thing gives way fairly easily. He checks over his shoulder once again to be sure no one’s decided to come wandering down the aisle and with the coast still clear he works the teeth of Remus’ zipper down before Remus drops his hands down below the quilt fort in his lap, doing some of the maneuvering for Sirius, lovely lad he is, and soon he resumes his prior position and Sirius moves his hand over him again, feeling him from root to tip, and breathes out a laugh through his nose when Remus’ attempt at looking casual has him looking like an odd, quilt-covered version of the Thinking Man with the way his eyebrows are knitted together. 

Sirius begins pumping him languidly, not too concerned about any unfortunate noises coming from his companion when Remus can slot right back into silent mode if necessary like it’s programmed in him to do, and in a way it rather was. He can feel the muscles in Remus’ stomach twitch against his wrist as he picks up the pace, not loving the idea of rushing this to the main event, but also understanding that this is going to have to be speedy lest they do get spotted, and it does wonders for his self-esteem this morning just getting to see Remus’ eyes fall closed and his mouth drop open before he balances the quilt’s edge against his nose with his hands, and then this whole picture is fantastic. 

Sirius can see Remus’ knees quivering, feel the muscles over his stomach tense up, hears what he thinks must be Remus’ breathing tightening, but lo and behind, it’s hard to tell with the rattle of the train on the tracks, and that keeps him feeling at ease. He knows they’re headed to the finish line, tosses a quick glance over his shoulder one more time for anything, and when he doesn’t see a soul paying them any mind, he slows his hand to a crawl and slips down in his seat, moving to the ground and lifting the quilt from below to pop his head underneath it, thinking he’ll finish him off this way and they won’t have any sort of mess to worry about getting stuck on this legendary quilt; a win/win. 

Remus has his hands clasped tightly around Sirius’ head the second he starts in on him, fingers tapping erratically over the quilt covering it as his hips almost involuntarily lift out of his seat some, and the rest is up to Sirius, who takes the reigns wholeheartedly and swerves down on his cock at a quick bob that could be very telling if anyone were looking their way, but he’s about ninety percent sure the train just stopped and the goal is to get him there ASAP. 

Release comes quick with Remus nearly curling inward with it; one of his hands leaves Sirius’ head and likely goes straight to Remus’ mouth as a noise guard, and right as Remus is spilling he tightens his legs against the lines of Sirius’ body — involuntary or not, Sirius can’t know, but he likes the feeling he gets from being closed in like this, breathing contentedly as he licks him clean and reaching up and in to tuck him back in before coming out from under the quilt. 

He pushes his hair back, pushes himself up off of the floor, and swivels around to lift into his seat rather than come down into it from above, and aims a bright beam sideways at Remus, legs still parted where Sirius just was and sitting back limp as a noodle in his own seat. He meets Sirius’ gaze soon enough, fights a smile, and pulls his quilt up over his head, leaving a small hole big enough for his peepers to stare out of. 

Sirius dissolves into a blob of human skin, putting out gusts of breathy laughter before a gent with two carry-ons veritably moves into the four-seater across the aisle from theirs and effectively takes their little oasis away from them. Sirius lulls his head back toward Remus, giving a flat, disappointed face, and Remus pulls the quilt down and looks sidelong at him with a frown. 

“I’ll get you back later and it’ll be worth the wait,” he manifests. 

Sirius was one thousand percent fine with this just leading to Remus getting some, but he won’t say no to that. “Deal,” he returns, beaming bright. 

“Now, I made note of where you fell asleep last night,” Remus tacks on, “and I downloaded the next two episodes just in case you might want to continue from where you left off.” 

Sirius presses his lips together, making a face that likely can only be described as heavily overcome, and leans in to press his lips to Remus’ own instead. Remus definitely darts his eyes past Sirius, but he looks back at him much more easily after doing it, so Sirius can't fault him for looking. 

Sirius blinks once. "Oh, here—" 

He pulls Remus’ phone out of his back left pocket where he stuffed it haphazardly, and holds it over the armrest. “What were you doing with that?” Remus asks, breathing an bemused breath through his nose. 

“Watching porn on it,” Sirius delivers. 

“What were you really doing with it?” Remus reiterates. 

“Trying to feel whimsy,” Sirius admits. 

Remus eyes him. “Hm?” 

“I picked one of your albums to let play because you’re the one with the catalogue of whimsy sort of stuff, but it backfired horribly and just made me feel like an empty corridor,” Sirius elaborates. "I should have just went with _Grace;_ I'm a fool." 

Remus blinks, morbidly piqued. “Which one was it?” he asks through vaguely gritted teeth.

“_Cleopatra,_” Sirius supplies. 

“Oh, Cunt; yeah, that’ll do it,” Remus puts up. 

“You study with it on,” Sirius defends. “I figured it would be harmless.”

“Yeah, because I regulated it to study-time only so that I’m too distracted to actually listen to it,” Remus provides. “The first time I did, I just lay in bed like a log for hours afterward; it really gets in there.” 

Sirius watches Remus flutter his left hand around his head. “It really does,” he affirms. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus offers, frowning again. “If I’d have known I would have warned you against it.” 

“I was trying to let you sleep,” Sirius forwards, turning in his seat and leaning against it to speak between the two of them and nobody else. “I just had a weird moment where I realized that I don’t really know how to enjoy whimsy stuff for what they are; like, pretty views of and sunsets and like a, like warm cuppa, and—” 

Remus cuts him off with a frank pfft. “Are we still talking about you?” he checks. “I’ve served you two cuppas in the last forty-eight hours, and I know you like sunsets just fine.”

“Remus,” Sirius implores, pouting for sure. “It’s more that I should be able to stop and admire things and not be go-go-go all the time, but I don’t always know how to do it.”

Remus sits with that for a moment, chewing on his lower lip with a frown on. “OK, I do at times I wish you’d slow down and stop trying to be everywhere at once,” he offers. “And because of that, I’m sure it’s not so easy to spot the things your talking about if you’re too busy going this way for one person and that way for the other, but I don't think it’s all the time or even close to that, and I definitely don’t think it’s that you don’t know how."

Sirius gives him a skeptical frown and Remus gives him a pointed look for it. “I've seen you take enjoyment out of whimsy, many a time; you taught me how to do that more,” he puts down, a smile budding that he won’t let fully form. 

“You always had that in you,” Sirius maintains.

“Alright, but if I did, you ramped it up,” Remus keeps to it. “You planned a whole day date around errands and baking, Sirius; what do you call that?”

Debating Remus is both a fine hobby and a not so fine one when he won’t agree with even a sliver of your point. “I want to be more present in good things when they happen--” 

“You are,” Remus comes in, laying it down flat. “You told me multiple times as I first got to know you that your m.o. is finding something light to balance out the dark, and you backed that up by doing just that, every chance you could; I’m sorry to keep on your anti-you parade, but you know whimsy.”

The timber of Sirius’ jaw is starting to weigh him down, makes it so speaking difficult in general but especially difficult to argue with him. Remus doesn’t really give it much time, however, speaking on in the midst of Sirius’ forced silence. “I can’t even say I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” he presses on, “but I’m seeing a pattern happening here and you keep directly ignoring so much of yourself to make room for what he or they thought of you, and that isn’t fair.” 

“What about this is fair?” Sirius raises, the timber of his jaw weighing him down.

“Not much, so maybe holding off from painting yourself as broken could be the one fair thing in all of this?” Remus raises. “I know you just read an entire slam book dedicated to you and it's jumbling you up, but you’ve come too far to let anyone tell you who you are, but especially any of them.”

Sirius’ nose gets itchy on the inside and his tear ducts aren’t faring well in that area either. “I don’t want to cry on a train,” he instills. 

“Then let’s not,” Remus agrees, “but if you start feeling like that again, I want you to tell me and I’ll try to pull you off of yourself, but if I can’t help right away then I need you to also try and refute some of Reg’s claims with the evidence you have to back it up.”

“Reg didn’t claim that last one,” Sirius confesses. “That was just me.”

“Well, then if it’s really bothering you, let’s make it something we can work on while we’re there, what do you think?” Remus raises. “We could both put in the effort to just sit and be present, make an effort to notice that we’re doing it so you’ve proof that you can slow down and enjoy something small like a view now and again; I know a few places that I’m sure you’ll love.”

“Mm?” Sirius probes, his law finally easing up to allow him to smile. 

“Mhm,” Remus affirms. “For now, though, do you think Stars Hollow might be the sort of whimsy you’re looking for right about now?”

“Just about, yeah,” Sirius allows, feeling love radiating out of his every being. “You really are my favourite."

“You too,” Remus returns, making a wee frown. "We just can't tell else anyone that." 

"Absolutely not," Sirius allows, rubbing at his nose. 

The two of them curl up with the armrest between them pushed up and away and quilt draped over the both of them. Sirius lifts his right thigh higher than his left to provide a stand for Remus’ phone, and since his earbuds are already plugged into it they go ahead and share those too, falling into their pattern of swapping quips back and forth as they continue their screening from where they left off.

The next time the train seems to be slowing down Sirius checks his unoccupied phone and investigates their whereabouts, finding they’re pulling into Cardiff Central. “Cardiff incoming,” he declares. 

“We’re switching off here,” Remus mentions, pulling his earbud out and handing it to Sirius by the wire.

“Is there coffee to be had out there?” Sirius asks, hitting pause on the episode they’re on.

Remus nods, sitting up straight. “There’s a kiosk in there,” he affirms, unplugging Sirius' earbuds and standing up to pocket his phone. “I might sneak into the bathroom real quick, back soon.”

Sirius nods for that, sitting up and tidying their area, folding Remus’ quilt up into a small, portable square, but Remus’ skills shrinking garments down to scale remains unparalleled. He goes ahead and brings his and Remus’ knapsacks down from the overhead compartment, leaves one on each seat, and goes to toss out their empty cups from earlier.

Remus returns to their seats after most of the other passengers on board have begun filing out, but Sirius has never been much of a fan of lining up with a bunch of randoms just to get outside milliseconds quicker than if he’d just waited until the compartment is emptied out to leave it, so he hardly minds waiting for him.

“Sorry sorry,” he says for the wait, reaching for his knapsack. 

“I didn’t mind at all,” Sirius offers, slinging his own knapsack over his right shoulder.

“Well, if you want, to save time you can go sneak a cigarette in while I go get the next fuel up, and then we can find our platform,” Remus raises, aiming it over his shoulder at Sirius as he moves up the aisle toward the exit.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Sirius chants, following him out.

Sirius does wander down to the area where about four other folks are standing around having a puff, and he hangs out a little off to the side, scrolling his phone aimlessly while he waits for Remus to turn up with the coffee.

He’s just finishing up his cigarette when he spots Remus’ viciously alive curls in the crowd and puts it out in the ashtray nearby before weaving through the crowd to get to him, beaming as he reaches out for one of the two to-go cups Remus is carrying.

“Left one,” Remus guides, and Sirius takes that one off his hands. “It’s just your regular drip; I didn’t think it wise to waste time picking between the featured drinks to find one you’d like.”

“Drip’s fine,” Sirius insists, taking a trial sip and tasting an undeniable blonde roast, and this man just knows Sirius’ absolute need for a caffeine kick. “You did good.”

Remus smiles around a sip off his own drink, pointing toward the doors down the way. “I spotted our platform, it’s just in and to the right.”

Sirius nods for it, fluttering his free arm for Remus to lead the way there. They aren’t as lucky with their seating on their next leg of the trip unfortunately and end up having to take a row toward the middle of the train as the back is well-occupied. Remus flaps his quilt out over the both of their laps, leaves his knapsack between his feet, and sifts through it before breaking out the Mad Libs, and Sirius forgets all about their shitty spot in the compartment when this is about to get good.

Remus feels around in his pack for a pencil and settles in again, reaches underneath the quilt to place his left hand over Sirius’ right forearm and begins prompting Sirius. 

“Celebrity.” 

Sirius glances up in thought, moving his hand up to clasp Remus’ underneath the quilt. “The fourth member of _Destiny’s Child_,” he puts up. 

Remus snorts. “Have you got her name offhand or am I to put all that down?” 

“Put that whole thing down,” Sirius instructs.

Remus scrawls the sentence down snorting. “I accidentally got a peek at the sentence that’s in and boy, it’ll be a gem,” he forwards, bringing Sirius’ enticement up several notches before scanning for the next prompt. “A place.”

“Halfway up Big Ben,” Sirius provides.

“Good and specific,” Remus nods, pausing to write it down. “Noun.” 

Sirius takes another few seconds to think. “Time,” he says as if testing the word out on his tongue, then glances at Remus with a wry smile while he’s foolishly writing it down and not seeing his angle here. “As in, the time Rory needed to take in order to step back and get a clearer look at the options she had in front of her.”

Remus flips the pencil around and erases the word he just finished scrawling. “You’re right, the number of a good counsellor is a fine suggestion.” 

It’s done so quick and easy that Sirius almost lets him have it. Almost. “A counsellor wouldn’t have done anything for her,” he maintains.

“That’s a bit of a reach,” Remus returns, looking over at him. “We’ve no way of knowing that, do we?” 

Sirius remains undeterred. “We do, though; she wouldn’t hear anything from Lorelai even, so by that logic who was she going to listen to?” he raises. “She already had a plethora of people inserting their opinions on her own situation—”

Remus clicked his tongue. “Why couldn’t plethora have been your word?”

“—she didn’t need a counsellor coming in to tell her what everyone already else was,” Sirius keeps on. “She needed time and space to find her own reasons for continuing.

Sirius pops his left fist like a gavel on his armrest and Remus eyes him and his hand. “OK, first of all?” he returns, getting Sirius’ stomach whirring.. “Those points you just made don’t automatically lead to that conclusion; we’ve no way of knowing if an academic counsellors help would have helped guide her away from taking one shitty opinion of her so to heart that she’d give up on a, what, fifteen year old dream, and second of all, I cannot believe you’d reignite this today of all days and yet I shouldn’t even be surprised.”

“We were watching it,” Sirius defends. “Of course I’m going to reignite it, now fight me on it.”

Remus levels him with a firm look of warning. “_Adjective,_” he prompts firmly, making it crystal clear they’re taking a recess on the issue until further notice. 

Sirius debates his chances of getting Remus in the bathroom for a quick romp. “Engorged.” 

Remus blinks, his face resetting to an expression of plain amusement, and writes it down. “Verb.”

Sirius sighs over the unfairness of it all, then glances up at the ceiling in thought, he leans his head back against the headrest. “Sparkling,” he puts up, Remus meets Sirius’ side-eye with a quizzical but allowing blink, “much like the silvermoon does.”

Remus presses his lips together, his eyes brightening up substantially as he matches Sirius’s stature as he glances up in thought himself. “Do you suppose fireflies really only dance silvermoon’s sparkling _if_ you’ve struck up a band?” he raises. “It’s just that fireflies have never done that for me, and I wonder if it’s because I never seem to have a band with me when they’re flying around.”

Sirius snorts, his shoulders shaking. “Incredibly fussy performers, fireflies,” he affirms. 

Remus grins. “And from there, does the flair of the band you bring along determine the beauty of the dance?” he adds thoughtfully. 

“It’s the law,” Sirius puts down knowingly. “Bring a two-piece drum and bass band and they’ll wiggle about just fine, but show up with a full big band troupe and you’re into breathtaking territories surely.” 

Remus smirks, ducking his head for a moment. "'Course, I'm sure they just meant it as 'the silvermoon is sparkling' and wanted to fit it into the melody—"

"Where's the fun in analyzing that?" Sirius raises. 

Remus promptly puts out a laugh that garners a man across the aisle from them to whip his head around to aim an entirely frustrated expression their way, reminding Sirius that there are more people in the world besides just the two of them and getting his rustles all jimmied over a thing so lovely as Remus laughing aloud getting a clear mark of disapproval. 

He turns his gaze on the man still eyeing them and gives him his best bedroom eyes, bringing his left forefinger between the two of them. “Are you sensing something happening here, because I definitely am.”

Remus slides down in his seat and squeezes Sirius’ hand in a hidden cry for mercy, but the man promptly faces forward and pretends he never interacted with them at all, so overall Sirius feels it was worth spooking the man just to get him off their backs. 

Sirius turns to look down at Remus, giving him an accomplished smile, and Remus sighs, lifting up to his prior positioning. “Can’t take you anywhere,” he tuts, a reluctant smile on.

“And you love it,” Sirius maintains.

“More and more everyday,” Remus allows, looking down at the open book on his lap. “An event,” he prompts.

Sirius takes in a thoughtful breath. “A bris,” he passes along.

Remus snorts so loud it sounds like it hurt, and Sirius gape/grins as Remus sits forward curls in over the book in his lap and just shakes for a bit, but Sirius isn’t in any rush. Upwards of thirty seconds later Remus lifts out of his curled position and takes a few moments leaning his head back against the headrest of his seat. “I’m terrified of reading this out loud,” he whispers at him.

“I’ll do it,” Sirius offers. 

“Those aren’t the rules.”

“When have I ever cared about those?"

“Quietly, then,” Remus emphasizes. “And there are five more prompts to go.”

“Lay ‘em on me,” Sirius goads.

Remus does, finishing the page off and passing the book over to Sirius, who sets it open in his own laugh and has a glance over the title, clearing his throat. 

“Dinner Time,” he recites powerfully.

“Oh no,” Remus expels, throwing a Hail Mary right quick before Sirius begins reading aloud.

The Mad Libs are enough to see them to Porth station without even checking the time once, but Remus closes the book of Libs and smiles over at Sirius. “This is us,” he forwards.

Sirius perks, looks past Remus to have a glance out the window, and all he sees is green in every direction; a far cry from where they set off from, and his stomach goes for a tumble. “I’m about to explode,” he admits.

“Same, but let’s try to avoid that together,” Remus says, bending to stuff the book in his knapsack, and Sirius likes that bonding sentiment more than he can really even articulate just now. 

Remus handles folding the quilt up into a frankly devastatingly small roll, leaving Sirius blinking wondrously at the finished product. “You’re a wizard.”

“I try,” Remus offers, maneuvering the quilt into his knapsack and zipping the thing up.

Once they’re off the train, they stand around waiting for their luggage to get pulled off of it before they can go too far, and once they’ve everything they brought along with them, they leave the platform, heading into the station. 

They both scan the area and find Lyall Lupin, man, myth, legend, waiting for them at a bench down the way, and Remus calls to him, giving a tiny wave as Lyall looks up and around for the source.

Lyall lifts off of the bench there, heading their way while looking five-times more spry than he did in December and he sure fooled Sirius back then, too. In fact, Sirius couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly Lyall’s ailment would have been, mostly due to the fact that Remus hadn’t shared that tidbit with him yet, but a little to do with the fact that if Sirius squinted he could notice a limp to Lyall’s step. 

Apart from that, Lyall waved off each and every one of Remus and Hope’s intermittent check-ins over whether he needed a break from walking around and Sirius figured it had to be fatigue related, at least until they got back to they got back to Remus’ come evening for a cuppa (tea for the Lupin fam, coffee for Sirius) and Lyall took a seat on the couch, rolled up his right trouser ankle to the calf, and detached his prosthetic foot like it was nothing — and listen, to Lyall, it may very well have felt rudimentary months after surgery and into the rehabilitation process, but Good Cunt, Sirius could really have used a warning. 

Sirius would like to stress that he definitely tried to play it off like it was an action he totally saw coming even slightly, but at the time he was more steamed with Remus for not giving him a single warning about it.

When he looked back on it later on, and certainly since May brought their trip plans into motion, Sirius still can’t help but feel it was a good sign that Lyall felt just that comfortable around him to literally take off the lower half of a limb in his presence and prop his stump up on the arm of the couch to relax — it was either that or he saw Sirius as just another piece of furniture in the room and thus his reaction wouldn’t have mattered either way, but Sirius likes the first option better; has clung to the fact that Lyall looked over at him a few beats later and waved with the prosthetic before leaving it beside him on the couch, and then Sirius got a strong sense this particular ailment wasn’t a terribly sensitive issue. 

All that is to say one thing: Sirius is fucking prepared this time around. He goes for Lyall’s hand when they get to him, shakes it firmly, and tells Lyall just how well he looks because it’s true, but he’s also aiming for home runs here. He’s instantly reminded that Lyall is really just Remus aged up twenty-five years when he promptly chuckles and turns the compliment around on Sirius in record time, and to say that Sirius isn’t eased by that reminder right about now would be one hell of a lie. 

Remus moves in to give Lyall a firm hug, making the same observation as Sirius but with different words, and before long Lyall is batting their compliments away with a proverbial stick, takes each of their carry-ons in his hands, and nods them back the way he apparently came, leading them out of the station and through the parking lot. 

Sirius scans the vehicles ahead, trying to suss out which ride belongs to the Lupin’s, and is certifiably pumped when Lyall makes a beeline toward a honking red pickup, and it’s official; this whole entire family will never cease to amaze Sirius. 

He and Remus get their luggage hauled into the cargo bed, Lyall tosses their carry-ons back there while they’re at it, but Sirius holds onto his guitar for a few beats in hesitation, wondering if this putting it in back would be a convenient move or naive and looking round at Remus for his input. 

“You can put it in the back if you want,” Remus offers, reading his damn mind.

Sirius smiles at Remus and then some more to himself as he heads for the left-hand side to stick it in back, but before he can sit down Lyall announces that guests typically get to sit up front and Sirius will not be arguing with Lyall about anything.

He saunters on up to the passenger seat with a twist of a smile on, then eyes the step-up that one would have to take to get into said truck before watching as Lyall hoists himself up and into the truck without any trouble. Sirius slides into the passenger seat as Lyall settles in beside him; when Remus spoke of him driving again, his face lit up over such a milestone, but seeing Lyall at the wheel in the flesh is a different story.

“Look at you, driving like a champ,” Sirius says, tapping the toes of his shoes on the floor of the car. “Was it tough getting into this thing at first?” 

“Oh, you bet it was,” Lyall returns, starting the car; Bad Moon Rising comes on with the engine, mid-way through playing the station the car must have been left on, and this is just beyond. “I didn’t get to drive this one until very recently even, I had to start back small.” 

“Not for lack of trying, mind,” Remus puts in from the back.

Lyall clears his throat twice pointedly as he pulls out of the parking spot. “Yes, well, I might’ve tried to rush the process a time or two,” he confesses, “but overall I had to settle with Honda while I got back into the swing of it and Hope got to drive this one.” 

“Lucky gal,” Sirius puts up. 

“She almost didn’t want to give it back,” Remus offers. “Said it made her feel tall finally.”

Sirius finds Remus’ gaze in his side-view mirror, at least he thinks what with Remus’ shades sort of making that hard to confirm but he sends him a bright smile for the passing anecdote all the same, just in case he is looking at him. He looks back at Lyall, having a glance over the pedals. 

“How different is it now?” he asks, and when Lyall looks his way Sirius adds a little pedal motion with his feet. 

“Well, I’ve a secret,” Lyall says. “Do you want to know what it is?” 

“Yes, give it,” Sirius prompts. 

“I just don’t break.” 

Sirius gives a knowing sound. “And watch the innocents as they scatter,” he nods. 

Lyall lets out an amused noise, pulling out of the parking spot. “Truthfully, I’m just rather lucky,” he says evenly. “I’ve much more control over the prosthetic since it’s lower down on the leg, but had the cut-off been below the knee or higher I’d have had to take much more time to get used to working with the prosthetic and would have had to put modifications in the car to help with it.”

“Still a champ,” Sirius says, finding it a little jarring that Remus ended up infused with the same tendency to reason away and downplay hard work and perseverance whenever a pat on the back is being given out. Remus asks something, but Sirius can’t register much past his voice while saddled with what his own managed to infuse in him. 

He blinks hard, telling himself no, he can’t keep doing this, and since he can’t turn around and pull Remus into his moment of crisis he’s just going to have to pull himself out of it on his own; he used to be able to do that at little to no trouble and he needs to get back to it.

“Now, Sirius,” Lyall says, pulling him back in, “are you still a caffeine addict?”

Sirius snorts, ducking his head for a moment. “Forever and ever.” 

“Good,” Lyall puts down. “We may not have much by way of glitz and glamour here, but we do happen to have one of your fancy shops if that alright with you.” 

“Do you?” Sirius raises slyly.

“Believe it or not, yes,” Lyall confirms. “Not far either, and I reckon you two will be needing a boost fairly soon and I wouldn't mind one either.” 

Sirius tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear. “You have no idea.”

True to Lyall’s word, the shop is about a five minute’s drive away, and they pull up in the parking lot of a particular chain of coffee shops that looks as if it’s been airlifted out of London and planted in the middle of the valley. 

“We can go grab them, Lyall,” Sirius offers as Lyall unbuckles. 

“Good to keep moving,” Lyall insists. Sirius allows it, but shifts to pull his wallet out so Remus might get the message that he's definitely got this one, but it’s Lyall who calls him out on that one. “Sirius, if you take that out you’ll be riding on the fucking roof.”

Sirius sits with his right hand half-in his pocket, looking left then right. “Take your wallet out,” Remus pipes up, goading him from the backseat. 

Sirius bites his lip and lifts his hands in surrender before glancing in the mirror to give Remus a challenging smile before slipping out his door. Lyall stands up beside the truck, snapping the lock and shutting the door. “You two will have to help me along,” he requests, moving o ‘round the front of the truck. “I’m no good when ordering here.” 

“Oh, I don’t know, then; I’d like to see that,” Remus says, stepping around the back of the back of it. 

Sirius follows Remus’ path, beaming particularly bright when Lyall lets out a too-familiar sounding huff. “Help a man out, would you?” he implores, falling into step with them across the lot.

“I’ll help you, don’t worry,” Remus insists, dropping the airy tone and moving ahead to hold the door open for them.

Inside the place they hang back from the line as Lyall stares up at the menu boards, blinking a lot before he looks down and over toward the hand-off station. “That one there,” Lyall raises, pointing at a Venti cup that a customer is just making off with. “What do they call it here?” 

Remus gestures for a couple to go on ahead of them, then glances at what Lyall is referring to. “Ah, that would be a vent-eye,” he supplies concisely, and Sirius has to breathe out slowly and stare fixedly at the ceiling to keep his laughter in check; what a little punk. “And you don’t want one of those.” 

“I certainly do,” Lyall insists. 

“It’s the size of an oil can, dad,” Remus says. “You won’t finish it.”

“I’ve a long day ahead of me, have to keep sharp,” Lyall maintains.

Remus makes a wan noise. “I guarantee you’ll get halfway to work and decide there’s too much in there and dump it.” 

“We’ll see about that,” Lyall serves him, glancing back up at the menu. “Now, a macchiatie, is that it?” 

“Yes, you’ve got it,” Remus affirms at once. 

“Why do I have a feeling you’re having me on?” Lyall mentions.

Sirius hears nothing but silence, drops his gaze to find Lyall side-eyeing him now, and lets go of his lower lip caught between his teeth, aiming his best reassuring smile while pointedly avoiding Remus’ face altogether else he’ll burst. 

“Make sure to run all your syllables together, too; they love that sort of thing,” Remus tips him off, and Sirius snorts loudly, ducking his head. 

“Keep this up and you’ll be the one riding on the roof,” Lyall warns. 

“Well, that’s a bit cruel when I’ve no upper body strength,” Remus says plainly, and Sirius straightens up and pulls his lips into a firm line for that is one blatant falsehood that he personally has receipts for. “I’d go flying off minute one and then where would you be?” 

“Me with all my problems taken care of,” Lyall gives him. 

Remus himself breaks there, grinning and giving his dad a nudge on the left arm with a closed fist. “Go with something simple,” he says, nodding toward the menu board on their left. “Look, all the common ones are just there, second from the left.” 

“I want what you made me last time, then,” Lyall decides after a scan of it, pulling his card out of his wallet. “You order what you want and stick mine on the end, how’s that?”

“Dad, don’t,” Remus says, pushing down on his hand. “I’ve got it.” 

Lyall casts a glance out the shop window. “It’s a lovely day for a long walk back to the house, isn’t it?” 

Remus clicks his tongue, going for his own wallet. “At least let me use my discount,” he conditions. 

“That’s about all you’re here for,” Lyall nods, and Remus gives a pronounced mhm before stepping up to the till with him. 

Sirius stays behind. The two of them are a regular sitcom, he knew that going into this, and even then he feels the pull over his entire body, this sharp, complicated feeling of wanting what they have and hating that he wants it equally as much as he hates that he never had it; not like this, never his own, always borrowed. 

Remus turns his head as Lyall moves to pay, and then he's crossing the distance between them so quick Sirius hasn’t got the chance to pull his frown up. “What is it?” he says low, not quite a whisper, not quite his normal tone. 

“I — don't even know where to start,” Sirius puts it. 

“You’re pale as a ghost,” Remus insists. “Can I do anything?”

“Remus, no,” Sirius can’t handle this now, hating Remus’s solemn eyes more than he hates the fact he had a father who never spoke to him long enough to playfully haze him. “You two are a lot, in a good way, so don’t change anything just ‘cause I’m here, OK? I just had a weird moment.” 

Remus looks pained for a moment, too long a moment before he starts talking, filling up the spaces and doing more than he even knows. “I’m his — I. I got you your coma drink," he offers, playing with his right thumbnail. "I had to fork over a hefty tip so my conscience wouldn’t suffer, but—“ 

He stops, listless and concerned and openly unsure, that combination where Sirius knows he’s trying and afraid he’s not hitting the mark, "—I feel like I'm doing well with you one moment and horribly messing up in the next." 

"You're not," Sirius says, at once, low down, so Lyall won’t be able to hear it over the sounds of the cafe. “I hate that I can’t kiss you here.” 

Remus’s near-instant switch into quietly touched has Sirius breathing out his nose slowly, content on the other end of it. “Quite the trade for a coffee,” he says, the right side of his mouth turning up before matching Sirius' volume. “We're not too far now." 

Sirius’s head swims, but he’s got to stick his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rein it in as Lyall passes them to get to the condiment bar. “Would help if they gave out lids over there, wouldn’t it?” he quips, trying to set his steaming cup down on the counter without an oopsie.

“Would you like to tell her that?” Remus raises. “I guarantee you you’ll have been the first to make that observation and we want you rocking worlds.” 

Sirius smirks. “Better yet, next time tell her you’d like a short brunette to go,” he suggests candidly. “She’ll melt, trust me.”

Remus aims a bright smile at him while Lyall lets out a put-upon sigh. “This a team effort now?” he says, popping a lid atop his drink. “Can’t trust the pair of you.”

The barista puts Sirius’s drink down on the bar and Sirius wanders over to get it. On the way out Remus leans to hold the door open for his dad once again and Sirius curses his lagging behind for Remus is stealing all his opportunities simply by being Remus. Sirius can’t go round and open Lyall’s door for him, that would be complete overkill, but he needs to keep sharp to spot for his next opportunity before Remus goes and does it for him again.

Lyall jingles his keys when they get back to the truck. “Do you want to have a go?” he asks, looking to Remus, and Sirius crosses his toes in his shoes, quietly celebrating when Remus gives a nod and takes the keys from his dad. 

Sirius sharpens up real quick as Lyall heads for the back. “Hold it, Lyall,” he says pointedly, there’s no way in hell he’s having Lyall squeezing into the backseat. “You take the front seat.”

Sirius tells Lyall to get going after his initial refusal and Lyall gives in one more insistence later. Sirius plops himself in the back and slides into the middle because he’s not missing the chance to see Remus driving, that’s just not happening. Remus resets the rear-view mirror a smidge, turns on the ignition, and pulls out the parking lot. “One thing I never did get used to is parallel parking, so we won’t be doing any of that,” he mentions.

“Ohhh, no,” Sirius denies. “Now you definitely have to let me see you try it.”

“It's because his mum taught him to drive and she hasn’t gotten the hang of it yet either,” Lyall quips. 

Remus gives a laugh and a nod that Sirius has to assume allude to some specificity, but he’s far more into Remus’s driving than inquiring for context. “Your hands are actually at ten and two,” he laughs, dumbfounded. “You aren’t real.” 

Sirius can tell by the restructure of his eyebrows that Remus shoots him a look in the rearview for all of a millisecond before he sets his gaze back out the front window. “And that’s enough out of you.” 

“Oh, no it is not,” Sirius denies. 

"She taught me to drive like this and I got full marks on my driver's test, OK?" Remus combats. “Honestly, you should be grateful for my—” 

Remus cuts off as Sirius reaches up front and tugs down on his elbow just to see something. When he gets Remus’ hand to eight o’clock, Remus shakes his arm free, promptly sets his hand back at ten, and Sirius loses it. Remus huffs and asks Lyall about Zaya, sending a clear message that he’d like to move on.

Sirius lets him have that for now, opens the compartment between the two seats, snooping definitely. “Just inspecting your tune selection, Lyall,” he interjects, holding up a black CD case. 

“Have at her,” Lyall allows before going back in. 

Sirius flips through the case, tuning into the conversation up front now and again, anecdotes about folk in town Sirius only knows by name and anecdotes, and some of those he does get mixed up, so for the most part he keeps flipping through the CDs, at least until his attention 

“I bumped into Edgar and Tom on their way into Howell’s,” Lyall mentions.

Sirius lifts his gaze from Lyall’s copy of Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m. and finds Remus concentrating on making a wide turn onto the highway. Lyall keeps talking, looking altogether oblivious to the significance of the name drop, and it’s no wonder when Remus looks as if they’re discussing a couple of no-names, and Sirius relishes it, feeling like the man who stepped in and righted things. 

“Did you,” Remus says, making the turn.

Sirius lifts his drink and sips off his straw, his gaze back and forth between Lyall and Remus as they go back and forth, not wanting to miss anything.

“Well, apparently they were out and about doing last minute errands for the big move,” Lyall forwards, “only I’d have thought the Cambridge folk would expect attire on the spiffier side, but what do I know, I never went there.” 

Remus glances over at Lyall after a moment, his mouth pulling up on the left side. “No?” he plays along, tilting his head.

“Not to my memory,” Lyall snorts. “In any case, this whole place is bursting about his acceptance and I’ve got to say it’s a little much; I’m halfway to expecting that there’ll be a throne set up on a float going down the main before he’s off, but no matter; I’ve an impressive son of my own and I made that well known.” 

“In the mirror, Sirius watches Remus take his eyes off the road and turn his head right to him this time. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“I certainly did,” Lyall assures a beat later. 

Remus looks back out the front window and asks, resigned, “just how many people are you doing this with?” 

“Anyone with a pair of ears.” 

“No one wants to hear it, dad.”

“Well, that’s too damn bad, isn’t it?” Lyall returns. “Do you think I asked to hear about Cambridge over and over again, but I certainly heard about it from everyone and their grandmother, so I think I’m entitled to some boasting of my own, thank you.” 

Remus huffs grand but leaves it be, veering off of the highway and onto a dirt path, and Sirius stuffs the CD case back in its spot, chuffed at the chance to see the Lupin abode. The driveway is longer than he expects any driveway to be, but it somehow works as they ride up on a house already better than Sirius’ imagination could have ever led it to be: stark white paneling on the exterior, bay windows on the first and second floors with bright yellow awnings hanging over them, a front porch with a plush, almost too-cozy looking chair swing, flowerpots hanging from the porch roof a few feet above over the railings, a dirt road leading up to this place. He’s stepped into a fairy tale; that’s it, that’s the only explanation for it. 

“Now, I won’t be back until six, but your mum will be in shortly after five thereabouts,” Lyall announces as Remus pulls to a stop. He leaning his head back to include Sirius as he keeps going. “Have you two got a plan? You’ll want the full tour, I’d imagine.” 

“Every pothole,” Sirius affirms. 

“We’ll be back for dinner, though,” Remus puts in. “It’s on us, so you keep your cards to yourself, and mum already knows this but if you speak to her before then, remind her that we’re making it and she’s expected to sit tight and let us do it.”

Lyall makes a noise that suggests he doesn’t think that’ll go over well. “I’m going to try, Remus.” 

“That’s all I need,” Remus allows, pulling on the door handle and slipping out of his seat. 

Remus hops down onto the ground and goes round to the cargo bed, Lyall does the same on his side of the truck, though he does go a little slower than Remus, and Sirius drops down to the ground first before reaching into the truck to tug his guitar case out of it.

“Do you need a hand bringing the load in?” Lyall asks, pulling the bed down.

“No no, we’ve got it,” Sirius insists, hoisting the case over his shoulders. He gets two steps toward the father & son duo working their luggage out of the back before stopping still, realizing he forgot his empty cup in there 

”What are you doing there?” Remus asks, amusement in his voice.

“My cup’s just in there,” Sirius explains.

“Oh, I’ll toss them,” Lyall insists, waving Sirius’ off. 

Sirius gestures back at the door he just left from. “I can still do it,” he offers. 

“I can handle a few cups, Sirius,” Lyall returns. 

“Whereas I might need your help here,” Remus says, holding Sirius’ knapsack out to him with a smile. 

Well, he can’t turn down Lyall’s insistence or Remus’ smile, he’s only human. 

With their belongings off of the truck and ready to be brought in, Lyall heads for the driver’s seat to start his actual day. “Thanks for the lift, hey,” Sirius tells him, almost slapping himself for not saying sooner; who is he, a schlub?

“Yeah, thanks dad,” Remus tacks on. “Saved us another fare.”

“Oh, no trouble at all,” Lyall says, getting in behind the wheel. 

“Have a good one,” Remus calls as Lyall starts the truck. 

He gives a wave, does a u-ie in the opposite direction of them and their things, and heads back up the driveway. Once the truck gets about halfway down, Remus turns to Sirius, letting out a long breath. 

“You’re at my house,” he says, lower lip caught between his teeth as an overcome smile threatens to burst. 

“I know,” Sirius says, grinning for him to see if Remus’ll join him. 

Remus does, looking up and at the house ahead of them. “What do you think?” he asks, nudging Sirius’ left arm.

Sirius takes another look at the house they’re about to head into, feels every single butterfly in his stomach fluttering around at once, and forget about him not knowing what whimsy feels like, this is it. 

“It’s perfect.”


	21. 21.

The two of them lift their respective suitcases off of the ground to get them up the porch stairs, wherein Remus fishes for his keys for the front door and Sirius hangs back a bit, brimming with enticement. For a moment he considers trying out the porch swing, but Remus turns the doorknob and pushes the front door open so that’ll have to wait. Sirius sets his gaze on a small foyer in front of the with a little bench on the left and what looks like the door to a closet on the right and a door straight ahead of him, holding the rest of the house out of sight.

Remus rolls his suitcase inside while Sirius waits on the welcome mat, figuring there isn’t quite enough room in there for the both of them and their respective luggage without someone or something ending up squashed up against a wall.

Remus looks around for him, blatantly confused for a moment before he works it out. “Oh, sor— I’ll move in more,” he offers, footing his shoes off quickly.

“I heard that correction,” Sirius puts up, quite psyched about it. 

Remus tosses a pointed smile over his shoulder as he leaves his shoes side by side on the mat in the left corner alongside with a few other pairs on it. “We don’t usually have so much happening in the entryway,” he offers.

“I’m in no rush,” Sirius puts up, and really, he’s just happy to be here. 

“Still, it might be on to let you in,” Remus says, moving toward the second door in front of them and reaching his free hand toward a diamond-shaped doorknob. 

“A diamond,” Sirius observes, dainty about it.

“It is not real,” Remus passes along, turning it to open the door. 

Sirius huffs. “And I was going to make off with it in the night, too,” he says plainly, but then the hallway ahead of them takes up all of his curiosity. Remus brings his suitcase into the hall and stops it off to the right side of the doorway, giving him a view of a long hallway with what looks like a makeshift work area halfway down it with a dark, wooden desks fitted into a little nook by another cutesy windowsill, and beyond that, a dining room by the looks of it at the far end of the hall. 

“Coming in?” Remus checks, smiling over at him as he takes his knapsack off. 

Sirius nods emphatically and moves inside, footing his shoes off and pushing them over beside Remus’ with his right foot, and looks up again, returning Remus’ smile with a grin and rolling his suitcase in behind him. “Are you going to give me a tour?” he raises. “Say yes.” 

“Yes,” Remus returns, his smile shifting into a wry one. “So, this is my entryway; I tripped coming in here when I was about seven and busted my lip open, so I daresay we’ve had our share of disagreements.” 

Sirius takes in a righteous breath. “I’ll be blowing the whole thing up very shortly, then,” he decides, bringing his luggage out into the hall beside Remus’ things. 

Remus smirks there. “Not necessary, but thank you for the continued support.”

Sirius glances down at the pale green carpet that starts from the very spot where the foyer ends and travels out down the hall as far as his eyes can see and lifts the straps of his guitar case off of his shoulders, leaving it propped up against his suitcase. “Carpet,” he puts up cheerfully, dancing his bare feet over it.

Remus smirks, avidly watching Sirius’ antics. “Wall to wall, with the exception of a few rooms,” Remus tacks on.

“Which ones?” Sirius asks. 

“The bathroom, den, and kitchen down here, the rooms upstairs,” Remus lists. “It goes up the stairs and into the hall, but enjoy it while it lasts; my mum's been talking about taking it out lately.” 

Sirius makes a soft, wounded noise. “It’s so soft though,” he puts up, wiggling his bare toes on it.

“It is, and I tried to remind her of that, but it’s a lot older than it looks and vacuuming on the stairs is quite the job,” Remus mentions. 

“How old is it?” Sirius asks.

“I believe my mum has said she was just a kid when it was put in, so my grandparents must have laid it down in the late '70s, around there somewhere,” Remus supplies. 

Sirius gives an enticed hum. “A retro carpet,” he dubs it, leaning the guitar up against his suitcase. “Now it must stay.” 

“I’ll tell her that’s where we stand on it and we’ll see where that gets us,” Remus decides, taking off his sunglasses and leaving his sunglasses atop his own suitcase. 

Sirius celebrates both that sentiment and him being completely hands-free by raising his arms in a moment of rejoice. “Lead the way, boss,” he says, before realizing he may be celebrating his free hands a little too soon. “Do we need to move our stuff in more?”

Remus looks over it, shaking his head. “They’ve both headed to work, so it won’t really be putting anyone out if we leave it here for a bit,” he says, moving up the hall.

Sirius follows him as he makes a quick left turn, leading them through a high, open archway and into a quaint sitting room. “This is the parlour.” 

“Fuck off,” Sirius huffs at him, smiling away.

His gaze darts all around, taking in everything he can manage to in the span of seconds; the pale green wallpaper to match the carpeting, the dark chocolate coloured and extremely plush looking couch his right, the fireplace & mantelpiece across the room from them that’s much more understated than it is a major statement piece like the one in Sirius’ house had been, the black leather recliner over in the corner on their left by the bay window and perched near a little sound system & record player set-up, and if Sirius leans over a little to the right he can spot a few crates of records seemingly tucked behind the armchair that he will be having a look through as soon as he can make it happen, and to the left of the archway, the piano Sirius had previously been made aware of.

He’s got a talking point to every detail to this room and falters for a moment, unsure of which one to start with, and settles with leaning over the side of the piano and laying his right forefinger on one solid key, sending a blunt note through the room. 

Remus takes in a charmed noise. “I’ve chills,” he quips. 

“You _are_ incredibly easy,” Sirius offers circumstantially, looking over at the mantel again, and that’s got a series of picture frames lined up along it and that’s where Sirius ends up going next. 

“Oh, you know what, you really don’t need to—” Remus starts, but he gets drowned out by Sirius’ bright trill as he picks up the first frame from the left, a picture of a young Hope sitting on the very couch in this here sitting room with a wee Remus dozing against her left hip and a massive sheepdog laying over Remus' legs. 

“How old were you?” he demands, shaking the frame at Remus, who eyes his antics with a sheepish smile while hanging back by the archway.

“Two, almost three?” Remus offers sheepishly. “Somewhere around there, I was at least walking and talking.”

Sirius‘ chest area nearly implodes. “Who’s dog?” he asks, putting the frame to his chest for a gentle hug.

“My granny’s,” Remus relays, brightening more. “His name was Trooper.” 

Sirius takes in a heavy breath, loving that detail. “You’re so little, and he’s so big.”

“He was something like ten by then and quite subdued, really good introduction to a dog honestly,” Remus offers. “He really took to me, used to follow me around like my shadow.”

Sirius pouts lovingly at the photo before setting the frame back on the mantel and moving in to have a look at the others. “Try the couch,” Remus suggests, nodding toward it, and Sirius looks back over at him. “You’ll want to, it’s disgustingly soft.”

Sirius takes to a lunge at it, landing on his front and finding the couch something more like a cloud once he sinks into the cushions. “I live here now,” he decides, looking over at Remus with a bright smile.

"I'll bring all your meals here," Remus plays along.

Sirius nods toward the armchair in the corner. “That Lyall’s spot?” he raises.

Remus blinks, looking over that way. “One of them definitely,” he nods, looking back at him. “He can be found just about anywhere in this place, but he liked the idea of putting his setup in this room because of the window and the view out front, and I think without it in here the room would feel a little too stuffy, if that makes any sense.” 

Sirius nods, getting that point quite well but also for the fact that Remus is giving his best foot forward here. “Yeah,” he offers. “I can tell it’s a sitting room ‘course, but it doesn’t give me a ‘don’t you dare put your drink directly on that table, young man,’ vibe and that I appreciate.” 

Remus shakes his head, a budding smile on his lips. “We don’t really use coasters even,” he passes along, lifting a forefinger to his mouth like it’s a shameful secret. “We’ve some in the end table just there, but do you think we ever remember to use them?” 

Sirius pushes an easy laugh out. “Didn’t take you for the sort, myself,” he passes along, lifting off of the couch and heading over to him. “Can we pause quickly so I can expel every one of the three coffees that’re in me?” 

Remus perks up, nodding. “Sure, there’s one down here,” he says, turning left out of the sitting room and down the hall. 

Sirius follows along behind him, having another, better look over the nook in the hall as they pass it; getting a further glimpse of a three-by-three set of wooden cubbies filled with yarn of all colours and sizes sits between the desk he spotted earlier and a sewing machine that's mounted on a small wooden table adjacent to the desk, all three of the fixtures tucked into the little spot. “Love this,” he says, circling his hands around the crafty area. 

Remus brightens right up with that so it’s even better that Sirius brought it up, as far as he's concerned. “I do, too,” he says, stopping to give the area its dues. “My granny was a seamstress and this was her little work area when she'd work on stuff for her clients, but my mum’s slowly moved into the spot and added to it, as you can probably see from the extreme amount of yarn.”

Sirius nods emphatically for it. “Does she sew, too?” he asks, gesturing toward the sewing machine.

Remus hums noncommittally, but his lips are quirking at the sides. “So, she absolutely can and she’ll tell you she’s not very good at it, but between you and me, she’s got a hell of a knack for it,” he supplies, smiling wryly now, "but she picked up knitting in my teens to give herself something to do while waiting around the hospital with and for my dad and she’s leaned more into that in recent years, and very recently she’s been all about gardening, as you’ve maybe seen.”

“Why yes, yes I have,” Sirius allows keenly, having a further inspection of the area and taking in a large gasp, padding full speed ahead at a clunky, shiny, and unfathomably red rotary phone on the desk. “Are you fucking _kidding me_?” he sends out, flying his hands toward it. “Stop, I’m heaving.”

Remus ducks his head through a laugh, shaking his head. “There’s actually two of those,” he passes along. “That one and the white one in the kitchen, but that one’s mounted on the wall.”

“Were these here already or is this just your mum?” Sirius checks, smiling as he gives the dial a spin with his right forefinger. 

Remus lets out a weighted sigh there. “So, it's a bit of a long story, but the short of it is that it's sort of both those things," he offers. "My mum really liked the home she grew up in and the way the rooms looked and felt, so while we've added to them and upgraded some things, you’ll see that there’s been a collective effort to keep the rooms largely as they were — and to an interesting degree for some of them, I'm sure you'll feel soon."

Sirius takes in a long breath, brimming with fervor. “I’m shaking.”

“Well, the loo’s over this way, then,” Remus lends to him, turning left and disappearing round a corner. 

“With excitement, Remus,” Sirius sends after him, rounding the bend in the hall and taking a sweeping glance up the staircase to the second floor, but the thing switches directions after a small landing so Sirius can’t see where the stairs leave off upstairs. 

Remus veers off a little to the right, heading for a door just off of the staircase and opening it by turning another diamond shaped door knob. “What a sneaky bathroom,” Sirius puts up. “I don’t know why now, but I would have figured that was a closet.”

“There’s one in there they use for linens and really just anything they don’t want to keep in the front closet” Remus says, moving out of the way of the door and fluttering a hand for Sirius to have at it. 

Sirius heads in past him, looking up and around at the bathroom he ignored for a good snooping, finding the theme to the room is quite evidently roses: off-white wallpapering that’s got about a bajillion little roses for the trim, a rouge, opaque shower curtain hanging over the tub, and some equally as rouge hand towels to match, a small, stained glass window with, you guessed it, a rose on it that casts a reddish tint over the room. He doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him, strolls over to the toilet and unzips, and looks up and around some more.

“Kind of love this?” he raises. 

“The bathroom?” Remus puts up from the hall, amusement lining in his voice. 

“The aesthetic, Remus,” Sirius chimes. “Very, uhm: ‘old lady sure likes roses a lot.’” 

“My granny really did, though,” Remus puts in, moving to stand in the doorway.

“I like that you guys kept it as is though,” Sirius offers, tucking himself back in and pushing down on the flusher. 

“Just you wait,” Remus returns. "That's the tip of the iceberg."

Sirius grins with anticipation as he moves to the sink, pushing on the nozzle of liquid hand soap that's indeed also red but with silvery shimmer to it, and leaning down to take a whiff of the scent while he washes his hands. “Ooh-hoo,” he trills, blinking wondrously at the scent filling his nostrils. “Your house passed the test, so you know.” 

“Which one?” Remus asks. 

“The house test,” he relays. “Any time I‘d go over to mates’ houses for the first time as a kid, I’d judge their homes based on a scale of one to ten, solely the scent and presentation of the hand soap in the bathroom and I still find myself doing it in new places."

Remus pushes a breathy laugh through his nose. “Odd maybe in general, but not for you somehow?” he returns.

“Yours gets a nine out of ten, easy,” Sirius passes along, patting his hands down with the hand towel hanging nearby.

“Well, thank you,” Remus accepts, his lips quirking. “I did not pick it, but I’ll let my mum know we passed the test because of her.” 

“You’d better,” Sirius returns, heading back toward him. 

Remus’ smile moves over to the wry side of things, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Did you judge my flat based on my hand soap?” he checks.

“I sure fucking did,” Sirius affirms. “Toasted chai? Goodbye, world; ten out of ten.” 

Remus breathes a laugh through his nose. “I think you might’ve just had a thing for me so the score would have been fixed already," he surmises.

“Oh, yeah?” Sirius returns. “Well, so you know, Lily’s place is technically in the lead because the soap the bathroom downstairs literally makes my knees weak; fifteen out of ten easily, but I have not told her that because humility is important to have.” 

Remus coughs out a laugh, turning from the doorway. “Oh?” 

“Mhm,” Sirius affirms, barely holding in a laugh as he follows him toward the door. Before leaving the room however, he veers off to open another diamond-shaped door knob, having a snoop inside the linen closet and then blinking as he finds there sure are a few shelves on his right with folded towels on them, but the closet stretches further down than he’d been expecting. He peers down ahead of him and moves in past the shelves on his right with various folded linens stored on them, wandering further into the closet and finding it appears to bend to the left.

Sirius very much makes that left, moving into near darkness. He blinks intensely to adjust to the difference, bumps face-first into something, and after slapping his hands around in the darkness a bunch he finds out it was a hanging light bulb that attacked him. “A light bulb hit me in the face,” he passes along, trying to feel for a switch.

Remus gives a bright laugh from the bathroom. “Woops, I should have warned you, that one hangs low.”

Sirius thinks he feels a chain hanging from the fixture he’s dealing with and pauses with his right hand ready to pull on it. “Remus, if something happens to me back here, I did love you,” he calls out.

“Well, you as well, but it's just your regular storage room,” Remus sends back, incredibly amused. 

Sirius pulls on a chain, sparking the bulb to life, and illuminating a room under the stairs that’s got a bunch of heavy winter coats hanging from it and a metropolis of boxes surrounding him. “OK fine, it's just a room, but whoever designed this house had a great vision for utilizing space,” he says, pulling on the chain to turn the bulb off and heading back up the tunnel. 

“The linen closet was there when my grandparents bought the house, but apparently my grandad knocked the wall out and added more space underneath the stairs because the front closet is a bit of a joke in fairness,” Remus offers, hanging out by the doorway. “He was quite the busybody and ridiculously good at carpentry so there’s more where that came from.” 

Sirius shimmies past the linen shelves to reach him. “Where to next?” 

Remus brings his left arm back toward him, setting his hand over Sirius’ back to lead him along and Sirius has to say he appreciates the warmth of the method used here. “The dining room’s right this way, sir,” he raises in a lofty, borderline Jeeves voice, gliding along the floor at a leisurely pace.

Sirius breaks into a hearty chortle as Remus guides him back toward the hall, pretending he’s got a glass of wine to swirl with him. “‘Scuse me while I take a moment to sip my glass of _Domaine Romanee-Conti,_” he hoity-toits, now pretending he’s doing just that. “Why, yes, quite.” 

Remus smirks. “Is that a real one?” he checks.

“Oh, it sure is,” Sirius assures. “I was made to attend many a tasting in my youth; I know my fancy wines.” 

Remus takes a bit of a reel there. “You were?” he asks before context seems to dawn on him, giving a nod of understanding. “Right, French.”

“How could you forget?” Sirius tosses at him, faux-offended.

Remus huffs a laugh. “I forgot that they just don’t have a specific age to hit,” he defends.

Sirius hums to affirm. “Mhm, they don’t, and as far as the Blacks were concerned, once you hit twelve you’re obligated to begin refining your palate, and you’d be tested on you on your ability to name the notes you were tasting at family gatherings — no no, I’m not even exaggerating here,” he tacks on after seeing Remus’ sour expression. “And at one of the tastings, I think I was like, sixteen, seventeen? Somewhere around there, and the officiant served a bottle of '72 Romanee-Conti that hit — brace yourself — a whopping twelve thousand pounds at retail price.” 

Remus makes a sound like he’s been socked in the gut, but knowing him, even with the warning he can only brace himself so much. “It had better have had all of life’s answers at the bottom of that bottle,” he puts up, leading Sirius through another open archway to get into the dining room.

“Well, I can tell you right now, it didn’t,” Sirius assures. “Tasted like arse too, and not good arse either.” 

“Well, that’s—” Remus starts, but a breathy laugh takes him over. “Poetic as ever.”

“That’s really all I’ve got going for me — well, that and this room; look at it,” Sirius puts out, flying both his hands around while standing in front of the dark oak table in the center of the room.

Remus can barely speak around the laugh he’s trying to hold in, but he manages. “I mean, I’ve seen it before.”

Sirius waves him off with a pronounced _pfft_ and veers off toward two china cabinets along the wall on the right-hand side of the room, looking to snoop. He stops in front of the first, peering in through the windows on the doors and finds that little trinkets are filling up every spare inch of the glass shelves on the inside. 

“Oho, you’re a tchotchke family, too, I see,” he raises.

“Oh, sure are,” Remus allows. “No gargoyles, I’m afraid.” 

“Even better,” Sirius returns, smiling wryly.

“There’s a little music box in there,” Remus raises, coming in behind Sirius to point at it from the outside side of the glass doors, “and if you turn the crank it plays this 8-bit version of _Hey Jude_. Not a remarkable treasure, but I used to crank it a lot when I was little.” 

“I—” Sirius starts, looking round at Remus, “—this place is like, already _just_ as indescribably wholesome as you are; I want to lay on the floor and give myself over to it.” Remus gives a breathy laugh through his nose, moving his arms around Sirius’ middle for a quick squeeze and leaving a kiss on the nape of Sirius’ neck. Sirius’ face warms up in record time as he looks on to the second cabinet, noting a set of china inside. “How often are those used?” 

“Not even at Christmas,” Remus divulges, slipping his hands out from around Sirius and heading around the far end of the table. “Come on, we’re not nearly done yet.”

Sirius looks round as Remus gestures toward another open archway on the left-hand side of the room, across the table and a little over to the left from where Sirius is. “The archways are a bit of a theme here, I’m seeing,” he raises. 

“Most rooms on this floor connect one way or another,” Remus offers. “The kitchen’s in here, and you might want to brace yourself this time because it’s a lot.” 

Sirius rounds the table immediately, already pumped beyond belief, and follows Remus into a bright white walled kitchen where he stops short, completely arrested. He blinks over at yet another cutesy windowsill with yellow curtains hanging from it and a small, archaic radio tucked into the right-hand corner of the windowsill, blinks down at the white tiled floor with little yellow flecks peppered in, over to a white fridge on the left side of the room and an equally as white stove straight across from it on the far right of the room, and finally, setting his gaze on a plasticine covered sea-foam green table-and-four-chair set in the center of it that could easily have been released in a ‘73 kitchen showroom. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he puts out, looking directly at Remus for an explanation for this but getting a circumstantial smile for it and not much else. “The aesthetic — it’s off the charts — I need to scream.” 

“Do what you must, but I’m honestly just glad you don’t find it extremely bright and showy,” Remus admits, budging on Sirius’ left hip. 

“I like this better than my own kitchen, and I love my kitchen,” Sirius insists, having a glance over the white, L shaped counter against the far wall, going from one side of the room past the double-sink underneath the windowsill and stopping just beside the stove. “Lots of counter space, hey?” 

“Oh yeah, that’s my mum’s favourite part about it,” Remus puts in distractedly whilst having a quizzical look around. “There’s usually a lot more out on the counters, but they could have wanted to spiff the place up for you; I really don’t know, but it’s a bit jarring.” 

Sirius snorts. “They’ve seen where I live,” he puts out there, leaning in to leave his forearms resting on the table. 

Remus gives a laugh through his nose as he wanders around the right side of the table to have a look through the cupboards below the counter, starting with the first one on the right, just by the stove. “Yes, but even you two tidied for the sake of your guests,” he mentions. “I’m just trying to figure out where they might’ve stuffed the coffee pot.”

“You’re really setting me up for success here,” Sirius offers, grinning at Remus’ back.

“Well, I’d just like you to know where it is,” Remus supplies, moving onto the next cupboard. “Oh, it’s in here; so you may absolutely use it if you wake up ahead of me and want to make some and there isn’t already a pot going.”

Sirius stays where he is, though he leans in to have a look inside it from the table, seeing a black percolator beside a white microwave on one of the shelves. “Love that it’s the lone thing in here that’s black,” he puts in, gesturing his hands freely round at this white, yellow, and sea-foam coordination in the room. 

Remus gives a light trill in his throat, smiling for it with a sheepish smile on. “She got that years back when the white one died on us, and apparently it was either a red one or a black one, and I remember her coming home and saying she thought red would be a bit off-putting with everything else happening in here,” he supplies, shutting the cupboard up and having another glance around the room. 

He perks up and moves for a door just to the right of the fridge. “The basement’s down here,” he says, gesturing down a flight of stairs. “That's where the washer and dryer are if for some reason you trip in mud, or you cum on something you’d like to wash sooner than later.” 

Sirius tosses out a sudden bark. “So thoughtful.” 

“Mhm, I try to be,” Remus chimes, heading down the stairs with Sirius in tow. 

There’s a landing near the bottom where three more steps veer to the left and take you out to the concrete floor, and while Remus takes a seat with his legs extended over those final three steps, Sirius moves further into the room, having a look around. He glances over the floor some more, spots a storm drain in the center of it, the washer and dryer side by side over on the opposite end of the room from where the stairs leave off. There’s a tiny window above the machines and a deep sink in the right corner of the room, and another lone bulb hanging from the low ceiling that’s got a little chain hanging from it. He reaches up to tug on it, turns the bulb on, off again, swivells around to look at Remus just sitting there with his legs crossed at the ankle, and pushes a circumstantial into his cheeks before letting it puff out freely. 

“This is the stuff of nightmares,” he declares. 

Remus huffs a laugh from where he’s sitting. “You’re not the first to think or say it,” he mentions, looking around the room. “I doubt the concrete flooring helps the room feel even slightly welcoming either, but there are rugs in the other rooms so it isn’t all like this.”

Sirius has a fast look around, trying to see for these other rooms being spoken of, but he gets a charmed laugh out of Remus, who for some reason likes him even when he’s high energy. “There’s a very basic bathroom and a little room full of my toys and old picture books just down over there,” Remus forwards, pointing left off into the darkness over there that the wee light from the small window above them can’t luminate. 

“And the door over here,” Remus switches hands, using his left to point behind the stairs where Sirius has to squint in order to see the door underneath it, “brings you to what looks like a crawl space from the jump, but it takes you into a full-sized room that we mostly kept it full of storage.” 

“There’s so many secrets to this place,” Sirius puts up, looking around the room and keeping his eyes peeled for any others. 

He takes a little stroll over to a tall, wooden cabinet pushed into the left corner of the room, opens the right side of the door, and finds a bunch of cleaning supplies in it. He almost has the door shut again before a tiny hole in the left side of the wood catches his interest, and then he's weaseling his way into the cupboard, getting a prime snort out of Remus for it. He smiles to himself in the relative darkness of the wardrobe before he lines his left eye up with the suspiciously perfect peephole in it, shutting his right one for better visibility. 

“Be honest, Remus,” he says slowly, peering in at the massive fucking saw hanging perfectly centered in his line of vision, “is this a torture chamber I’m looking into via this peephole?”

Remus pushes a series of fast gusts through his nose. “That’d be my dad’s tool room where the tools live.” 

“Oh, because you didn’t bring me down here to chop me to bits, right,” Sirius returns plainly. “You know there’s a saw hanging directly across from this peephole, yes?” 

Remus pushes out a quick laugh. “Is it actually right across from it?” 

"There's literally a hole in this wardobe that perfectly lines up with another hole in the wall, that highlights an entire fucking saw, what else am I supposed to think it is?" he raises, straining his left eye to inspect the other tools hanging alongside the saw. “Is this the peephole you look through when checking on the progress of your torture practices?” 

“That or the wood’s old,” Remus offers.

“A likely story, and you should know I’ll be watching my back from here on out,” he informs him while not watching it in any form, though he does slip out of the cabinet. 

“Well, we’ve narrowed it down to two things,” Remus raises from the stairs. “Either there’s a murder plot happening here or my dad’s a natural handyman.” 

Sirius puts on a valley-voice, coming out of the cabinet with a saunter to his steps and hips. “Oh, I bet he is,” he gives in a valley-voice.

“Gross,” Remus calls it plainly. 

Sirius snorts, dropping the theatrics, and smiles over at Remus, who’s surveying the room and apparently already over Sirius’ quip. “I suppose I just got used to it down here because I liked helping my mum with the laundry, but the room gives people the spooks,” he says, frowning circumstantially, and Sirius needs a moment to contend over Good Boy Remus striking again but he doesn’t get that because Remus is still going and he doesn’t want to miss anything. “A friend of mine, Micah, he would _not_ come into the kitchen if the basement door was open, but we were seven at the time so I suppose we can forgive him for it.”

As much as Sirius does think this room is a tad on the rustic, and dare he say dungeon side of things, that seems a bit much. “Who’s he?” he raises.

“His family moved to Cardiff not long after that," Remus supplies. 

“The basement must have really bothered him,” Sirius quips.

“Must have,” Remus returns, smiling at him from across the room. “Plenty of other kids in town thought the whole house was creepy, but the basement in particular really got them into a tizzy.” 

“What, why?” Sirius demands.

Remus looks over at him plainly. “Weren’t you just saying how—”

“No, this room? I’m thinking the storm drain is where all the blood goes, but the rest of the house? A quaint country inn, Remus,” Sirius raises. “Were those not bay windows with fucking awnings hanging over them that I just saw?”

“Mm, banana yellow and a bit much overall, but they didn’t stop those kids from presuming at least one supernatural creature lived here with us,” Remus offers. 

“Ohhh,” Sirius drags out. “Are you a ghost, then? Is this how you’re going to break it to me?” 

Remus pushes an amused breath out of his nose. “No, but that was a running theory for a while there,” he puts in, and Sirius raises his right eyebrow, demanding more on this. “Ok, I’ll try and make it quick.” 

Sirius backs up a step or two to lean back against the washer, leaving his elbows up behind him on the edge of it. “Don’t,” he says, all set for story time. “I want it all.” 

Remus folds his hands in his lap, smiling over at him in the low light of the room, but thankfully the window above and behind Sirius’ head is helping with some visibility because smiles returned to him for even suggesting that he likes it when Remus talks is worth seeing, every damn time. “Well, there were rumours going around when I was nine or so that this place was inhabited by some fiendish thing,” he frames it. “It might’ve been the long driveway and how the house just kind of looms from the distance if you’re going by on the highway, and I’d see a few kids from my class out there on the road with their bikes sometimes, just checking things out.”

Sirius sniffs there. “See, I want to say, ‘get a hobby, kiddos,’ but I’d have been one of them, so.”

Remus puts up a quick laugh. “You might’ve been, yeah,” he says. “And then they sat down in front of me at school and said how much they wanted to come over, and I didn't realize they just wanted to investigate the haunted house in town and was just really excited to have them over, so I needed very little convincing.” 

Sirius’ eyes have definitely narrowed down to the halfway point, but Remus isn’t able to see the shape of them without the light from the windowsill for he pays no mind to it. “And they, like you, thought this room was particularly chilling and were just huddled up there in the kitchen going back and forth over what they thought was in it, and I tried telling them it was a perfectly harmless basement but they were convinced I was bluffing when I talked about going down there frequently.”

Sirius sends out a massive _pfft_. “Literally why would you have been bluffing, though?” 

“Well, I was small for my age; I hit my growth spurt around thirteen and became a bean stock, but I was still small with wiry wrists then and didn’t look the least bit tough,” Remus supplies, tilting his head back and forth. “So they thought I was a giant liar and dared me to go in there for, I don’t remember how long, something frightening to a bunch of kids but since it was my basement I hardly thought it was a long time-frame, and I’d heard plenty about dares with a sort of ominous tone attached, but this was an easy one to me—” Sirius feels itchy under his skin, making a face at that and maybe a little over the fact that he used to be one of those kids proposing dares to the quiet ones just to, what, have something to do? ”—so I just went in and sat down right here actually, to wait for the allotted time to run out,” Remus keeps on, scooting back on the landing and lifting his legs to cross them underneath him, adding a few twiddles of his thumbs in his lap for added allusion.

Sirius snorts despite himself. “I’m sorry, but that’s—” he tries, ducking his head through a laugh that takes him over, “—so you.” 

Remus smirks there, giving an easy hum. “Oh, and the doorknob up there was a bit of a menace before my dad finally hunkered down and tinkered around with it, but it would constantly fall out and you would just have to put it back in if it fell out on your side of the door or knock and someone would come stick it back in for you, but generally speaking we would keep the door open if we were down here so it wasn’t something we really had to deal with that often, but of course it fell out while I was down here.” 

Sirius lifts his hands, pressing them together in the form of a prayer. “Mhm,” Remus returns, “and they went absolutely hysterical, thinking it’d been yanked out by some invisible thing and I was about to get possessed or snuffed out, and they were up there pounding on the door and running around the kitchen in circles, and my mum heard the commotion and came to investigate the chaos that was erupting in her kitchen.”

“Oh, I love a Hope cameo,” Sirius pipes in heavily, loving this turn around. 

Remus nods emphatically. “So she went in and really didn’t get much clarity out of them because they were all yelling at the same time, but she heard '_RemusRemusRemus_ and thought I’d broken my neck or something awful like that, so she put the knob back in and finds me on the other side of the door, and I remember that deflate motion that she did like it was yesterday,” he details, doing a full heave down of his shoulders to pair with it, “and she just turned around and sent them all home right then and there.”

“_Yes,_” Sirius drags out, clapping once. “Shut it down, Hope.” 

“She sure did,” Remus confirms. “And then she sat me down at the kitchen table so I thought I was in deep shit, but then she gave me three wafer cookies and I thought, ‘well, this is nice; unexpected, but I’ll sure eat these,’ but in reality, she had a feeling that whole situation hadn’t been my idea and the cookies were more of a bribe in order to ease the full story out of me, and I gave it because to me it was just a misunderstanding but then those kids weren’t allowed over anymore and I was to avoid them at school, where possible.”

Sirius claps his right hand to his chest, his left behind him and gripping at the edge of the washer. “Your mum's a fucking legend.” 

“Well, yeah, I know that now,” Remus raises. “Obviously she didn’t want me to keep hanging around with them and wind up pressured into something way worse than that, but at the time? I was nine and devastated; I gained four friends and was going to them in a single afternoon.” 

“Well, y’know what?” Sirius puts up. “I’ve never hated a group of kids more than those ones, so she did right by you and I’m going to need every single one of their names, if you please.”

Remus smirks out a laugh. “Didn’t take much to get you going, did it.”

Sirius puts his head on a pointed tilt. “Listen here, that was mini you and your eyes were probably gigantic then, and they just sent the little nice boy from class down here as bait?” he raises. 

Remus looks left then right. “There was nothing dangerous down here,” he puts up. 

“Yeah, but they didn’t know that, did they?” Sirius puts up. “I say we pay whoever’s still kicking around town a nice little visit since we’re here.”

Remus huffs a laugh. “What, are we going to roll up and exact revenge a good decade and a half on?” he raises. 

“And why the hell shouldn't we?” Sirius supplies at once. “Hop on board.” 

“I really can’t say it hindered me much,” Remus puts up. “Well, it did and it didn’t. To me, I was suffering the consequences of letting wafer cookies bribe me into telling the full story, but then I went in on Monday and those kids wouldn’t stop staring at me all morning, and ten at lunch they cornered me out in the hall and told me to tell them straight if I was a ghost or not—” Sirius tosses his head back, a sharp, forceful bark leaving his throat, “—and I looked between the four of them to figure out if they were serious or not, but they very much were and I lost interest in them in actual seconds, but I did confirm that I was a walking, talking, school attending ghost that could totally sit at desks and stuff, and made up a bunch of details on the spot of my horrifying basement experience to help my cause, which was apparently just messing with them.”

Sirius right beams about the image conjured in his mind of a tiny Remus leaning right into it. “A little shit even then,” he says fondly.

Remus gives a wry smile there. “That went on until the end of the school year, if you can believe it.” 

“I fucking can,” Sirius insists. “What made them see the light finally?” 

“Well, I tripped in the school yard while running in gym and they saw me skid on my hands on the playground, and then the whole charade was over because to them I absolutely couldn’t be a ghost if I could still bleed,” Remus provides. “And then I was branded a liar all over again and they wouldn’t talk to me after that anyway, so I really just ended up doing my mum’s sleeping patterns a solid in the end.” 

“Good, dodged a bullet there anyway,” Sirius returns. “I still say we find them and pressure them into getting their arses handed to them.”

“I’m really OK,” Remus insists, smiling away on the stairs. “It was kid stuff, but thank you for continued loyalty.” 

Sirius pushes a stray lock of hair behind his right ear, feeling quite enamoured for the nth time over how he managed to fall in with someone this fun to be with. “That's not going anywhere,” he assures. “Can we take a little break from the tour?”

“Aren’t we?” Remus offers. 

“Well, yes,” Sirius allows, “but I’m thinking about drafting a plot for the horror film we’ve set foot into and I'll need someone to bounce ideas off of.”

“Oh, gladly,” Remus returns, making a show of sitting forward attentively. 

Sirius grins, moving his elbows from where he has them resting on the washer’s edge behind him and lifts them to help aid his vision. “Two young men at the end of the world fall upon an abandoned farmhouse whilst on their travels and decide to have a look around inside,” he pitches. 

“That’ll end well,” Remus quips. 

“Way better than you think,” Sirius returns before continuing with the pitch. “They’re low on sustenance, eager to scavenge, but find out that the kitchen’s been ransacked so that doesn’t help them out. They decide to have a look in the basement to see if there’s a freezer down there that no other survivors have stumbled upon yet, and come down into what is clearly a death chamber, and oh? Would you look at that; the doorknob’s fallen out—” Remus snorts real big there, “—leaving them trapped on the inside and now they’re just sitting ducks waiting for the one who inhabits the house to return and making clothing out of their skin.” 

“Such a lovely touch,” Remus forwards. 

“And what else is there to do other than for those men to find a way to work off all that nervous energy?” Sirius raises wistfully.

Remus breathes in there, searching him from the stairs. “Is this film going to be a thriller or porn? I can’t tell.”

“Jury’s out on that one,” Sirius puts in, lifting a shoulder easily. “The director’s been evading any and all questions on the matter and that is a bit of a red flag, sure, but between you and me, I hear the actors lined up for the parts are wickedly into each other so they don’t seem to mind.”

Remus smirks. “I bet they don’t.”

“Would you like some backstory on the characters?” Sirius inquires. 

“How would I get into character otherwise?” Remus returns, folding out of his crossed-legged position and pushing to stand. 

Sirius’ heart rate picks up as Remus takes the final three steps down to the cement floor and strolls his way. “Character A: young, fit, studious; was a researcher specializing in — Welsh folklore before the world he knew ceased to be. Character B: endlessly gorgeous would-be entrepreneur that’s looking to specialize in barter now that the world’s a barren wasteland,” he details, brimming with anticipation as Remus presses him back against the washer and runs his hands easily over Sirius’ waistline, though his attention seemingly very much on Sirius’ pitch what with that avid smile he’s got on. “The two have been making eyes at each other since they teamed up a few weeks back, and Character A, who we’ll call Remin for now—” Remus’ smile changes to one of plain mirth in a mere beat, “— he’s rather professorial; has a right dignified air about him, the epitome of control at first impression but there’s something carnal hanging out below the surface that’s got him just aching to pin his travel companion up against the washing machine they found down there and lay into him.” 

Remus puts on a light air of surprise while dragging his hands down, up, and over Sirius’ hips, looking him over like he’s an absolute snack. “Does Character B have a name?” he checks.

“Sirius,” he blurts.

Remus pushes a breathy laugh through his nose, flickering his gaze up at him. “Creative.”

“I’m a little distracted,” Sirius returns pointedly before Remus starts palming at him over his jeans, making this that much more of a challenge. 

“Tell me about Sirius,” Remus grins, the jerk. 

Sirius breathes in roughly, shutting his eyes and refocusing despite the steady hand on him. “He’s got that roguish, dangerous look about him, but plot twist: he’s actually never had a man before.” 

Remus takes in a piqued breath. “That’ll have to change.” 

“‘Says Remin, with a wicked glint in his eyes,’” Sirius recites, fluttering his eyes open there, and Remus takes his chin in his right hand, catching Sirius’ lips and smirking into the kiss. 

Sirius can’t help smirking either, breathing heavier as Remus drops his left hand to work Sirius’ fly down enough to dip his right one below the waistband of Sirius’ pants, stroking up on Sirius’ cock and swallowing each of Sirius’ putters of breath. He feels like he ought to give Remus more room to work that wrist as freely as possible and drops his right hand to push his trousers down some more, but Remus promptly catches his wrist, humming a plain denial against Sirius’ lips. Sirius’ chest heaves as Remus sets Sirius’ hand back down on the washer and Sirius goes right back to gripping it when he’s got a strong feeling that he’s going to need to be holding onto something if Remus is going to be telling him what he can and cannot do here. 

Remus removes his right hand from inside Sirius’ pants, works Sirius’ trousers down past his hips and meets Sirius’ eye once before moving down to his knees. Now, Remus has knelt before Sirius many, many a time, but it’s another thing entirely to kneel on concrete, but Remus doesn’t give a single indication that he minds it, tugging Sirius’ pants down to join the waistband of Sirius’ jeans and setting in briskly on Sirius’ cock as if it’s really just a down pillow that he’s kneeling on. Sirius keeps his right hand held tight to the washer’s edge while his left fuses to the back of Remus’ head, his fingers dipping in and tangling up with Remus’ curls, making it feel a little like he’s helping Remus’ speed, but overall it’s Remus who’s got the reigns here, pressing Sirius’ hips back against the washer with his left arm, and Sirius’ toes start to curl in as Remus adds his right hand to the mix, dusting his fingers over Sirius’ thighs, between them, and up to grip at the base of Sirius’ cock while he works at the head with his mouth.

Sirius fights a little against Remus’ hold, rather liking the idea of getting shoved back into place, and Remus does do that for him, knocking Sirius’ hips back against the washer and pulling a tight noise from the back of Sirius’ throat. His eyes fall shut as Remus works faster over him, his grip tightens in the floofly curls in his hands as Remus takes him all in, swerving down on him and swallowing around the head of his cock, once, twice, and at the third interval Sirius is biting hard at his lower lip but doing fairly well for himself, but a few more of those repetitions has Sirius tapping out.

Sirius slumps against the washer, his head on a backwards tilt as he breathes in and out carefully, and registers a clatter on the floor between them about five seconds later than it happened. 

“Why would Sirius be keeping EZ-lube in his pocket if he’s never had a man before?” Remus raises. Sirius blinks and looks down, finding Remus holding the travel tube up at him with a pointed smile on. “Guaranteed someone's going to ask these questions, Sirius; if you get the details sorted out now then you won’t be caught unprepared to answer them at prompt.”

Sirius blinks twice. “Just ‘cause he’s never had one doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about it?” he pitches.

Remus makes a tentative hum. “Not bad,” he lets him have. “A little convenient perhaps, but we can let it slide for now; you're not going to be able to please everybody.”

“There’s a condom in that pocket, too, if you want convenient,” Sirius puts up. “He’s very responsible, that Sirius.” 

Remus blinks twice and goes fishing in Sirius’ right pocket for it, smirking through his nose as he pulls it out. “When did you do this?” he asks, squinting up at Sirius with a bemused smile on. 

“While you weren’t lookin,’” he returns, sending a wry smile back down at him. 

Remus huffs out a laugh. “Did you really think we were going to go this far on the fucking train?” he raises. shaking both items up at him.

Sirius sniffs. “Well, you let me do a fair amount to you, just saying,” he counters, and Remus pushes a pointed breath through his nose, his mouth twisting up. “I pocketed them _in case_ I could luck out and get you in the bathroom or something, but you know what, be glad did because now we can hit it and go.” 

Remus puts out a sigh/laugh combo, his lopsided smile on as he lifts off his knees, holding the condom between two fingers and the lube in the same palm while beckoning Sirius to turn around with an almost too easy twirl of his right hand, and Sirius faces the washer in a true second, bracing it tightly with the both of his own hands. Remus tugs down further on Sirius’ own, leaving them bunched around his knees and not being able to see what Remus is doing is making it all the more easy to hear and feel it; the pop of the cap, the first squeeze, the zip down of Remus’ own trousers, the tease of a slick finger. 

“I’m curious, how did the world end in the film?” Remus asks conversationally. 

Sirius pushes out a breathy laugh, shutting his eyes so he can think with the teasing happening here. “Zombies that come out only at night,” he puts out. 

Remus huffs a laugh from behind him, pressing the same finger inside of him. “I feel like I’ve heard that one before,” he mentions. 

“Umm, they all borrow from each other, Remus,” Sirius chimes. “Stay with it.” 

“Rather busy plot, though, isn’t it,” Remus raises, starting to move the same finger back and forth.

Sirius drops head to a forward droop, mouth falling open as he grapples with the pressure going on behind him, and then the words hit and he’s putting out an affronted noise. “How so?” he pushes out, aiming it over his right shoulder.

Remus hums thoughtfully behind him. “Well, night zombies and a skin enthusiast are a lot to keep up with at once,” he raises.

“There’s always more than one threat, Remus,” Sirius returns. “Have you learned _nothing_ through all of our screenings?”

Remus smirks out a few breaths from behind him. “It’s no wonder these poor blokes just want to get it done.” 

Sirius would have found something to respond with, but he settles for sucking in a breath as Remus adds in a second digit, and by settles he means there was no choice in the matter. He breathes that out with something close to a laugh, the reality of the situation hitting him squarely in the cheeks and making them ten notches warmer, and soon he can’t stave off a laugh.

“I love that this is happening,” he puts up.

Remus gives an easy laugh behind him. “Same here,” he puts up sweetly. “It’s just a shame that I have to be fingering you while discussing such a powerful film, you know?” 

Sirius grips the washer hard as he gets taken over by a rolling laugh, ducking his head through his mirth, and soon they’re both a pile of stitches. Remus gets back to it soon enough, patiently working at Sirius until three of his digits move in and out of him without any sort of hitch or trouble, and by then Sirius is rocking back down on him like a fiend. 

“That Sirius is really gunning for that dick, hm,” Remus observes, lighthearted as all hell, but the way he grips Sirius by the hips means business.

Sirius sends a half-grin, half huff at the bit of basement wall that’s taking up his vision, takes in a sharp breath as Remus breaches him, and lets his breath out once Remus fully sheaths himself. He waits a few cursitory beats for Sirius to wiggle around a bit and adjust to the stretch, and Sirius hangs his head forward, his half-smile deepening as Remus begins to move maddeningly slow.

“Is this where the music swells and Sirius sheds a tear?” Remus checks. 

Sirius lifts his head in a snap, huffing loudly. “It’s a thriller, not a sap-fest,” he returns. “And so you know, the director’s notes implicitly state that Remin is a talkative fellow, but rumour has it this isn’t what he had in mind.” 

Remus hums thoughtfully. “Ohh, I see,” he whispers, just by Sirius’ right ear. His hands are hot to the touch, the right one moving up to curl around the front of Sirius’ thigh, the left gripping tight at Sirius’ hip, both rocking Sirius back on his cock. “Shit, is that footsteps?” 

For a brief moment, Sirius foolishly thinks somebody has come home and he’s about to get the blue-balling of the century as a result, but then Remus pulls nearly all the way out of him and snaps back in, filling Sirius up again and pulling a strangled moan out of him. “We’d better hurry,” Remus cautions, fucking Sirius at a staccato that he fully agrees with. “Don’t want the skin enthusiast showing up right in the middle, do we.” 

“This wasn’t what the director had in mind either,” Sirius puts out tightly, eyes shut against the steady pace Remus is keeping. 

“Yeah, you like that cock?” Remus says in a true, glorious deadpan. “You’d better take it.” 

Sirius barks out a laugh, reaching behind him to grip at Remus’ right hip, half to urge him on and half just to hold onto him, but he finds even that isn’t quite enough; he turns his head to search for Remus’ lips, finds Remus snickering intensely behind him, and makes a wonton, eager noise, and Remus takes in a sobering breath, latching onto over Sirius’ right shoulder and laughing a little more into into it, but that just makes it even more of a breath of fresh air than the kiss already did.

Remus lifts his right hand from Sirius’ thigh and wraps around Sirius’ cock instead, timing his strokes to match his thrusts, and the duality of both heavy paces moving at once has  
straight gasping against Remus’ mouth in little time. “Fuck,” he prattles, eyes shut tight, lips kiss-soaked and quivering, “_Shit,_ shit — Remus.”

Remus pulls back, hovering his lips an inch over Sirius’ own. “Oh, what, I’m not Remin anymore?” 

Sirius puts out a fucking strange noise, something between a strangled cry, a laugh, and a huff, but for fuck’s sake, he’s never laughed with any man this much, and certainly not while getting railed; how does he get to have this? “You’re the fucking worst,” he pushes out, not meaning it at all. 

“Hold that thought,” Remus warns, and Sirius breathes in hard as Remus hitches Sirius’ hips up so that he’s aiming for gold with each thrust, and Sirius sees white. “Say it; say she shouldn’t have left.” 

Sirius’ eyes shoot open, lit up with fire at the smile he fucking knows he heard on Remus’ lips, but he only gets a millisecond’s worth of confirmation before his his eyes are forced shut again by way of Remus’ cock alone. 

“Just say Rory should have stayed where she was,” Remus says simply. “You can give me that, can’t you.”

Sirius snaps his head away from Remus’ face, turning toward the wall. “Never,” he tosses out, banging his fights on the lid of the washer like a gavel. “I’m literally never saying it.” 

Remus smirks by Sirius’ right ear, tugging at his earlobe with his teeth. “Say it,” he prompts, tightening his grip on Sirius’ cock. “I’ll go easier on you if you just hand this one over to me.”

Well, now he’s really not saying it. 

Sirius shakes his head sporadically, biting down on his lower lip to keep from accidentally throwing out an agreement from delirium alone, and then Remus switches to half-thrusts, fucking Sirius so quickly there isn’t any time between them to even breathe efficiently let alone make things like words string together, so he’s at least got that going for him separate from the Dickens he’s getting. He curls forward and sets his forehead on the surface of the washer, but with Remus holding his hips still as his own thrusts spike to a numbing degree that just gives even more to the quality of this in terms of angling, and soon he is making all sorts of noise, but it’s nothing coherent; glorified gibberish by the distant sound of it, he’s still in the running for now. 

He grapples his hands over the machine under them, the curve of his hips bent against it and shaking the whole thing back and forth as Remus drives into him, but apparently Remus isn’t worried about the washer’s standings, too busy stuttering nonsense words of his own behind him, and that's fine with Sirius when it really is something to hear Remus’ voice all around him; coming from behind and echoing off the wall ahead of them at once. Sirius tenses up, bares down on Remus’ cock his ears ring out, and hangs onto the washer for support as he writhes through his release, rocking up into the grip of Remus’ hand and feeling warm under every inch of skin. Remus lets go of Sirius' cock and sets both his hands on the small of Sirius' back, pumping back on him, Sirius’ name on his lips and spoken like a prayer to Jesus Cunt himself, and Sirius cheeks go twice as warm as the rest of him as Remus grips his hips hard, riding it out, and curls over Sirius' back, fucked out. 

It’s really that lovely to be Remus’ leaning post that Sirius almost lets him rest before going on the attack. Almost. “How fucking dare you?” he shoots back at him. “_During?_ I’d have never—”

He stops, losing some momentum there, and Remus smirks, his breath tickling the underneath of Sirius’ right shoulder blade. “Can’t finish that sentence in good conscience, can you?” he raises languidly, and Sirius aims a huff out and back toward Remus. “Alright, you have fought dirty plenty of times and I wanted to see if it would work for me, tell it to the judge but I think he’d agree with me.”

“What do you think I am, a chump?” Sirius returns. “Don’t let your guard down around me, boy; I’m fucking coming for you.” 

“Didn’t you just.”

Statistically speaking, Sirius has zero chances of remaining indignant when faced with Remus and a lewd joke; he just doesn’t have that in him. “It’s a good thing you’re cute, I’ll tell you that.” 

“Mhm,” Remus mutters back, and Sirius would’ve spent more time on his easy acceptance of Sirius’ claims, but Remus chooses to bring them back into the situation at hand instead of letting the moment linger. “I didn't think about what we’re going to do with this condom.” 

“Bin it?” Sirius raises, giving into a stretch while his arms are still resting on the washer. 

“I can’t put a used condom in the bin,” Remus returns indignantly. "That's just chaos." 

“Well, it’s either that or we make a balloon animal out of it, and I don’t know how to make one,” Sirius puts up. 

“I’ll wrap it in tissue,” Remus decides, apparently not needing Sirius' input so much for this dilemma of his. 

Remus breathes in long, lifts off of Sirius’ back, and moves the both of his hands to Sirius’ hips, easing out of him. There, Sirius has the space to inch his hips back from the washer, peering down below and finding he definitely shot at the front of the machine. “So,” Sirius puts up in a bit of a tune, “you aimed me right at this thing.” 

Remus snorts from behind him, leaning his chin over Sirius’ right shoulder to have a look for himself, but it must have been exactly how much of a mess he’d been prepared to find, or he’s just that fucked out for he barely reacts to it. “I’ll get a cloth,” he says simply, tapping Sirius’ hips easily. 

Sirius looks round as Remus wanders off to the left with his trousers hanging around by his knees, disappearing out of sight. Sirius pushes a hand up through his dampened hair, pushes himself back from the washer with his free hand, and drops the both of them to tug his trousers up over his hips. He’s just testing out his footing when he catches the sound of taps running and wanders around the bend on slightly shaky feet, following the noise down a small hallway and looking into the first room ahead of him, finding Remus with his trousers back up, wetting a cloth in a very tiny bathroom with just a sink and toilet in it.

“Convenient,” Sirius calls it, hanging out by the door. 

“What is?” Remus asks over his shoulder, shutting the taps. 

“This wee bathroom,” Sirius forwards. 

Remus nods with the clarification. “Yeah, there isn’t much to this one aside from saving us a trip upstairs if we’re already down here,” he says, walking the wet cloth over to Sirius, who blinks down at it royally. “It’s your jizz, dear.” 

Sirius leans up and huffs directly at him, taking the cloth from him and giving Remus’ left hip a thwack with it before heading to wipe up the mess. Remus turns up very shortly, holding a wad of tissue with a condom wrapped up in it no doubt, and heads past Sirius to a large bin by the dryer, tossing it in with a bunch of lint and various fabric softener squares already in it.

Remus clears his throat before jostling the side of the bin with a foot to seemingly make the wad fall to the bottom of the bin, garnering a pointed laugh from Sirius. “It’s not like anyone’s going to go fishing around in the bin unless that’s just a Lupin trait I haven’t dealt with yet,” he raises.

“I’ll feel better if it’s at the bottom,” Remus returns. “Just let me have this.”

Sirius sends a _pfft_ Remus’ way, finishes up with the mess, and inspects his work with his left arm crossed over his stomach and his right bent at the elbow with the cloth held up. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” he offers, 

“I was going to say,” Remus says, turning up on Sirius’ right to have a look for himself.

“I fucking wish you were going to say that,” Sirius returns, budging his already jutted out hip against Remus’ left one.

Remus shakes his head through a smirk, takes the cloth from Sirius’ hand, and walks it over to the sink, giving it a good rinse before wandering it over to a basket sitting not far from there. 

He looks back over at Sirius, patting his hands together with accomplishment, and catches his quizzical stare. “Laundry chute,” he extends, pointing up at a rectangular square in the wall above the basket that seemingly appears there out of nowhere because Sirius sure only noticed it now.

Sirius blinks wildly. “What?” he shoots back. “Where am I, a storybook?”

“Possibly,” Remus humours him. He smiles as he steps up close to Sirius, leaves a peck on the tip of his nose, and slots his right hand in with Sirius’ left, leading him back toward the stairs. “Come on, we’ve a tour to get back to.” 

Sirius heads up the stairs behind him not unlike someone who might’ve just got some quality dick and is feeling rather pulled along by Remus in more ways than just their hands being linked together. He lets himself get led back through the kitchen, around the table over toward another open archway to the right of the stove and left of the dining room.

“The den’s over here and hopefully hasn’t changed much since I’ve been away because it sure had its cozy charm,” Remus raises. 

From where Sirius is, all he can really see is brown shag carpet ahead of him and quite suddenly, he’s really more of a fifteen year old trapped in an adult shell, putting out a lengthy trill. “I’m adding this to the list,” he announces, pointing down at the carpet.

“Oh, I’d take it right back off,” Remus advises, stopping to run his right foot over the carpet. “It’s really not as soft as it seems.”

Sirius lets go of Remus’ hand and steps into the room, dropping down to the floor on his back and doing a carpet angel real quick. “Yikes,” he puts up, the fibers far more prickly than he’d been prepared for them to be. "I'm kind of crushed."

“It’s deceiving,” Remus imparts. “Gives wicked carpet burn and I do care about the state of your skin quite a bit.”

Sirius appreciates it, no denying that, but he can’t deny that this objection feels a tad too lived-in either. “You already tried it on this, didn’t you,” he says, looking up at Remus through a squint.

Remus presses his mouth into a firm line, blinking once, and that’s confirmation enough. “Wow, Remus; right in the den?” he raises, gape/grinning up at him. “I mean, I know we just took a nice ride into Poundtown, but we were hidden away in a torture chamber and nobody’s home but us.”

“Well, it wasn’t like they were home that time either,” Remus returns, laughing a little there. 

“Right,” Sirius allows. “The moment they went out the door, it was time.”

“Or we were already in here and the carpet was a quick but regretful idea of mine and we didn’t finish there,” Remus cops to it. “And you know what, I’ve no idea where my grandparents managed to find this lie of a rug, but leave it to my parents to keep a shag rug that can’t realistically be shagged on without suffering injuries; it’s just ridiculous and a lie.”

Now, Remus ranting about a shag rug not being that good a time at all is hilarious to him just in and of itself, but Sirius has to contend with the image conjured in his head of Remus getting railed into the carpet by somebody who hardly deserved to be there. “Well, you live and you learn,” he offers, and where’s his Oscar for getting through that sentiment sounding unbothered. 

“And I did,” Remus supplies for it. 

Sirius nods, moving off of the floor. “Thank you for the warning and Imma take this right off the list.”

He refocuses on the room they’re in out of survival, but one thing he’ll note straight away is that Remus had been right in his advertisement; the feeling that the decor breathes into the room is one of intense relaxation; the lengthy, cushy couch that Sirius remembers is actually a sneaky hideabed, the coffee table ahead of it that’s got a shelf for what looks like a variety of photo albums that Sirius will definitely be combing through extensively in due time, another armchair that’s a vicious but incredibly endearing shade of red and an automan to match, and two lamps perched on end tables that have decidedly gigantic lampshades. 

“Oho, this one’s my favourite room so far,” Sirius offers fondly, smiling as he takes in the high windows over the back of the hideabed with another twin window on the right-hand side of the room, complete with a door to a mystery land (though more likely the backyard). He glances out the window across from him again, his heart rate easily picking up speed at the snapshot he can see of the backyard and just a small glimpse of the land he knows is going to be a lot to take in, but he resists his overwhelming urge to fling himself out that door mostly because Remus hasn’t got his sunnies on and it wouldn’t do well to torpedo out into the sun just now, and besides, he’s still taking this all in. 

He looks left instead, looking to the left for more treasures and gets them in droves. A mid-00s veritable box of a telly a few steps to the left of the doorway, another quaint desk pushed against the wall nearby that’s got a laptop sitting on it, and to top it all off, a certifiably Yuge bookshelf that spans the entire the left-hand side of the room, littered with books of all sizes.

Sirius reels a bit at the gargantuan bookshelf. “That’s fucking impressive.”

“My grandad made it,” Remus pipes up, smiling over at it quite fondly. “Half of those books on there were my granny’s. Some were his, and mum and dad have added to it quite a bit, but he initially made it for my granny so she’d have a nice place to put her books on.”

Sirius makes a rather gooey noise, frowning imploringly over at Remus. “I love that so much,” he professes, getting a bright beam for it. “Did he build other stuff here?” 

Remus nods emphatically. “Oh, so much,” he insists. “He was a carpenter, so the coffee table in here, the two end tables, the desk in this room as well as the one in the hall, and he made me a desk/bookshelf hybrid which he purposefully scaled it up a few sizes so that I’d be able to still use it after I hit my growth spurt.” 

“Ohh,” Sirius chimes in. “That’s a smart man right there.” 

Remus smiles for it, nodding again. “He figured with the giraffe that my dad is, the chances of me winding up as gangly as him were far too high to build me a child-sized desk so he went at it with longevity in mind,” he forwards. “I mean, I did outgrow the desk by the end of high school, but it’s just so handy that I never considered replacing it.”

“Well, you’re your parents kid and all,” Sirius offers. 

“Alright, fair,” Remus allows, though he lifts a hand for a pardon, “but I am far more ruthless than they are; hence how little clutter I actually keep now.”

“Unless we’re talking about your school work,” Sirius raises, smiling wryly.

“Well, that I will forever fan out around me,” Remus delivers. “He also built the shed out back, and he fixed up both porches one summer when I was little, but he was most proud of the A-frame; he built that with a few of his carpentry mates and their bare hands when he was a little older than we are, and it’s actually so impressive for — oh, _fuck me._”

Sirius blinks wildly over at Remus as the man lifts his hands to his forehead, overcome. “I meant to tell you, but with the way this week’s been it went right out of my head,” Remus tacks on, huffing at himself. 

Sirius stops with a braced pose, ready for it. “Gimme it,” he prompts. 

Remus gives into a bit of a smile. “So, for a bit there, the assumption was that you’d be kipping on that,” he starts, gesturing toward the folded-up hideabed, “but then my mum offered the A-Frame earlier in the week for you in case you did want a semblance of privacy, and I might’ve went ahead and told her you would, but for good reasons.”

“Alright,” Sirius accepts, watching Remus playing with his hands at his belt line and waiting for the issue here because it’s clear Remus thinks there is one to be had. 

“I thought it might be the answer to two issues,” Remus keeps on, “we’d get some privacy away from the house, I’d have an already established place to go to if I need to hide away for a while.” 

Sirius watches Remus gesture faintly at his head for context, nodding for it. “Is there a way we can keep the mask chilled out there?” he checks, finding that the first and honestly only roadblock as far as he can see.

“Mhm,” Remus nods. “There’s a kitchenette in there; nothing fancy or anything and there isn’t a lot to it, but there is a bulbous fridge in there from the ‘40s that still works if you can believe it and we could keep it chilled in there.” 

“Then fuck yeah,” Sirius returns. Remus eases up by a notch, which gets Sirius squinting at him. “Boy, literally what did you think I was going to say? ‘No, I think we won’t go along with that really good idea you went and snatched up like the opportunist you are, and fuck you for even suggesting it.‘”

Remus gives into a sheepish smile. “I just didn’t want you to take the wrong way, as if you’re being sent away from the house,” he puts up. 

“Well, where is it?” Sirius asks. “If it’s ten miles out, then yeah, I might think I was getting sent away.” 

Remus shakes his head right quick. “It's just a little off from the house, nothing extreme,” he offers. “My grandad built it for guests to stay in back when guests actually came round often enough, so it's got a bed, a dresser, a little TV — not many channels on it, but there are infomercials that play at night that are so bad that they’re good, and I have a slight feeling you’d love some of that.”

Sirius sucks a breath in through his teeth. “Amazing,” he calls it. “Is there a bathroom in there too, or am I going to have to piss off of the steps?” 

Remus snorts, lifting his free hand for an even gesture. “I mean, what you do under the cloak of night is up to you, but there’s one in there,” he offers, making Sirius feel so fucking normal even though he very much can’t be. “It’s super small, though, I’ll warn you; the tub takes up most of it, but it serves its function just fine.” 

“Then I really can’t see why I’d be put off,” Sirius puts down. 

Remus pushes a quiet laugh through his nose, ducking his head a little. “I really wasn’t sure.” 

“You’re not doing this to send me away,” Sirius puts it. “You’ll be joining me there eventually, won’t you?” 

“I hope so,” Remus puts it. 

“Ah-ah,” Sirius puts up, wagging a finger. “Once dinner hits we aren’t going to need a decoy anymore unless your parents are old-fashioned enough to want us staying in separate rooms, and ‘scuse me if I may say that I really doubt they are.”

“Well, I — I have no way of refuting that,” Remus puts it. “I’ll still put my things in my room for now and if all goes well, I can move them down.”

Sirius blinks sweetly at him. “When.”

Remus expels a long breath. “I can’t, Sirius.”

“Then I’ll just think it to myself,” Sirius reiterates, lifting his hands to suggest he’s backing off. “Are you going to show me my new digs?”

“Well, hold on, we haven’t even finished the house yet,” Remus returns, beckoning Sirius back toward the kitchen. “I just wanted you to have an idea of the plan.” 

Sirius follows him into the kitchen, through the dining room, and out into the front hall where Remus heads for their luggage. “Might as well take mine up while we’re going there, but we can come back for yours,” he offers, gathering his stuff together. 

He places his sunglasses on top of his head, gestures for Sirius to go ahead of him, and Sirius grabs Remus’ knapsack to lighten his load a little before doing as bid. He heads up the stairs a few steps ahead of Remus, finding they creak a bit under his feet despite the carpeting on the stairs. 

“Oh, my Cunt, they creak,” Sirius puts up emotionally. 

"Were yours much quieter?" Remus asks. 

"Oh, they didn't make a creak," Sirius affirms. "Hard on the face if you tripped, but easy to sneak down." 

Remus eyes him sidelong with a lopsided smile. “Ours are bit more rundown than I think we’d all like to admit,” he passes along. “They didn’t really have the means to fix them up for a while there so it just never got prioritized, but who knows; it's a new chapter now.” 

“Right, they must have made a pretty penny,” Sirius offers. 

“Well, I think that’s still getting finalized, but I assume it’ll be quite something,” Remus returns, placing a hand on Sirius’ back as a means of balance, and Sirius reaches around behind him to get a hold on Remus’ wrist, locking him in as they get to the landing. “Here’s where the laundry chute starts.” 

Sirius blinks at the wall straight ahead of him, reaching to pull down on the handle, and makes like he’s about to crawl into it. Remus leaves a snort in his wake, dusting the fingertips of his free hand over the nape of Sirius’ neck as he squeezes past him on the landing, heading up the last stretch of steps with his suitcase in tow, and Sirius closes the door to the chute and bounds up them behind Remus, happy to follow a bloke who‘s so keen on him for one and absolutely just as happy to see Remus’ old bedroom for another.

“I’m shaking all over again,” Sirius puts up, thundering up the stairs behind him. 

Remus gives an amused noise ahead of him. “About which part?” he checks, reaching the top of the stairs.

“I mean, every aspect of this house definitely,” Sirius makes sure to put down, coming up on a hallway with a door on either side of them and another down at the far end of it, all with matching diamond shaped door knobs, “but specifically, I cannot wait to see your room.” 

“It’s nothing fancy,” Remus insists, veering toward the door on their left. 

“Well, I didn’t think it was going to be marble themed somehow, but it’s still yours and I want to see it,” Sirius returns, tapping on Remus’ back excitedly. 

Remus reaches to turn another diamond shaped door knob before pushing on the door, letting it swing open. “Oh, it hasn’t changed even a little,” he says, letting the door swing open. “That’s sort of nice to know that they didn’t turn it into an exercise room or something while I've been gone.” 

Sirius gives a distracted laugh, blinking in the brightly patterned wallpaper, the single bed across the room and pushed to the far wall, the desk/bookshelf hybrid across the room from the bed, the dresser on the other side of the doorway, the wood floor with a large colourful, crochet rug placed in the middle of it, and another sugar-sweet bay window on the left that looks out over the front yard with a little ledge to sit on underneath it. 

“Remus,” Sirius says sweetly, leaving Remus’ knapsack on the floor in favour of heading for the bay window ledge, wrapping himself up in the drapes hanging from it and going into a little twirl, “this is every little girl’s dream.” 

“I liked that ledge, thank you,” Remus returns airily. “I finished many a novel on it.” 

“Oh, well, there’s another wholesome image to log away,” Sirius offers, feeling exceptionally pleasant about that one as he unravels himself from the drapes. He heads over to Remus’ bed, swan-diving onto it and stretching out over it. 

Remus goes for his knapsack and sticks it beside his suitcase, letting out an accomplished breath through his nose, and Sirius gives into a long stretch over Remus’ bed, glancing around the room again once it’s finished with. “You know what, I’ve decided this suits you well,” he puts down. 

“Oh yeah?” Remus asks, taking a perch on the edge of his old desk and smiling over at Sirius from it. 

“Mhm,” Sirius hums pleasantly. He drops his gaze to the round rug in the center of the floor. “Did Hope make that?” 

Remus looks over at it too, taking in a breath through his nose as he shakes his head no. “She doesn’t crochet much; finds the needles too clunky,” he puts up, and Sirius pushes out an easy laugh for the bonus information. “She brought that back from the antique mall years before I started working there, but it’s a bit of a staple here.”

“Are we stopping in later?” Sirius asks, wiggling his hips excitedly. 

Remus eyes him with a twisted smile on. “Especially if you do that the whole time we’re in there.” 

“I just might,” Sirius returns, grinning ear to ear. 

Remus takes in a breath, lifting out of his perched position, and going for his knapsack where he digs out his hot pink sleep mask and pockets it. “So, my parents' room is across the hall, but we’ll let that remain unseen just in case I’ll have to see anything I very don’t want to,” he throws in, pulling his bottle of sunscreen out of his knapsack next. 

“You’re right, what if there’s a sex swing out there in the open,” Sirius puts up, stretching mildly. 

Remus makes sure to gag at that while stuffing the tube of sunscreen into his back left trouser pocket. “There’s another bathroom down at the end of the hall should you find yourself up here and in need of one,” he passes along. 

“Thank you, I’ll keep it in mind,” Sirius accepts, lifting off of the bed with a sense that they’re just about done with the second floor. 

“Or if you don’t love the water pressure out there, you can use the shower up here or the one downstairs, either or,” Remus tacks on, leading them back toward the stairs. “It’s not terrible, but it will just be unarguably better inside the house, so it’s really up to you.”

“I’ll test out both,” Sirius takes it further, hopping down the first five steps to get to the landing in one leap. 

“Someone’s pumped,” Remus observes, choosing to walk down the stairs Sirius just cleared. 

“I want to see the yard,” Sirius returns, making the turn at the landing. “How sturdy is this banister?” 

Remus gives a tentative hum. “You could maybe slide down it for like, a few seconds, but I wouldn’t put your whole weight on it.” 

Sirius staves off his immense urge to slide down the entire thing and passes his left hand daintily as he traipses down the stairs instead. He takes a right at the bend in the hall to go for his own, lifting his knapsack over his shoulders and popping up the handle on his suitcase, but he nods to his guitar case as Remus makes it to him. 

“Want to grab that for me?” he requests. 

Remus reaches for it, lifting the straps over his shoulders, and Sirius smiles proudly.“Should snap a picture and send it along to Charlotte,” he raises, waving a hand to let Remus lead the way.

“Oh, please don’t,” Remus huffs, heading back down the hall.”

“You’re right, she’d go into cardiac arrest,” Sirius accepts, following Remus back through the house. 

Remus takes a hard right once in the den, dropping his sunglasses down over his eyes before reaching to open the back door, and Sirius gets a quick view down by the right side of the armchair of a basket of many different colours of yarn and two knitting needles sticking out of it before he follows Remus outside onto the back porch. 

Remus leads him down a short stretch of it before rounding a bend, and there Sirius finds out the porch is more of an L shape, the length of it going across the back of the house with a staircase leading down to the yard at the center of out to the yard at the center of the porch, and beyond those, two deck chairs with a small matching table in between them in the far corner of the porch.

“This is cute,” Sirius mentions, gesturing at the serene little spot to look out from. 

“I think the other chairs must be in the shed, but we’ve more in case you come out here looking to have a sit but the both of them are already out here,” Remus passes along. 

Sirius smiles over at him, alive with all of the little ways Remus is showing an effort to make him the most comfortable he can be, and he’d have likely said as much if he hadn’t gone and fully peered out again the property, but now that he has, he’s a bit arrested by expanse of field ahead of them. “Jesus Cunt,” he puts out, his gaze lifting to the long, dark row of trees at the far end of the field. “I’m hallucinating, aren’t I.” 

“You’re not,” Remus assures, standing just on his left. 

“I know you said there was a lot of space, but—“ Sirius pushes a quick puff of breath out before looking to Remus. “How much is sold off?” 

“Everything on the left-hand side of the property,” Remus offers, gesturing past the little terrace. "I don't know where the line's drawn exactly, but past the shed for sure.

Sirius moves past the deck chairs to get to the side railing, looking past the garden shed to the left of the house and blinking in that side of the property that seemingly stretching out equally as far in that direction as it does behind the house, complete with various dips and hills and a smattering of trees here and there. 

“My grandparents bought the house at a good time and the land came with, so I must take on the tradition,” Remus says, moving to join Sirius at the porch railing and leaning his arms over it. “And I’ve already touched on it a bit, but my mum’s had a difficult time viewing all of this as hers.” 

Smirking, Sirius nods in both plain remembrance and a little amusement. “Even though it explicitly stated Hope Lupin on the will?” he raises it.

“Mhm, even with that,” Remus allows. 

“Modest through and through,” Sirius teases.

“I could do some more armchair psychology over why she was so hesitant to sell, but who wants that?” Remus puts up.

Sirius clears his throat. “Me,” he returns like he’s doing a vocal warm-up. 

Remus smirks, but a bit of a frown takes over the lower half of his face. “This is after years of thought, of course, I wasn't on the ball the whole time or anything, but she was very close to them while growing up and I think losing them so young really affected her; she really wasn’t much older than us when my granny passed, and she was hardly into her thirties when my grandad followed,” he details, and Sirius blinks there, having not done the math on that front yet, but Remus doesn't read that one too well. “Is this OK to talk about?” 

Sirius wipes his face clear, shaking his head quickly. “What do you mean?” he asks. 

“Well,” Remus offers before choosing to go with a grimace. “It's a very different scenario from yours, but there is a huge similarity and I don’t want to harp on about it if it’s going to be—”

“Honestly? Didn’t even think about it,” Sirius comes in, lifting his shoulders once. "I'm more down about the fact that I didn't do the math myself." 

Remus nods stiffly. “Right,” he says. “I just don’t want to—”

“You’re not,” Sirius doubles down, popping Remus in the hip once with a closed fist. “Talk about your mum, please; I find her a fascinating lady.” 

Remus reworks his mouth. “She is, but a complicated one too,” he puts in, then makes an even head tilt. 

“Well, aren’t we all,” Sirius puts up. 

Remus nods, accepting that one. “True enough," he says. "Well, you’ve seen the house now; that's a pretty good example right there." 

Sirius smiles quietly. “I love your house.” 

Remus on lips start to quirk a bit there too. “I do too; I mean, I barely remember where we lived before we moved in because I spent so much time here as is,” he shares, “but I suppose it helps show my mum’s difficulty moving in and fully changing up the place even after my grandad past; I don’t think she planned on us being here permanently, and then my grandad’s state deteriorated quicker than any of us banked for, and the place was hers and ours to keep, but for a dismal reason.”

“So, maybe keeping it as close to the way it was helped with the adjustment of the place being hers all of a sudden, and in turn comforted a lady whose parents passed far too soon,” Sirius takes it from there, smirking at Remus unearthed expression. “See? I can follow human emotions pretty well even though mine are bleeding out; I’m not that out of sorts.”

Remus’ mouth curls up into a smile that’s suspiciously smarmy for the tone of this. “Right; it’s almost as if you’ve a stunning amount of empathy in you? Weird.” Sirius huffs directly at him before ducking his head, his cheeks warming up by the second. “Yes, though, you’re onto something. I do think a lot of it was practicality too; we didn’t have that much stuff to fill a house with, to be fair, but there was a fully furnished one right here, so it made sense to keep a lot of stuff that wouldn't be able to replace anyway.”

“And if I’m honest, that hideabed looks heavy as shit,” Sirius raises.

“It is fucking heavy,” Remus returns. “It would have taken the entire fire department to lift it out of here.”

“Well, then, there wouldn’t have been any point in messing with it,” Sirius offers.

Remus gives out a thoughtful hum there. “She’s eased up a lot more with it over the years, and especially in the last few; it’s certainly got an look about it that’s a out of the ordinary now, but I think it comforts her still to have it like that, but with a Lupin flair mixed in there too,” he offers, smiling a little there. “I’m glad she came around to selling; it’s another big step for her, letting some of it go.” 

Sirius nods, thinking it must have been from the bit of armchair psychology itself, but also for the fact that he’s well-learned that the Lupins are natural born creatures of habit. “Do you know what’s happening to it?” he asks. “Only if a strip joint goes up right there, it’ll really detract from the overall tale, I think.”

Remus puts out far more an amused noise than Sirius was even banking on given the quiet tones they’ve adopted. “They sold to a couple with kids apparently, so the assumption is that a home will be built here at some point or other, but the details are thin as of right now,” he provides. “I’m sure it’ll be nice having neighbours that aren’t an entire fields away in either direction.” 

“Depends on the kind of neighbour you get,” Sirius puts up. 

“That’s an incredible point,” Remus allows, then lets out a faux-grievanced sigh. “I guess we’ll just have to live with just one acre now.” 

Sirius smirks for it, though he’s still taking in the view. “You know what, as complicated as that bit of background information was, I feel like you three ending up with all of this is the most fair and fitting thing I’ve ever contended with and that I find comforting, myself,” he puts down. 

“How so?” Remus asks.

“Oh, come now,” Sirius returns, budging up on Remus’ right side. “Humble beginnings with a goldmine underneath; if any deserve to reap the benefits of parting with a shitonne of land that is rightfully theirs to do what they choose with, it’s you guys; my parents owned a lot of fucking property and I can tell you right now it was painfully gratuitous and not anywhere near as just as your family's background.” 

“Was it?” Remus engages.

Sirius gives a solid nod his head. “Some of it was land was bought to continually bring in money in the background, as if they needed the extra dough, hilarious, but all over Paris they had — well, still technically must have, though I don’t know who technically owns them now because it sure isn’t me,” he tacks on, “but they had whole apartment blocks and shopping centers to their name, a resort in Belize that just churned it all in without them actually having to lift a finger, another one of those in the Maldives, and then for personal use, they had a town home in Paris, a summer home in Versailles, a villa in Spain that made so little sense to have when I swear they only vacationed there twice in the eighteen years I lived with them, and then a place in Greece that was an absolute flex on my father’s part because cousin Cissy went on and on about her vacationing there over one family dinner and all of a sudden there was a fourth home Rhodes; that’s too much power and not enough sense.”

Remus pushes a horse-like breath out of his cheeks before succumbing to a few amused breaths. “Cousin _Cissy?_” he raises, his mouth curling up.

“Well, Narcissa,” Sirius reiterates, putting a haughty lilt on it. “You saw her once, at the funeral." 

Remus’ eyes go to dinner plate status while clouding over before he puts out a tentative hum. “I saw a lot of people that day,” he hints. "I'm sorry." 

“No need to be, she's not that memorable," Sirius puts down. "She was with Bella out front, being passive aggressive as usual."

Remus clicks his tongue in remembrance, his expression going flat before he leans in and rubs his left hand over Sirius’ back for a few moments before guiding Sirius toward the porch stairs and right back into the present in one sweep, and that has a strong potential to be the best response out of Remus he could have ever gotten. He turns his head and leans in to press a kiss to Remus’ left shoulder for that before hoisting his suitcase off of the porch floor to carry it down the steps, his heart rate pick up as they head into Hope’s garden that he only ever saw once over video chat, but it’s that much better in person. 

He takes in the windy, cobblestone path they step onto off of the porch that seems to twist and turn throughout the garden. “I’m going to lose my mind, Remus,” Sirius insists, surging forward to skip along it down the path. “Did Hope lay all these down?” 

“She and my dad did,” Remus offers, smiling by the sound of it. “It was their little project over spring.” 

Sirius puts out an overcome noise, loving the image of the two of them laying the stones down. “They’re too fucking cute,” he returns, making his way through the windy path to get out of the garden, but takes in a sharp gasp as he lays his eyes upon an incredibly important sight. “The bird bath.”

“Oh Cunt, it’s even bigger in person,” Remus observes, putting out a bright laugh. 

“I’m so glad it is,” Sirius returns, then pauses as he realizes the stone path beers off into two direction, one that takes you out of the garden and another that leads toward a wicker love seat with a matching wicker roof over it. “What. The fuck, Remus?”

Remus looks around wildly for the source of Sirius’ outburst. “Oh,” he puts out heavily, “that’s very new; my mum was talking about doing that a couple weeks back, but I didn’t realize they put it up yet.”

“I’m — this is absolutely not real,” Sirius insists. “Do woodland creatures come here to gather here?”

Remus smirks for that. “At some point you will probably see deer up here while you’re staying,” he forwards. "In the mornings when it’s quiet, they’ve come right up to the house."

“Shut up,” Sirius returns, a Londoner through and through. “That does not happen.”

Remus nods eagerly, smiling for it. “One morning, a few years back now when the garden was just your very regular set of flower beds, I wandered outside one morning with a tea and went down into the yard, and there was a stag standing there, actual steps away from me, helping himself to our grass.”

“Fuck off, that’s madness,” Sirius sends him, rolling his suitcase down the other direction to get out of the garden. “Did you get to touch it?”

“Oh, no, I was clutching my mug very tightly because I was a bit spooked seeing it so close up,” Remus returns, following Sirius along the winding path. "I didn’t even think about trying to put a hand out."

“How long was he there for?” Sirius asks.

“Not long, a minute or two,” Remus provides. “It was kind of intense though; there was thirty seconds there where the two of us just stared at each other, unmoving, and I honestly felt like he could genuinely see into my soul.”

“Well, with one that sweet he probably could smell it a mile away,” Sirius offers. 

“Ooh, smooth,” Remus sends him. 

“Mhm mhm mhm,” Sirius hums back, rolling his suitcase off of the path as the cobblestones come to an end.

He looks off to the right where the A-Frame stands, not far from the house at all he’s happy to note, and topped off with bright blue painted wood panels and a white screen door with three steps up to it. 

He puts his head on a tilt, finding this sort of cabin such a sight to look at in real time. “It’s really shaped like an A,” he puts up. 

Remus moves up on Sirius’ right, stopping beside him. “Have you never seen one before?” he asks, right piqued with a smile on.

“In, like, pictures and outdoorsy themed calendars, but not in front of me,” Sirius returns, gesturing over at it with a smile of his own on. “It’s so fucking cute? Why is everything so cute here?”

“Well, wait until you’re in it,” Remus assures. 

Sirius cannot wait to check it out, very true, but he goes still as he takes in a green and white striped ground hammock sitting between the shorter side of the L-shaped porch and the A-Frame itself. “Hammock,” he puts out jovially, dropping his suitcase and knapsack right then and there. 

He takes to a sprint, gaining enough traction to launch himself onto it, and is very happy to find that it doesn’t cave in underneath him. He pushes himself onto his back for a good sprawl over it, smiling over at Remus, who’s on his way over to him and looking quite a bit taken with Sirius, if he does say so himself.“You’re almost too much fun during a house tour,” he passes along. 

“Thank you,” Sirius chimes, giving a shoulder-shimmy before resting his hands behind his head and looks up at Remus with a pair of bedroom eyes on. “Ever have relations on a hammock before?” 

Remus’ mouth goes from a bright smile to a pressed line, his eyebrows lifting over the frames of his sunglasses, and Sirius pauses short. “OK, I was fucking around? But wow, Remus,” he puts up, laughing there.

“Not like, the full shebang or anything,” Remus puts up, gesturing vaguely with his hands, though he doesn’t make any specific one and then seems to think twice about committing to the bit. “Just, you know, hands and stuff.” 

“Goodness gracious me,” Sirius returns daintily. 

“I’ve made it sound worse than it was,” Remus puts in. 

“Have you, though?” Sirius checks, squinting up at him.

“Well, we weren’t crossing spots off a list and high-fiving whenever we got one more down,” Remus elaborates. “There was just a lot of downtime over six years."

“I bet there was,” Sirius returns, shoulder bobbing. “Where else have you visited?”

Remus sets his hands on his hips, caught somewhere between a good pointed smile and frown. “Here and there,” he passes along. 

Sirius tosses a thumb back toward the A-Frame. “Did you get it done in there?” he raises. “I bet you did.” 

Remus lifts his right hand and scratches at the bridge of his nose idly. “The bed in there is great, you will see that if we ever get to that part of the tour,” he hints.

“Mhm, and we will, but what about the tall grass over there, hm?” Sirius raises, nodding out to the vast field behind the house. “Seems like a fine place to stop and have a roll in the hay, as they call it out here.” 

“Nobody calls it that here, and it got really tall at times,” Remus returns. “If we lay down nobody could tell if we were even out there and the grass would make a little dome around you." 

“Well, how you could resist, then,” Sirius chimes, kind of loving how openly haughty Remus is being about this. “What about the woods, Remus; he already take you there too? Am I too late?” 

“Well.” Remus lifts his hands. “When in the woods, it’s important to stop and enjoy the scenery—” he cuts off as Sirius flails his hands in the air but comes back swinging, “—that doesn’t mean I don’t want to again; guaranteed I’ll have a much better time if it’s you I’m with.”

Sirius almost loses steam there. “Well, you just wait and see how good a time it is, but here’s a quick and probably easier question,” he prefaces, “where haven’t you had relations on this property?” 

“The basement,” Remus sounds out, giving him a pointed smile. 

Sirius goes for a bit of a face journey there. “Good answer,” he returns.

For someone who held his own quite well for a good while there, Remus gives himself away not by changing much about his expression but by slipping his hands into the back pockets of his trousers, and that really is Sirius’ only sign that not all is right in Remus’ world. “Hey,” Sirius says, lifting his right leg up to prod Remus in the hip with his big toe. “I’m just teasing. Come on, with all the places I’ve dropped trou, what kind of soap box would I have to stand on here?” 

Remus budges back on Sirius’ foot, which Sirius has to hope is a good sign. “Not a tall one,” he replies, his mouth twisting up halfway toward a smile. 

“OK, we’ve agreed on that, so why are you doing the pocket thing?” Sirius asks. Remus moves his head back and forth in a semblance of a shake of it, but Sirius eyes his stance. “You do that when you’re uncomfortable. Well, that or you pick at your nails like you did inside, but the pocket thing's good a sign as any.” 

Remus stares Sirius down for a few seconds, lets out a deep breath, and moves to crouch by the hammock, crossing his arms over Sirius’ waist. “I didn’t want you to start trying to put two and two together and wind up thinking that what happened back in there with us is in any way comparable to any of that with him,” he puts down, giving Sirius’ middle a small squeeze with his open, down facing palms. "That's why the pocket thing happened; I didn’t want you getting too far ahead of me with this one."

Sirius sits after the nth time Remus has shown him just how much he gives a shit about how he feels about anything, but especially this. "I appreciate how hard you're looking out for me right now, but I really wasn’t giving you actual shit for seeing someone before me, OK?" he raises. "I’m just a lot when I get going, you know that.” 

“No, but I could understand if it’d be hard for you to hear all of that and not to compare how I was with him to how I am with you when everything is so confusing right now,” Remus insists. "And instead of not saying anything about it and risking you coming to that confusion without me, I think it's important to differentiate here that you and me, us, how we are during, how attentive you are to me and what kind of a time I’m having, how I feel when I’m with you; I didn’t know that this was a thing I could actually experience, but it feels big every single time, be it a quickie in a torture chamber or not, it’s amazing no matter what we’re doing and where, and that is new.”

“Boy, you have no idea,” Sirius returns, regaining the ability to move and using it on lifting his right hand to cart it up through Remus’ fringe. “I’ve never had this much fun with anyone, full stop; you and me are something else.” 

Remus gives into a sunshine smile that directly rivals that “official” sun pouring its rays out over the property around them. “I laugh so much more with you,” he keeps on, and thank Cunt he did; Sirius breathes in and out quietly, unable to handle how Remus can sometimes read his mind without knowing he’s even doing it. “I had that with him for a while but it really fizzled out toward the end, and I know we’re still just getting started in a way but the fact that we’re still cracking up like that this far in is a really big deal for me.” 

“It’s huge for me too,” Sirius returns, his mouth all twisted up. “And you know what, even if I was freaking out about comparing the two of us, the answer is really quite simple,” he pauses to gesturing around at the Lupin abode for emphasis with his free hand, “look where I am and look who brought me here; I passed the biggest checkpoint there is with you and I couldn’t refute that even if I tried, so I haven’t.”

“Good, stay with that,” Remus puts down.

Sirius passes his right thumb back and forth over Remus’ left temple. “I wasn’t giving you genuine shit, OK?” he puts down, passing his right thumb over Remus’ left eyebrow, tracing into the shallow divot going through it that’s likely near-permanent now but almost feels like it’s been there for ages. “I was just surprised, is all.” 

“Over?” Remus checks.

“Well, from the whole big, bad secret thing,” Sirius raises. “I would’ve thought trying it out in the open would be difficult to talk yourself into, even with that adventurous side of yours; it just threw me and I flailed around and made a lot of noise to combat it.”

Remus leans his head down on his arms, facing Sirius. “Well, in general it was either we went to my house or his, and his dad has a home office so he worked from home half the time and he had a brother and sister so there was always someone lingering around at his so there was absolutely no privacy there and we were doing tutoring too, so we needed a place that was more subdued already,” he offers. “Mine both worked, and when one or both of them they were on leave, they were either at the hospital or back home with my dad recovering, so they weren’t constantly checking in on us. And when times were as good as they could be for us again they’d be in and out of the house but they wouldn’t hover when they were home, they didn’t come looking for us if we went out on the trails, and interestingly, condoms wouldn’t magically turn up on top my dresser when they knew he’d be coming by later that day, but a box sure did turn up there once I started bringing Angela over to hang out.”

Sirius fizzles there, giving himself away to a full snicker fest. “I’m sorry, that’s funny.” 

“Mhm,” Remus chimes in reply, and even he’s starting to laugh more at the oddity of the situation and that’s some fucking progress in and of itself. “That was after I hit seventeen and was their version of flying a ‘if you’re going to do it please use one of these,’ conversation toward me.”

Sirius sends out a round of huffy laughs. “Did you repurpose them?” 

Remus takes a hold of his lower lip between his teeth, shaking his head no, his expression half amused, half something else, and Sirius leans in, waiting for Remus to bend to his will. “They were the wrong size,” he confesses. 

Sirius acts like he’s been shot, laying back on the hammock and clutching his chest fast. “That was so much better than I thought it’d be,” he puts out. 

“I just stuck with my regulars and just left that pack where it was,” Remus tacks on, breaking into a laugh at the end of it. “They’re still there because I didn’t toss them should they get the wrong impression or I was scoffing at their effort, but that means I’ve, like, seven year old condoms up there that I’m not sure what to do with.” 

“Again, balloon animals,” Sirius chimes. 

“Well, if there’s a time to learn a new skill, maybe vacation’s it,” Remus offers. 

Sirius turns in a little toward him on the hammock, reaching to tap the tip of Remus’ nose with his left forefinger. “You didn’t even flinch when his name came up,” he mentions. "I was impressed, to say the least." 

“Well, it’s like I said, it happens now and again,” Remus offers, switching to his knees on the ground to give his ankles a rest, Sirius bets. “I know he's not fishing, or doing it to be a punk about it; he’s just talking about someone we have in common.” 

Sirius nods, twirling another lock of Remus’ hair up and around his right forefinger. “I think I'm starting to see just how many moving parts there were to this whole thing,” he says, speaking it between them. “I mean, truthfully if I hadn’t already known and was hearing you two talk about him, I don’t think I’d have even guessed you two had a thing, so just being able to see the way you handled that, I can see why they wouldn’t have guessed that you two even had a something if that’s how you are about him whenever he comes up, but then that’s also helping to put your nerves about this into perspective even more for me, you know?”

Remus barely moves his head, caught between a shake of his head and a nod, but that’s a call to keep going if Sirius has ever seen one. “You going along with the assumptions they made early on: ‘those two study-buddy pals are off on a hike again, just some boy time,’ probably felt the safest thing to let think at the time, especially with the big secret element being put in your head, and eventually them figuring that Angela was going to be your first experience instead probably felt like another sign that you were doing well in keeping the secret, and I can imagine it reinforced you to keep speaking nonchalantly about him when things were good with him because you had a decoy, but then I imagine it also allowed you the ability to be so nonchalant about it when he'd come up while things weren’t so good between you two and then afterward when things had finally ended with him and up until now, where he's just a name that comes up, so I think I get it; this is a lot more complicated than I even gave you credit for, but I'm learning.” 

Remus scoots over on his knees, leaning over Sirius’ chest from the side of the hammock, and kisses him with a firm press of his lips, a patient tongue to contrast, and a left pressed to Sirius’ jaw with a softness to it that takes the thank-you kiss that much further along. Sirius lets Remus end it where he sees fit, stares up at him with a pair of soft eyes as Remus keeps hold of his face like he’s not quite ready to let him go fully yet., and Sirius isn’t sure he’s ready to let him yet either. “I’ve been so nervous that we’d finally get here and you’d think ‘what has he been worried about this whole time?’” Remus divulges, swallowing after it. 

Sirius shakes his head best he can with Remus still holding it so carefully. "I get you and this situation much more than I did before we took this hammock break even, so maybe this could be another lesson in ‘Remus talking about his past lives gets us further than when he doesn’t,’” he raises. “What do you think?” 

“I think it’s a case by case basis,” Remus whispers at him pointedly. 

“Better than nothing,” Sirius whispers back, just as pointedly.

Remus pushes back from the hammock with a laugh through his nose, though he stays knelt down by Sirius. “This has been the most disastrous house tour that ever occurred, I think” he puts up, smiling wryly for it.

“Disastrous, or completely in character with us?” Sirius raises. 

“Both,” Remus allows. 

“One quick thing before we get back to it?” Sirius bids, and Remus nods for it. “Was it just me, or does Lyall not appear to like him all that much?”

Remus smirks there, making a doozy of a pointed face. “He likes Tom just fine,” he puts down, “it’s his dad that he’s not too keen on.”

Sirius gives out a throaty trill at the prospect of getting even a little bit of tea on this matter. “Why why why?” he repeats, prodding Remus’ left shoulder thrice in time.

Remus huffs a laugh, budging against Sirius’ third prod. “Well, some of it’s got to do with the never-ending Cambridge talking point,” he offers, giving a head tilt back and forth, “but in general they just rub each other the wrong way; my dad’s never really been one to make nice with uppity folks, and Tom’s dad is one to look down his nose at you when you’re in conversation with him.” 

Sirius nods before smacking his lips once. “That was a lovely, Sunday school version of it, but I was asking for the deets, Remus,” he asserts.

Remus’ shoulders sink a little there. “I don’t know how to say more without making us sound like terrible people,” he muses.

“Um, literally impossible,” Sirius puts in. “Go.”

Remus makes a long-suffering face, but there’s a hint of a smile happening and Sirius knows he’s just got to wait with a pleasant smile on for the details, and in total Sirius has to wait seven seconds for Remus to comply. “We dunk on Edgar’s sort quite a bit,” he admits. “My dad’s favourite theory about him is that he drives his Audi through the mu k on purpose just so he can parade it into the shop and get it washed by my dad or any one of his work mates.”

“_Ah,_” Sirius drags out. “Any weight to the theory?”

Remus’ eyebrows raise high above his sunglasses. “An anvil,” he puts down.

Sirius' eyes brighten. “Did the apple fall far from the tree there?” he checks. 

Remus gives a tentative hum behind a tight smile, tilting his head back and forth in consideration, and Sirius hums in harmony with it, budging up on Remus’ arms crossed over him to get him to say it. “He was aware enough to take the mickey out of his dad when he was being particularly insufferable, but not quite so self-aware to notice when he was parroting something his dad would have absolutely said,” he answers, and Sirius taps the tip of his nose once in understanding. “In any case, the point is, my dad’s never got on well with hoity-toity, as you’d call them and, well, did that apple fall far from this tree? Not very.”

Sirius briefly considers leaving it alone, but he just can’t hold it in. “OK but have you met me?” he raises, gesturing at himself. “Why would I have thought you were terrible for that?”

“We have gotten into it over things like this,” Remus raises delicately.

“What, when?” Sirius cross-examines. 

“Our first date,” Remus puts down. “And many instances after that, so there are some things I have to be careful disclosing.” 

Sirius panics for a beat. “Which one do you count as our first?” he checks. 

“Well, since I found out that you consider the laundromat had been one, then if we get down to it my first time coming over to the flat probably counts as a date, and that would make it the first one,” Remus theorizes. 

A lock and key click in Sirius’ head. “And with what I planned to do to you that night?” he raises. “You’re completely right, that was the first.”

“Well, we got into a spat over class inequalities on our first date, then,” Remus adds onto it. 

“OK, but I thought your were calling me a spoiled brat who didn't know what he was talking about after only knowing me for three weeks, and I sure don’t do well with being called something like that, do I?” Sirius counters, and Remus nods once, letting him have that. “Shitting on hoity-toits however is my area of expertise; I’ve trained extensively in the field and I've earned that right.” 

“Shitting on pretension is more your style though, and has become more of ours over time, though,” Remus puts up. 

“Well, are we saying that Tom’s papa is rich but not pretentious about it?” Sirius queries.

“Oh, definitely not,” Remus returns. “He’s a packaged deal, I’m afraid, but I still felt the need to be careful.”

“Well, I say we it’s time his Audi met a dozen eggs,” Sirius raises, giving Remus a wicked smile.

Remus huffs directly at him, wagging a finger at him. “The point is, they get by well enough when they see each other because they live in the same town and sort of have to, but what you saw was what my dad does after a run-in with the man; he brings the salt.”

“I love Lyall’s salt,” Sirius puts in avidly. “I want more of his salt, even.”

“You will get it,” Remus insists knowingly. He reaches to tap Sirius’ stomach twice with his right hand. “He really likes you, by the way.”

“Yeah?” Sirius probes, his eyes lighting right back up again.

“Oh, yeah,” Remus affirms, flashing him a grin. “Good work ushering him up front.”

Sirius feels as if he’s sucked all the energy out of the sun for how good that makes him feel. “Thank you,” he accepts, genuinely grateful for the mention. “I honestly couldn’t believe he was going for the back.”

Remus gives a laugh that takes his whole chest up and back down with it, pushing himself to stand and reaching to extend his right hand to Sirius. “That is just my dad; he really would have just gone and sat in the back, he’s that unbothered, but I loved how fast you turned that around,” he says, helping Sirius to stand. 

“You have to quit stealing my thunder, then?” Sirius raises, bumping Remus as he passes him to get to the luggage he dropped nearby. 

“When did I do that?” Remus asks, turning up just by Sirius to grab hold of the knapsack with an imploring expression on. 

“No more getting doors for him, that’s my job now,” Sirius manifests, going for the handle of his suitcase. “I need my thoughtfulness to be on full display here, and I can’t do that with you around, taking all of my chances.” 

“I wasn’t trying to,” Remus insists. “It was automatic.” 

“I know that,” Sirius returns, lifting his suitcase to carry it over toward the A-Frame, “but Hope and Lyall are already well aware you’re a cherub, but they need to realize I’m one, too, so I’m going to need you to hold back on your Good Boy Remus impulses, at least for tonight.” 

“Right, and then you can stand back and let me get all of the doors,” Remus reiterates, following along. 

“Exactly,” Sirius jests. “Though, who are we kidding, am I going to stop there?” 

“I highly doubt it,” Remus says, going up the A-Frame steps ahead of Sirius. “My mum said she’d switch the power on in here this morning, so everything should be working.” 

He opens the door, heading inside and holding it open for Sirius to wrangle his suitcase in through the doorway. Sirius drops it, has a look up and around at the shape of the cabin, and the little bedroom area in front of them, and he does have to say it’s like a swanky hotel room. The two things he’s most excited about are the bed and the massive, triangular window over it that gives them a prime view of the property, and therefore, the property a prime view of the bed, too. 

“Those blinds work, yeah?” Sirius checks. 

“Oh yeah,” Remus forwards, smirking as he props Sirius’ guitar up against the wall. 

“Good, ‘cause I plan on taking you over every inch of this cabin, and I need you to know that now and to know that the blinds to do us a solid when that happens,” Sirius puts up.

Remus leaves Sirius’ knapsack near the guitar, steps over to Sirius, and leaves a peck on his lips. “They’re solid blinds,” he doubles down. "Can’t see a thing if they’re drawn.”

Sirius sneaks a little longer of a kiss out of Remus, but his lips are plush and still have a rosy tint to them from how much they sucked face during their quick romp, so Sirius considers it fair game, and Remus seems to think it’s fair too, given that he lets a contented breath out through his nose as Sirius pulls back from him. Sirius flashes him a smile after it, has another look around, and heads over to the door on the right side of the room, pointing toward it. “Does that lead to this bulbous fridge I heard about?” 

“Sure does,” Remus offers. 

Sirius flings the door open, finding a wall in front of him and that he has two choices, left or right. On the left is the previously advertised kitchenette area complete with a compacted blue and black checkered counter space, a portable burner, and the ancient, mint green fridge with a silver handle and suction sealing so powerful that Sirius thinks he’s actually travelled back in time a good eight decades when he pulls it open to have a look at the bare shelves inside of it.

“A mint fridge?” Sirius calls out. “Fuck off, Remus.” 

“I didn’t choose the colour of the fridge; I wasn’t alive then.” 

“This is just beyond,” Sirius puts out. "Why mint?" 

"I think it's just what they brought home way back when."

Sirius shuts the fridge door and heading down the opposite way from the kitchenette toward a door to what he has to assume is the bathroom. He pokes his head into the small room, finding a small tinted window in the top right corner of it, the tub does take up most of the room as advertised, and that the tub, sink, and toilet, and the world's smallest mirror over the sink, but Sirius' reflection isn't doing him any favours lately as is; that's just fine. 

He heads back to the main room where Remus is having a sit at the little complementary desk and chair combo in the room. “I want a mint everything now,” he announces.

Remus smirks. “I mean, we could take that task on but it could be awhile before we have everything swapped out.” 

“That’s fine with me,” Sirius offers, having a peek inside a wooden cabinet across from the bed and finding the telly in there, “it’s more a ten year plan.” 

“Then that, I think we could do,” Remus returns, taking his sunglasses off and leaving them on the desk. “Check out the bed, you know you want to.” 

And with that, Sirius flies at it, finding it to be on par with the couch in the sitting room in regards to plush comfort. “Why haven’t you stolen this bed for your room?” 

“It’s not really mine anymore,” Remus offers. 

“No, but it was, like, two years ago?” Sirius returns. “Why didn’t you steal it earlier than that?”

Remus waves it off. “A queen would have looked funny in it,” he says evenly.

Sirius projects himself back into Remus’ room and superimposes the bed he’s on into the corner where Remus’ double was, and while it wasn’t a small room necessarily, he can sort of see why a queen would look out of place. “Fine, you win,” he says, rolling onto his back. “I can’t believe I let you rail me in a torture chamber when this was here the whole time.” 

“Next time’s the charm,” Remus offers, giving into a yawn. 

“What are you doing over there?” Sirius asks.

“That porn we were just in really tuckered me out,” Remus offers up, a smarmy smile on. 

Sirius beams grand. “Come here, then,” he coaxes, reaching out toward him with a set of grabby-hands. 

“No, I can’t; I’m spent,” Remus professes. “If I lay down now I _will_ crash.” 

“We have time for a kip, don’t we,” Sirius raises plainly, and after Remus’ disagreeing expression he looks up to the digital clock on the nightstand just by the bed. “It’s not even ten yet.” 

“And we’ve a whole day of exploring ahead of us that I don’t want to waste snoozing,” Remus tacks on. 

“Who says it’d be a waste?” Sirius frowns, eyeing the rather pronounced circles around Remus’ eyes. “First of all, we're on vacation so you’ve a Cunt given right to sleep whenever you damn well please, and second we have all morning and all afternoon to peruse around the town, and while you do look rugged and dangerous with those bags under your eyes, I’m feeling a tad responsible for them.”

Remus shakes his head, not even letting that land for a second. “I was the one up all night,” he raises. 

“After I kept you up most of the night before,” Sirius tacks on. “All I’m saying is, your running on fumes here; you can take a snooze break.”

“Last time I tried that I got kiss-bombed,” Remus mentions. “And believe me, I’m not complaining about it, but I don’t know that I should be—”

Sirius’ whole chest wilts along with him. “Remus, I know I had a low point, but I don’t want to need you every second of this trip,” he presses. “And I don’t want you feeling like you can’t close your eyes around me, so please, get some rest and we can pick right back up where we were after.” 

Remus breathes in long and sighs it back out. “Only half an hour, OK?” he raises, lifting off of his chair. 

“Coming up,” Sirius says, flashing his phone at him. 

Remus goes around the edge of the bed, moves up on the left side of the bed as is their regular form, and curls into Sirius’ body, setting his left arm across Sirius’ stomach and his head propped up on Sirius’ shoulder which is a maneuver Sirius was quietly gunning for and now gets to reap the benefits of; not a bad turn of events at all. 

He sneaks his left arm around Remus’ shoulders, brings his hand up to trace his fingertips over the nape of Remus’ neck while he types in Remus’ alarm with his right hand, hearing a muffled laugh come from Remus. 

Sirius sets his phone down beside him on the bed and turns his gaze on Remus, but he can only see the top of his head and tufts of curls from here. “Hm?” he asks.

Remus shifts his head up so Sirius can see the light smile he has on. “I’ve had _You Raise Me Up_ in my head ever since yesterday,” he offers, his voice low. 

Sirius snorts, leaning his head down to leave a kiss on Remus’ forehead. “Real sorry about that.” 

“Don’t be,” Remus insists sleepily, settling his head down again with his eyes shut this time. “I like the idea of you going full worship team lead on everyone.” 

Sirius gives into a smirk. “You know, James was actually preserving my honour about that.” 

“Was he?” 

“Mhm; the performance was really more at the sweet spot between worship team lead and that hoe over there.” 

“Oh, well, that I’d already well assumed.” 

“Listen: it was out of my hands. My hips go everywhere first, I just let them tell me where we’re going and follow their lead.” 

“I, fucking know that.” 

Sirius huffs out a few, purposefully internal laughs for the sake of Remus’ dozy state, but Remus presses his wry smile to Sirius’ chest, adds a bit of pressure to make it a kiss, and settles in once more, but this time Sirius is pretty sure he’s on the road to Snoozeville. He leaves him to it and quickly tacks another ten minutes onto Remus’ allotted time, thinking that a little more time than requested to rest might be nice for him, but not too long that he’ll come out the other end regretting it. He sets the phone back down, turns in toward Remus just a little bit, and Remus hardly reacts, only adjusts his head a little before breathing out sleepily, and Sirius thinks even if he doesn’t actually get a snooze in, maybe just having a lay down could be just what the guy needs. 

The sun’s facing east at the present moment and therefore not beating in through the window above their heads, but there’s enough light shining in via the open blinds for Sirius to be able to see the sparing sandy coloured strands mixed in with the rest of Remus’ hair, and Sirius can’t help lifting his hand from the back of Remus’ neck to thread his fingers through it, gentle enough with his movements that he hopes he isn’t keeping Remus from sleeping. 

From the looks of it, Remus is either too close to sleep to mind or he’s already there, and really, it’s not at all unnatural for Sirius to cart his fingers through it, perhaps it’s a common enough occurrence that it doesn’t even stick out to him. Sirius reaches his right hand up, hovering his thumb over Remus’ left brow, down his cheek, his jaw, and stops it at his neck before snuggling in himself and dropping his left hand from Remus’ hair, wondering if he’ll be able to snooze too, and smiles to himself as Remus makes a tiny noise in his sleep; a tiny objection. 

Sirius puts his hand back where it was, curls his fingers back in the mop on his head and tracing little circles over Remus’ scalp, keeping it slow, methodical, hoping it helps. 

Sirius can’t say he gets any sleep though he does try; he’s just too wired. The good thing is, he’s in an A-frame cabin in Wales while Remus is cozied up beside him, so it could be a lot worse for him. He opens his eyes again after a while, staring up at the meeting point between the two sides of the tall roof. He thinks about going and exploring a little more, but he ought to save it all for Remus to be present for; he does enjoy Sirius’ live reactions. 

Instead, Sirius picks his phone back up and starts thumbing around on it, thinking he can waste a bit of data until he can get the wifi password off of Remus. He’s only just got his browser loading back to its most recent page when a text comes in from James, and thank Cunt he was already messing around on his phone for Shania doesn’t blast out to alert him about it and wake Remus as a result. 

Sirius taps on the message, even though it’s short and sweet enough to see it in the little blurb at the top of his screen. 

_Good luck, fool_

Sirius lifts his gaze to the ceiling, taking in a deep breath and smiling for a lot of reasons: the sentiment, the crass execution that’s completely true to form, the fact that he already said good luck before leaving Remus’ place but felt he needed to forward one more along, the fact that he waited until past nine to send it over to his extremely anti-early morning mate. 

Remus moves in his sleep, giving a big stretch before curling back in against Sirius, his head ending up closer than it was before, and Sirius tucks his own in, leaving his smile pressed to his forehead, and thumbs out a reply, feeling quite surrounded by his favourite people. 

_i won’t need it, you tit_

He sends a heart emoji along after it, sits with that thing called guilt festering in his stomach, and then definitely jolts as his alarm sounds off, stirring Remus into the waking world again, and that’s some good timing, even if it was startling. Remus curls in more, breathing in through his nose, and peers up at Sirius through lidded eyes, and soon drops the wry smile on his lips past Sirius’ chest, hiding it from him. Sirius pushes an amused breath through his nose, wiggles down the bed so they’re side to side, and hovers a big ol’ smile in front Remus’ sleep face. 

“Put that away,” Remus orders, placing his left hand directly over Sirius’ face. 

Sirius trills behind his hand, feeling rather precious about that one. “Are you feeling better?”

Remus nods while he uses his free hand to rub at his eyes. “I am, thanks,” he replies, dropping his other hand from Sirius’ visage. 

“It’s OK to have this out now?” Sirius asks, circling his right hand around it. 

“Barely,” Remus returns, pushing off of the bed and wandering out of the room. “Just going to use the bathroom and then did you want to go see my favourite spot on the planet?” 

“Yes,” Sirius back powerfully. 

“Used your whole chest with that one.” 

“I needed to.”

Before long a flush echoes back his way, another few seconds and the sound of the taps running takes over, and Remus makes his reappearance, garnering Sirius to finally lift off of the bed. He goes for his knapsack, kneeling before it and taking his cigarettes out of the front pouch, and slips the pack into his back right jeans pocket, heading for the door. 

"Hold on, sunscreen," Remus bids, pulling the tube out of his pocket and coming for Sirius. "We'll be out in the sun for a while." 

Sirius smiles warmly, extending his arms up and out for Remus to rub his arms down. "Am I forgiven yet for picking the Henley?" he checks. 

"Yes and no," Remus answers plainly, onto Sirius' cheeks. "You look horrifyingly good today." 

"Same to you, pal," Sirius returns lively. 

"Do you want me to do your ankles?" Remus raises. 

"Why, I wouldn't mind at all," Sirius gives him, and Remus stoops down to handle that while Sirius messes around with Remus' hair some since his heads right there anyway. 

Remus rises to his feet once finished and Sirius swipes the tube from him, works on his arms and face before gesturing for Remus to twirl around, and it'd sure be something if Remus twirled but he just turns around instead. He leaves the sunscreen on the desk and hands Remus' sunglasses over to him since he's nearer to them, and heads out the A-frame door, taking a leap over the three steps and landing on the ground with his left hand pointed toward the house and the right one off into the distance. “Which direction?”

“The entryway first,” Remus imparts, shutting the door behind them. “We’re going to need our shoes for the trail.”

With that, Sirius heads back toward the cobblestone path to get back to the porch, but Remus turns up with a hand at Sirius’ back, gently guiding him back toward the hammock. 

“What‘s your angle, pal?” Sirius asks, definitely going with Remus’ guiding anyway. 

“Well, there’s this thing called the side of the house which we could just skirt around to get back to the front,” Remus replies enticingly, leading Sirius around the right side of the hammock.

They pass below the short side of the L-shaped porch, walking in between a row of evergreens on their left with the house on their right, and about halfway down sits a bin with a number of logs sitting in it. “Can we make a fire?” Sirius asks.

Remus smirks heavily through his nose. “Not off to a great start with a sentence like that.”

“I mean in the fireplace, not just in the street,” Sirius returns, snickering.

“Then, yes, definitely,” Remus assures, leading Sirius out into the front yard and up to the front door. “We even have one of those fireplace blowers, and you can push it all you like if you want.”

“I am going to push it so much I’ll keep the fire ablaze myself,” Sirius manifests.

“I’m sure you will,” Remus returns amusedly, heading into the foyer and returning in very little time at all with both their pairs of shoes.

He lets them fall to the porch wherein they both work their feet into their respective pairs, and Sirius hangs back while Remus shuts the front door again and turns back for the stairs.

“Uh, we’re just leaving the door like that?” Sirius asks, tossing a thumb back at it. 

Remus stops at the top of the porch stairs, looking over his shoulder at him. “We don’t really lock it unless there’s nobody else home,” he says. “We’re not leaving just yet, we’re going on a little quest.”

Sirius scoffs haughtily. “After all the shit you've given us about leaving our door unlocked and then here you are being _Mr Fucking Chill About It,_” he returns.

“Well, the difference between living in Rhondda Valley and living in London might just be a large one,” Remus puts up, heading down the stairs. 

“I just think it’s funny, ‘thassal,” Sirius puts up taking the stairs with a dainty swing of his hips. “But really tho, what’s the rule around here for that? I don’t want to mess it up.”

““Go with unlocked during the day unless we’re the last to leave and locked at night and you won’t mess up a thing,” Remus passes along, leading them back toward the back yard via the grassy pass alongside the house. 

“If you could bring on the same unfailing opinion of my abilities onto your own, you would be unstoppable,” Sirius puts down, following Remus into the backyard.

“Well, that goes for you too,” Remus forwards, heading past the hammock with an easy stroll. 

Sirius sends him an indignant noise, but lets that come to a standstill, and then as they pass the A-frame he switches to excitement again when he remembers they’re going on a quest. “Don’t even try to tell me where we’re going,” he imparts. “I want to be surprised.”

“Deal,” Remus assures, reaching to clasp Sirius’ right left hand and nodding ahead of them. “All I’ll say is we’re going straight.”

“Could never be me,” Sirius puts in, falling into a stroll alongside Remus, who’s busy pressing a long fart noise into his free palm. “Yeah, yeah, yeah; not like you love it or anything.”

Remus quits the antics, dropping his hand and leaning further into Sirius’ frame as they stroll, and Sirius watches him sidelong as Remus takes a good look around at the place, finding the act contagious and follows suit, taking in the field ahead of them. “Where do they usually cut off in terms of mowing this deep stretch of land you have here,” Sirius asks, quite piqued.

Remus hums there, pointing northwest of them. “That line of trees up there is usually where my dad calls it quits,” he relays.

“Fair enough,” Sirius accepts, when it’s quite a section to work with as is.

“It’s taller than I was expecting it to be with all the yard work that’s been done lately, but then again, I’m not sure how the mower’s faring these days,” Remus raises thoughtfully, then trains his head down and to the right, looking down at Sirius’ cuffed jeans. “I hope it doesn’t bother your ankles too much when we get further in.”

“Can’t say I’ve noticed a prickling,” Sirius offers, strolling along easily. 

“Mm, it might,” Remus warns.

“Well, listen, if you two went and found a nice spot out there to do the do, I feel like my ankles will live,” Sirius theorizes. 

Remus sends out a horse-like puff of breath. “It pats down pretty easily,” he forwards. “And so you know, we didn’t get starkers for the field times; those were more of a pull things down to make it work and once it’s done it’ll look like we’ve been studying diligently the whole time.”

Sirius snorts freely there. “There is no way in hell they thought you were just doing school work,” he insists, and Remus’ entire face drops. “No no, I’m not saying they thought you were getting off, but smoking something, having a brew, that sort of grass mischief; that’s all I meant.” 

Remus relaxes his face muscles there, budging Sirius for the fright. “It’s possible they did, but they never came looking with intent to bust me,” he extends, though there he pushes out a laugh through his nose, smiling sidelong at Sirius. “Although, one time—“

“Yes,” Sirius hisses, fishing his pack out with his free hand. “It’s going to be good, I can tell already.”

“OK, but this was from far earlier, back when we first moved in here, so I was just kid at the time” Remus elaborates, reaching up to cup his free hand around Sirius’ one-handed cigarette + lighter maneuver to shield them from the wind, but pauses speaking to see if it helped any, and Sirius nods eagerly as he puffs on the end of it, getting a good flame going. “So the backyard was very exciting to me, and one day, maybe only a week or two into our stay, I went out here looking to explore, sift through the grass, pretend I’m in the jungle, that sort of thing, and my mum and dad were inside somewhere and grandad was out on one of the deck chairs so I told him where I was planning to go, the problem was that I set off on my expedition without saying where I was going loud enough.”

“Oh, oh no,” Sirius says around a new haul.

“I did bring a book with me because I always had a book with me,” Remus says circumstantially, “and once I found I’d sufficiently explored, I lay down to read with all this grass around me, obscuring me from everything but the sky, and then I fell asleep, and that led to the Great Remus Search of ‘99.” 

Sirius lets his haul out in a fast stream to the side, giving him a sidelong grimace though his eyes are alive with curiosity. “And turns out, what I thought was a short nap was really hours, so my mum was in an upheaval, thought I’d been lost to the wolves — expression, not literally, though honestly I have a sense it crossed her mind,” Remus puts in, “so I finally did make my way back to the house, but I had no idea I’d been out there all afternoon, not answering to the call of my name, and Sirius, when I came up on the backyard and my mum and dad lay eyes on me, I’d accepted it: I was going to have to pack my things and go.”

Sirius snorts there, sending an easy stream out of his mouth. “You poor thing,” he returns. 

“No, not poor me,” Remus denies. “Poor my mum; she was beside herself, and my dad was irate.”

“I can’t even imagine irate Lyall,” Sirius says, smirking around his cigarette. 

“Mm, he was juggling my mum and the fact that he didn’t have any answers either, so he wasn’t in a prime mood,” Remus puts in. “He doesn’t go off the rails often, but when he does the best hope you can have is that you can stay out of his way and wait for him to put on Fleetwood, and then you know you’re in the clear.”

Sirius lets his lungful out with a curiosity-soaked laugh. “Oh?” he raises. “Not the Beatles?” 

“Oh, no no,” Remus denies. “He’s not very comfortable with his own anger, so he has to leave and go fizzle down himself, and they’re not what he’ll go put on he’s in a state; I don’t know if it’s that he doesn’t want to mix the two, mess up the connotation he’s got with them, but it was always Fleetwood, and in particular, the opening bars of _Landslide_ would fill little me with a complete sense of calm knowing that my dad was on the mend, and I’ll be honest, when I hear it come on up until this day, I still sort of deflate with unmistakable relief? It’s odd, I’m sure, the way I’m saying it.”

“No, you did fine,” Sirius returns, giving the back of Remus’ hand a swipe with his left thumb. “So, _Landslide_ could be heard that day, I’d imagine?”

“Later that night, yes,” Remus affirms. 

“How grounded were you, though?” Sirius checks, knocking the cherry off of his cigarette with three quick flicks. 

Remus gives a vague hum. “Grounding didn’t really work for me.”

Sirius snorts, looking sidelong at him as he pockets the end of his cigarette. “I mean, didn’t really work for me either but it sure happened anyway,” he says, and even he can tell it sounds more sour than he planned for.

Remus is quiet for probably ten to fifteen seconds in real time, but in Remus-time that means he’s panicking internally. “Well, it wasn’t—” he starts, stops, breathes next to Sirius.

“Alright, I promise I didn’t actually want it to sound that snarky,” Sirius instills. “I just thought saying it didn’t work was a funny way to phrase it because what kid is jazzed about being grounded? Come on, boy.”

Remus moves with the budging Sirius starts up. “It really didn’t work for me, though,” he says. “I’d give myself so much shit for getting in trouble that grounding me to them was overkill; like that day, I knew I’d made my mum bawl and I knew I’d made my dad livid, so I put myself in timeout.”

Sirius is real torn right about here, the anecdote so perfectly Remus that it’s definitely funny in a sense, sweet too, and enough to push out a breathy laugh through his nose, but there’s two anvils weighing in his stomach, one there to scold him for not already predicting that, and one that he likes less than the former when it carries with it a sharp bolt of envy.

It’s not a new feeling, but there’s no way around it: he doesn’t have a single idea what that could even be like. When he and James were eleven they accidentally flooded the Potters’ upstairs bathroom and Sirius didn’t see him outside of school for a week. Same year, Sirius fed Peter’s dog a sprinkle-covered donut hole and she went and ralphed that and everything else in her stomach up and onto Miss Pettigrew's favourite rug, and after Peter took the fall for it he wasn’t allowed to come out with them for a week either. That was just about the only thing that got him feeling like he wasn’t the only one who got into trouble at home. His own groundings came from dragging mud into the foyer from outside so for that he often felt like it wasn’t fair scoring happening, but at the very least, he was aware that his friends got punished for wrongdoings too. 

By that age, it wasn’t difficult for him to pinpoint the differences he noted between his own family and others around them, but that early on it was more to do with playing and kid stuff; being permitted to run around in the Potters’ backyard and burn all the energy inside of him bursting to be let out, to be rowdy, to talk at a volume lower than a dulcet tone. Back then, trips over to James or Peter’s were like field trips, with perks like treats in the mid-afternoon and sometimes getting to eat lunch in front of the telly. Sometimes, however, meal times would trip him up, and particularly at sit-down dinners; offers for second helpings or offers of a bit of video games after dinner were exciting once he got used to them, but at first he was certain he was being tested. His mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, the governess all tested him here or there, see if his manners had set in properly, and who was to say that Peter’s mum wasn’t doing the same? Who was to say she wouldn’t be reporting back to his own mother to let her know he hadn’t passed it? Early on he declines a lot of seconds, didn’t take the controller from James on his turn, but James prodded that out of him eventually because James is James and if everyone at the table is getting seconds and if he’s allowed to play a game after dinner, Sirius should be allowed too; end of story. 

Later on, once he hit his teens and he and every one his friends hit puberty in and around the same year at school and went ballistic, talking back to your parents became customary in a way. Sirius sure did, got a lot of shit for doing it, but going over to his friends’ places could get grating on various occasions. During one of James’ particularly moodier evenings, Sirius watched him get up from the table and trudge off to do something way more exciting to him than dinner was, as he made very sure to say as he left the dining room, and felt absolutely mortified for it and ended up doing the both of their dishes as a way to make sure he was he’d continue to be invited back again, and in case the Potters traced the behaviour back to him, and then he helped with the dishes the next time, the time after that, and on and on, and if he can try to credit the specific time where he morphed from James’ school friend into second son territory, he might have to give it to those post-dinner conversations at the sink with Mrs Potter, so thanks James; did him a solid on that one in the end, but the Potters were a one in a lifetime family to get welcomed in by, that didn’t happen anywhere else he went, and seeing the clap backs, the snark matches, the back and forths over things that he felt should have been extremely easy to live with, and those times he’d head home from theirs feeling frigid and vexed and fighty knowing what he was headed home to versus the veritable oases he’d just left. 

He feels himself start to go there again and he knows that can’t happen; not here, not today, not over a tale about an oopsie Remus made as a kid, and what's stops himself from going there isn't only that Sirius knows that's unacceptable; it's also to do with curiosity. Sirius himself wasn’t the type to put himself in timeout, he didn’t need to, he’d get sent there soon enough by way of Blackhanded law, but Remus did do that and he’s a significant piece to a family dynamic that Sirius literally has never seen before, and he can't not ask what that even entails. 

Sirius looks up as they’re heading toward a break in the trees ahead of them, marked by a trail a few steps away. “What happened after that?” he asks. “Was it just forgotten after _Landslide_ hit?”

Remus shakes his head no, pushing a breath out the left side of his mouth. “Well, on his end, yes,” he offers, “but that’s because my mum already found me up in my room all torn up about it and explained why that couldn’t happen again, so he hardly needed to knead the point in anymore, and from there on, the expectation was that I’d be very loud and very clear where I was off to, and not just rely on telling grandad because his hearing was going a bit by then.” 

Remus gives a shake of his head, rolling his eyes at his kid self like he was just supposed to know that back then, and already Sirius’ hackles are easing down; the bloke still kicks himself harder than anyone else around him, and this is after two decades worth of self reflection and work he’s done to ease off of himself in the last year or so, but kid-Remus would have been an extremely anxious kid without the understanding to know what that even meant; of course he didn’t get grounded in the way the rest of them did. He's had it differently than any of them. 

“Hey, sorry about that,” Sirius says, meaning it. “I got a little green there about that because your parents are somehow right in the middle of hands on and hands-off in a way I can’t fathom, I’ll be honest, but you’re a daisy, so I really need to chill.”

“I’m a what?” Remus checks. 

“A daisy disguised as a human,” Sirius reiterates, doubling right down now that he's gone and said it, but he finds traction in that. “You having a situation anywhere close to as authoritative as mine was would literally make me want to go on a rampage, so if anything I’m glad you had parents with-it enough to see you properly.”

Remus turns his head toward Sirius, pressing a heavy kiss against his left shoulder. “Your parents are the closest thing to make _me_ want to go on a rampage,” he supplies, blunt as all fuck, and seriously, he just gets better by the second.

“I’m going get that tattooed across my back,” Sirius declares. 

“Oh, well, just saying ‘thanks’ would have been enough,” Remus supplies plainly, but his smile is just perfect.

“There’s going to be the phrase in big blocky font, and then a little dash, and a cursive Remus Lupin underneath,” Sirius details. 

“Why change the font for my name?” Remus raises.

“Flair,” Sirius sounds out, and while he can’t see Remus’ eyes beyond his shades he makes sure to stare extra pointedly at the frames for emphasis. 

“Well, I don’t know why I even asked,” Remus puts it plainly, leading Sirius between rows and rows of trees on either side of the trail, feeling easier already. 

Remus’ favourite spot, turns out, is about a twenty minute walk on the trail and is the section of waterfront still attached to the Lupin’s name, though Sirius can’t quite tell where the line starts and ends when it’s all a bit more than he was banking on, but he can also see why it’s a choice place to be. There are rows and rows of piers on their side of the lake, by the looks of it plenty others across it from them, blue/green water that stretches out past his peripherals, boaters passing by on the water going in both directions, on the left and four docks down from them a pack of kids ranging eight to twelve years old by a glance’s guess, three already splashing around in the water, two milling about on the dock, and two others taking to a run off of the dock and making quite the combined splash; it’s a serene scene to see, even as one of the two lads still dry gets blasted into the water by the other one and pops up from under the surface quite quickly to yell _motherfucker_ at the top of his lungs, but even then? Sort of adds a bit of spice to the whole, picturesque scene. 

Sirius smirks to himself, then wants to include Remus in it and turns his smarmy smile toward him, but finds Remus waving at a couple on one of the boats going past. “Oh shit,” he raises. “I forgot; you know everyone here.” 

“Not everyone,” Remus amends. “Some more than others, and I’m sure there are new people in town.” 

“Do you know the pottymouth over there?” Sirius asks. 

“I used to babysit for three of them, including him,” Remus offers matter-of-factly, then his expression goes pointed. “And he did not learn that from me, thank you.” 

Sirius sends out a profound pfft for that, and mere seconds later the pottymouth over there catches sight of Remus and begins windmilling his hands in the water, creating two tidal waves as he calls over Remus, which alerts the other kiddos, and then it’s just a chorus of _RemusRemusREMUS._

The man repeatedly getting called after sends a smile/wave hybrid over to them, then turns Sirius’ direction. “Actually, give me two seconds?” he bids, looking back at Sirius while pointing over to them. 

“Go, they're about to combust,” Sirius allows, waving him off. 

Remus bows his head in thanks. “That one’s ours,” he supplies, pointing to the closest wharf to them, and that would almost make too much sense. 

Sirius wiggles his toes in his shoes as he heads down the wharf to get his feet in some of that lake. He takes a seat at the end of it, lifts his legs up, and pops his shoes off in turn, leaving them behind him on the dock. He rolls the cuffs of his pants further up his legs and dangles them over the edge, dipping his toes in to test before deciding the water is absolutely delightful and dunking both his feet in. He glances down the way as Remus makes it over to the dock taken over by kids, though he doesn’t have to do much work once getting to the edge of the water when four of the seven kids come barreling out it and surround the guy, with their heads hung back, looking up at him and all talking at once. 

Sirius swishes them back and forth, grinning madly as he watches Remus loom over the collection of tykes like a redwood. There’s a wonderful moment where one of them, a little girl that's about two heads shorter than the pack, reaches up to tug on Remus’ left arm, vying for a chance at getting her words heard over the louder ones of the pack, and Remus teeters a little having not seen it coming by the looks of it and Sirius thinks he’s about to watch him go knees-first into the shallow water at all of their feet, but Remus keeps his balance in check just fine. 

Remus makes his way back a half-minute later, heading up the wharf behind Sirius and moving to sit in the spot Sirius left for him on his left. "How’s it?” he asks, nodding to the water. 

“Everything,” Sirius supplies. “I even think you’d find it nice.” 

Remus takes both his shoes off and leaves them beside Sirius’ before working the ankles of his corduroys up in turn. “July and August are usually fine for me, though if I’m in the water too long my lips will start to turn blue and that’s my cue to take a break,” he forwards. 

“Fucking noted,” Sirius returns, logging that away. 

“It’s not a quick thing by any means, I have to be in it a while for that to happen,” Remus puts down, giving a flick or two of his toes in the water before sinking his own into it. “I did fall in there once in mid-January and that was piercing; would not recommend it.” 

Sirius sends out a wounded noise. “What, when?” he demands. 

“I was nine, so forever ago now,” Remus passes along. “It was frozen over and I was able to walk on it a little back by the shore, but I got halfway down the pier and went right on through the sheet.” 

“Jesus Cunt,” Sirius puts out. “How’d you get out?” 

“My dad was there, he went into turbo mode and wrenched me out,” Remus assures, cracking a smile there before it falters. “And before you say anything, he saw me going for the ice where it's shallow and warned me not to go too far out as it wasn’t going to be solid straight across or anything, but to me that was just fine because I had no plans to go across the lake, so I kept shuffling forward and trying to be dainty about my footing but a pair of clunker boots are a pair of clunker boots, so you know, don’t get after him about it." 

Sirius nods once, his face quite the blank canvas. “I wasn’t going to say anything?” he offers tentatively.

“Well, some might,” Remus puts in, tilting his head back and forth. “My dad was panicked, I’d never seen him like that before; it was usually his unbothered self and then once in a blue moon he'd get fucked off about something, but worried? That’s my mum’s style, so him lugging me out of there, putting his coat over mine, carrying me back up to the house to get me warmed up, that was all a bit jarring.” 

“I’m sure,” Sirius puts up, Remus’ captive audience forever and ever, Amen. “What’d he even do? I’ve never fallen through ice before, so I wouldn’t even know what the first step would be.” 

“Well, he helped me get out of my wet clothes first, and then we got four pairs of pyjamas on me, bunch of blankets, and he put me on the hideabed in the den to huddle and rang my doctor for more advice and what he got was get that kid as warm as can literally be, and then my dad blow dried my hair, made me soup and so much tea, herbal of course, I was still a young lad,” Remus details, head tilted, voice distant and decided in one-go, giving the impression he’s picking up memories but peppering them with Remus-isms as he goes, “and as hard as the man worked to get me back to into shape, I definitely had a wicked cold by the morning, but he was warned that would likely be the case and therefore I was also warned, so that wasn’t nearly as shocking as the incident itself, and it was far better than the alternative. 

Sirius can’t for the life of him think of something he agrees with more. “Where was your mum?” he asks. 

Remus presses his lips together for a moment, tilting his head to the right and toward Sirius’ a bit. “_She_ was down in Cardiff helping a friend of the family clear out her parent’s house after a death in their family, so it’d been a sort of boys weekend at home — and boy did it turn out to be since my dad felt so bad about it and I also felt so bad for scaring him, so we just took it easy for the rest of the time,” he forwards. “And she got home later in the week, but by then my cold was subsiding, so the whole event was our little secret — shh.” 

Sirius takes in a sharp, overdrawn breath, clutching his chest like he’s got a string of pearls around it. “Did you two shake hands about it?” he asks. 

“We cheersed our mugs together?” Remus raises. 

Sirius smirks. “You two are something else.” 

Remus breaks for a knowing smirk there. “Well, he and I both knew that her finding out on an already somber trip would just make her feel stuck and torn between coming home early and sticking it out for her friend, and I was alright, you know? Sneezing like mad and pretty useless overall, but I was through the worst of it,” he offers, not liking the sound of that one bit by his laboured tone. “And really, it really was a fluke situation that could have been prevented had I listened to my dad’s warnings. “And I listened to my dad’s warnings better from there on too, because sometimes his unbothered, hands-off method could sound like he was being facetious, but I learned there that I has to stop assuming his fairly laxed tone meant he wasn’t being serious about warning me away from things.”

“Well, you gotta learn that stuff, right?” Sirius offers up. “Rough way to, but certainly a way.” 

Remus nods vigorously for that. “And I definitely never fucked around with ice again,” he raises, grinning tightly for a dot of punctuation. 

“No?” Sirius returns skeptically, his chest rising and falling through a snicker. 

“Weirdly not,” Remus returns, his mouth closing over his teeth for a wry smile.

Sirius looks out onto the water as another boat zips by, this one a little closer to shore than the others. “You really had some funky luck, huh?”

“Just, in general?” Remus checks, a dry tone about him, but a plain smile on his lips all the same. 

“Well, sickly, I mean,” Sirius clarifies. “Not that I thought you were exaggerating or blowing it out of proportion when you brought that up, but it’s another thing hearing about you blasting through ice.” 

“It was more like a drop,” Remus puts in fairly. “

“Fine, there one moment and gone the next,” Sirius allows. “Still really checks out from the way you described it.”

“Well, I was telling the truth,” Remus says, not unkindly. “I had some fluke accidents like the ice and the chesterfield of course, but I caught just about everything that went around too; pox, measles, every flu, all the colds, mono much later on--” 

Sirius cuts in with a bark of a laugh. “Well shit, I got that too,” he pipes up. holding up his right hand for a high-five.

Remus’ visage goes a little rouge there, a tentative sound coming out of his throat. “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be high-fiving for that?” 

“It’s not as if you said the clap, come on now,” Sirius returns indignantly, keeping his hand up and out, but he does pause short after Remus pops his left palm up against Sirius’, squinting sidelong at Remus. “You didn’t get that, did you?”

Remus puts out a _pfft,_ shaking his head. “I managed to avoid those sorts of contagions, thanks.” 

“Well, how am I to know,” Sirius raises, lifting his hands for a makeshift shield. "I’m learning a lot today."

“I’d have told you if I had,” Remus insists. “Way earlier than this, especially.” 

Sirius brings his hands down and over his lap, settling in again and feeling rather cozy with hearing that assurance that he basically knew himself. “How long did it take for you to shake it?” he asks. 

Remus puts out a bit of a groan there. “I was more or less over most of it by the two week mark, but I swear the fatigue lingered around for weeks." 

Sirius gives him a grimace out of sympathy. “I more or less bounced back within the week." 

“And colour me surprised,” Remus returns. 

Sirius rolls a tiny wave of water over Remus’ right ankle with his right one,, smirking for it. “What’d you tell them you had?” he raises, lulling his head to the side with a plain look on as Remus adopts a rather innocuous expression. “I wasn’t born yesterday, boy; there isn’t a chance you told them you got _mono._”

Remus lets his expression fall to one of resignation. “I just went to the school nurse and dealt with it myself,” he admits. 

“Sacre bleu,” Sirius puts out. 

Remus huffs out a faint laugh, brushing a hand over his face. “Well, I was well into the DIY mentality by then, ” he says behind his hand, giving his face a good rub. 

“I’m sure,” Sirius says. 

Remus lets his hand fall, turning his head to him. “Well, I was,” he says faintly. “Dad went into the hospital the first time when I was in year eight; I got the schooling done early on handling things myself.” 

Sirius’ jaw feels like that anvil that keeps coming up, how nice. “A whole fucking decade of that?” he puts up, feeling heavy just thinking about how long a decade is already, let alone with a perpetually sick Lyall threaded through it. 

Remus hums there. “On and off,” he supplies. “He went in once every year for the first five, different times each one so sometimes the grace period felt shorter and sometimes longer, and then there was a two year gap after secondary where we all got a little too comfortable, and it started all over again” he describes, “but the mono time, it’d didn’t make sense to tell them about it when it was during one of his grace periods, and I didn’t want to shift the searchlight onto me. And besides, that’s awkward as shit to have to tell your parents you caught.” 

Sirius pushes a half-breath out of his nose, enough to accept the jest capped onto the end of it, but he’s more distracted by a new puzzle piece slotting into place and making the picture easier to take in. “That must have been rough,” he offers, “feeling like you had to keep so much on lock.” 

Remus tilts his head back and forth rather than nodding, but it’d be farfetched for Sirius to think he’d let that lie. “I don’t hold it against them,” he extends, and Sirius shakes his head, looking around real quick for who said that Remus did when it certainly wasn’t him, “My dad had a lot more pressing concerns than what I had and my mum was putting all of herself into getting him sorted; I just couldn’t stand the idea of bringing them bad news after a while and certainly not when we were in a good stretch.” 

Sirius nods there, a frown etched on. “I mean, it makes sense, everything you just said checks out,” he outs down as a preface, “but you can totally admit if for a little bit there, over the course of a decade on and off, you might've felt put to the side; I wouldn’t say you anything to you for that, other than, ‘that’d be a human right there.’”

Remus gives a courtesy breath through his nose, similar to Sirius’ own moments ago, but he shakes his head numbly. “I don’t want to get into that,” he says, denying that with a wave of both his hands, a polite bow out, and Sirius feels quite a bit like hot garbage, overall.

“How are you feeling about it?” Sirius asks, not wanting to lose Remus to the disciplined wall he’s built around him. “Or him, the ticking clock, the nerves.”

Remus shifts on the dock, breathing in a pondering breath. “It’s touch and go,” he frames it. “I’ve been feeling good about it today, or this whole week really, but today particularly.” 

Sirius nods there, keeping his tone low like Remus’ll spook like a cat and run off if he talks too loudly. “Yeah?” he bids. “He looks really good. The difference between Christmas and now is huge, and he was killing it then, too.”

Remus nods vigorously, more alive with this topic already. “He worked so hard over the fall," he says. "Even when he got to mine, he wouldn’t let me or my mum go get him anything because he insisted he needed the practice, and it felt like his typical ‘no one help, I can do it, thanks,’ at the time, but maybe he was onto something because look how he’s doing now?”

“No, Remus?” Sirius comes in, turning on the dock and pulling his wet left foot out of the water and tucking it underneath his right knee so he’s facing him, feeling like he must for this. “I don’t understand how he can physically get himself into that truck.” 

Remus snorts there. “I mean, you saw where the prosthetic ends,” he poses, lifting his right ankle to pop the side of his flattened palm at about the spot where Sirius’ docs would end on him should he knick them and wear them around. 

“I mean, yeah?” Sirius raises. “And thanks again for the super warning you gave me, real good job, Remus—” 

Remus sends out a long huff out at the water ahead of them. “I didn’t know you that well yet,”he defends. 

Sirius gives an exceptionally tight noise, tossing a plain blink at the water too. “I don’t know, just my feeling here but I feel like you did?” he returns. “I made you fucking scream, I think that’s at least enough for a little warning.”

Remus’ comes alive once again with immense fervor. “Just because that all went swimmingly doesn’t mean you weren’t going to turn around and be weird about it,” he counters. “And I didn’t think he’d take the fucking foot off in front of you.” 

“He’s your fucking dad, Remus,” Sirius sends him, windmilling his hands around with a gape/grin on. 

“How could I have planned for that? How?” Remus emphasizes. 

“The man waved the thing at me and there I am, trying to be fucking cool about it even though I want to fucking burst,” Sirius stresses. 

“Well, I think putting a little levity out there might’ve been why he did it,” Remus returns. “I don’t know why you’re lodging complaints this further on from it; now you’ve a fantastic story to tell.” 

“That, I’m not arguing,” Sirius sends back at once. “Point is, and maybe it’s just my pea brain being unable to imagine me losing my foot and being able to climb into a pickup like nothing happened a year on from it, but forgive me for my pea brain because that’s where we are; that’s a wily man in his forties.” 

Remus’ expression goes plain in under a beat. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t say that to him,” he passes along under his breath.

“Sorry, is that a false statement?” Sirius raises faux-quizzically. “It’s a compliment.

“He’s getting up there,” Remus hints. “Might not have taken that one too well, so I’m saying you picked the better route when showering him with praises.” 

“Well, that I’m also not going to argue,” Sirius asserts. “How’s your mum doing with it?”

Remus pushes a weighty breath out, but there’s a ghost a smile it’s got to pass through first. “Much better than I am, from what I’m seeing,” he raises. “That’s good because if one of us has to remain casually optimistic then I don’t want it to be her; everything is turned up for her.” 

“Yeah?” Sirius probes, smiling away at the thought of Hope living her best life like she damn well deserves. 

“Yeah, and after seeing her at her worst, I just want her so happy that she can’t even handle it almost,” Remus instills.

Sirius pauses, so fucking curious it genuinely hurts; there’s no way in hell he’s going to get the details, Remus has shared a fucktonne already, and he gears up for getting blown off for the question on his lips. “What was her worst?” 

To his surprise, he doesn’t get a Look, a huff, or a pointed hum — he really just gets a tight smile for it and tilt back and forth of his head. “My senior year is probably an ominous era by now?” he raises, and Sirius nods at once because he’s sure held onto that much. “Well, by then he’d gone into the hospital and had long stretches there four times, and he’d had a grace period over spring and summer, and fall showed up with his problem in a bundle.” 

“Thanks, fall,” Sirius chimes, smiling tightly. 

“Mhm, mhm,” Remus allows, thank Cunt. “so to recap, each time he went in prior to that, they’d taken a vein from somewhere else and put it in his leg in hopes that would get blood circulating better; he’s got a huge scar going up his good leg from one of those operations.”

“And nothing stuck and he’d end up back where he was before,” Sirius nods. 

“Can’t argue with that,” Remus puts down. “So this time around, they wanted to insert a manufactured vein into his chest that would be powerful enough to do almost all the work in getting blood to that leg and were very optimistic about it, but it was going to be open-chest to get the vein in, so that fucked me right up, no denying that.” 

“And fucking fair enough, Remus,” Sirius puts in there, ‘cause he’s gotta.

“But I’d worried for nothing because he came out of the OR spick and span, recovery was longer than the others had been, but promising and he’d felt perfect weeks after the surgery until he wasn’t anymore,” Remus continues. “And my mum had started back intermittently at work so I was home for a few signs that my dad was definitely trying to hide, but--”

“Wait, sorry,” Sirius comes in, piqued to all hell, “why was he?” 

“He was sick of it,” Remus supplies. “He didn’t want to go in again, he was supposed to be better, he kept getting his hopes up just to have them crushed, he wanted to go back to work, he felt stuck, and he didn’t think he could do it again — and that’s what I know now, after some time away from it, but at the time, that’s not how I saw it.” 

Sirius stays unmoving save for a blink to suggest he’s all in, and Remus speaks where Sirius is afraid to lest he drive them off course without even intending to. “I came home right from school’s end because it was my off day from work and he was grey,” he says, flashing his right hand over his face for reference, “and blazing hot to touch, so I knew something was wrong and I told him I’d drive him to get looked at, and he really didn’t want to do that, and we went back and forth over it until I wouldn’t back down on it, and I don’t like that I was so hard on him when in reality he was just scared, but I was terrified and it felt like he was giving up, on him, my mum, and me all at once, so I wasn’t too keen on him on the way in, but it’s fucking good he did because that entire vein they’d just put in him ended up being infected—”

Sirius lifts his hands, fully encapsulated. “Would it have been too much for him to catch a fucking break?” he tosses out.

“I asked the same fucking question,” Remus allows, laughing humourlessly. “So, I rang my mum before we left and told her I was taking him in and she turned up once she could get off and let me off the hook to go home and do the homework I definitely had that night, and that was a tough one definitely but it gave me something to sink into, and then she came home very late, I want to say two, only heard one person downstairs which was a sound I got used to so it was automatic that I knew he’d had too stay there, but every other time I was home when she got back from the hospital she’d call for me and I’d come to her and she’d give me the rundown of the day, which I appreciated a lot because it got me feeling like I was part of it, but that night she didn’t call, come upstairs, it was just silent, and I could have figured it was the time, or she was just tired, but I didn’t because I’m me, so I go downstairs with this horrible feeling going through me, and she was in the kitchen trying to fill the kettle and get a pot going because of course that’s literally all we know as a family, but she was just sobbing while doing it -- silently doing it which was worse to see, and I thought my dad was gone.” 

“‘Course,” Sirius puts in distantly.

“So I just took the fucking kettle and said I’d do it for her because she wasn’t having an easy time with it, and she just broke down to me, and he wasn’t gone obviously but it’d been too close for comfort and that’s what she was dealing with on top of everything else,” Remus raises. “The ups and downs, the hopes being made and broken again, all the support she’d been giving, it was all coming out, I’m sure, but it was almost losing him that she was reeling over, and I don’t know how to explain this without just saying it, but I couldn’t be me during that.” 

“OK,” Sirius nods, avid that Remus elaborate the fuck on that one. 

“Well, I couldn’t be her son during that,” Remus instills. “I just knew she needed to not be the mum in that case, so I just let her talk, you know? Just as a lady who’s husband almost passed. Later on I was able to go upstairs and actually process it myself, but not then, and I felt like I’d seen her outside of my own view of her, and I saw the struggle that she often wouldn’t show, and it was absolutely the worst thing to have to watch, but so fair to me that she just needed to blow up for once, and I’m glad in a way that she let me see that side of her, but I never want to see it again — and for her sake, more than mine.” 

Sirius nods, breathing quietly, and tucks some of his hair behind his right ear. “You’re seriously the best kid they could have asked for,” he puts down. 

Remus takes in a breath so delicate that if Sirius weren’t looking straight at him, he might not have known it happened at all. He’s glad he is looking though, for he sees Remus look left, check out his surroundings, and deem the area too crowded for a thank-you kiss, and Sirius can’t really fault him for it, there’s a lot going on, but he appreciates getting to see the moment where Remus considered it. 

“That’s my favourite thing you’ve said to me today yet,” Remus says, smiling there, “and I’ve liked a lot of what you’ve said.” 

“It’s just the truth,” Sirius says. “Well, all of it was, but that was straight from my gut.” 

“Even better,” Remus says, holding his body differently already. 

“If it means anything,” Sirius raises, “she looked fantastic last I saw her.” 

Remus’ chest moves up and down through a breathy laugh. “You just liked her sunhat.” 

“And her,” Sirius chimes. “She’s so sweet, and she smiled like, the whole time you were on screen, and forgive me, but I get why.”

“How could I forgive you for that?” Remus returns, gloriously plain before his face softens. “I wanted to ask you in the truck, but my dad was there and he likes to talk so it went out of my head, but what would you say to a drive out to where my dad and I would go?” 

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Sirius returns on a dime. 

Remus grins ear to ear, bobbing a little where he sits. “It’s about two hours out from here in Porthgain, and I was thinking should we ask my dad if we could borrow the truck for it and return it with a full tank upon arrival, he’d let us,” he says. “And it’s honestly the best way to do it because we park at our usual spot nearby the water, and we could throw a bunch of blankets in back and sleep in the cargo bed if you’d be alright with slumming it with me, and if not we could always look up rooms nearby, but it’s really up to you.” 

“First one, first one,” Sirius chants, completely jazzed by the idea already. 

“OK, I’ll see about early next week?” Remus raises. “I feel like we should hang around for the weekend at least.” 

“I do, too,” Sirius concedes. “Don’t want them thinking I’m just here to use their A-frame as a hotel; that wouldn’t be son’s boyfriend material at all.”

Remus makes a pained noise, leans in to hover his mouth over Sirius’ right shoulder, and makes out a begrudging noise in his throat, and Sirius feels it’s almost better than the real thing, just hearing how much Remus wants to kiss him right here. Sirius casts a look out and around them, seeing that everybody in and on the water aren’t looking their way at all, and he might’ve mentioned that if he didn’t spot a family of ducks floating by just north of them on the water. 

“Remus,” he hisses. “You have ducks here?” 

“Oh, a thousand of them,” Remus offers, lifting his head and having a look around. “Oh my.” 

“I’m going to lose my shit,” Sirius declares, watching the five ducklings follow their mother along behind her. “I love how they’re so calm and collected on the surface but underneath they’re all just peddling like mad.” 

Remus snorts. “Me.” Sirius barks so loud the mother duck swims out further away from them before continuing on their course. “Want to go to town?” 

“Always do,” Sirius returns, pushing his right hand up through his hair.

“Different town,” Remus returns. “My hometown, that one.” 

“Well, you should have said,” Sirius says, deciding it is exactly too hot for his locks just now and has it up into a bun in moments. “Can we walk there?”

Remus gives out a throaty trill. “Sure, if you want it to be an hour.” 

“Well, you’d be there, so,” Sirius puts up. 

“It’s further than you think,” Remus puts down, though he does budge his right leg against Sirius’ knees for that sentiment. “I was thinking if we took the bike in then we could cab it back with all of the groceries.”

Sirius takes in a tight breath, gape/grinning. “You’re going to let me ride behind you?” 

“Unless I perish from exhaustion on the way, but I’ll give it a go either way,” Remus says. “It’s forty minutes.” 

“I’m good with switching up,” Sirius says, pulling his right leg out of the water.

Remus snorts, lifting his legs out of the water as well. “Hadn’t noticed.”

Sirius drums his feet into the dock nearby their shoes before picking up his own and putting them on his feet once the dock hits shore, looking around at Remus as a thought piques him. “Where are we going to put the bike if we’re cabbing back?” he asks, hanging back by the end of the dock while Remus catches up to him. 

“Well, if you want to meet Bubba still, yes?” Remus raises, letting his shoes fall to the ground in order to foot them on. 

“Absolutely, I do,” Sirius assures. 

“Then if we rode it up to the shop, I’m sure my dad would be fine with it if we stuck it in the back of the truck,” Remus provides. 

“Damn, you are on it today,” Sirius returns, snapping his fingers for applause. 

“Well, it really just makes the most sense to me, then we don’t have to worry about locking it up anywhere and coming back for it another time,” Remus offers, heading up toward the trail. 

Sirius follows along beside him, waiting until they pass the first line of trees before he slots his right hand in with Remus’, liking the idea of getting the most of their relative privacy before grabbing for Remus’ anything might get a little tougher once they’re in town.


	22. 22

An easy silence falls upon the two of them on the way back up to the house, but with that brings Sirius a chance to unhurriedly observe the forest around them while Remus guides them back up the trail. Up above, rays of sunlight peek through the leaves of the trees overhead, casting a glow over the forest floor, on their left, a vast expanse of forest that seems to stretch out and out and out, on their right, a near-mirror image save for the fallen tree in the distance, and up ahead, a break in the trees showcasing the field they’re on their way back to. 

Sirius lets out a wistful sigh, swinging his and Remus’ conjoined hands in between the two of them. “I feel like _Sufjan’s_ about to come out from behind one of these trees and serenade us the whole way back to the house,” he shares. 

Beside him, Remus dissolves into a breathy fit. “That’d be one way to get woodland creatures to follow us around, though I think they’d be there less for us and more for him.” 

“Likely the only way we’re going to see any with me around,” Sirius puts up wistfully. 

Remus gives Sirius’ right hand a squeeze. “You’ll see something,” he assures. 

“But I want to see a majestic woodland creature, not a squirrel I could see in the square any given day,” Sirius instills. 

Remus gives an even sort of hum. “Much like that pesky love thing, woodland creatures of a majestic variety tend to come along when you’re not actively looking for them,” he philosophizes. 

“Hm?” Sirius hums, smiling away. “Know anything about that personally or are we just quoting one of the greats?” 

“I know a thing or two about it,” Remus offers, his lips all twisty and perfect. “For what that’s worth.” 

“Quite a bit,” Sirius returns, stepping over a hefty root sticking out of the ground along the trail. 

Remus tugs Sirius in between the gap in the trees, leading him out onto the outskirts of the field. He moves ahead of him into the wall of tall grass ahead of them with their hands linked, and Sirius smirks as he follows Remus into the mix, finding the height of the innumerable blades give the illusion that he’s a floating torso. 

Sirius looks out over the property, the house in the distance, the garden shed to the right of the house from this vantage point, and finally, two silhouettes to the right of the shed. “You said you’re mum and dad are both working, yeah?” he checks.

“Mhm, they are,” Remus affirms, swish-swaying through the grass ahead of him. 

“And they wouldn’t pop in to say hello, then?” Sirius tacks on. 

“Not likely, it’s not even lunch hour yet,” Remus passes back to him. 

“Cool, then either your new neighbours are milling about the property line, or we’ve got ourselves some classic peepers over there,” Sirius announces, nodding his head toward the silhouettes in the distance when Remus looks round at him bemusedly. 

Remus looks out in the direction of Sirius’ nod and tenses up, putting out a startled noise that’s definitely funny, but the speed he drops Sirius’ hand isn’t so. “Hey,” Sirius sends him, affronted. “You didn’t have to let go like they’re going to rush us; they can’t see us schmoozing from all the way over there.”

“Well, we can’t just stroll up to the house hand in hand, can we?” Remus raises, keeping on toward the backyard. “We don’t know them.” 

Sirius hums disagreeably, following Remus along. “I’ve been told I look strikingly like a lass from a distance,” he raises, but that simply gets Remus sending a blunt note back to him. “It’s true; I’ve literally been mistaken for Marlene from the back more than once.”

“Did they have terrible depth perception?” Remus raises faintly. 

“At first glance, Remus,” Sirius sends up to him in a chime. 

“For a few seconds, maybe,” Remus allows, but he’s clearly not finished by the sound of his tone, “but you’re wearing the Henley so you’re not about to fool anybody for long today, sorry.” 

Sirius huffs with a new grin lifting his cheeks. “What _is_ it about the shirt?” he returns, taking hold of the hem and flapping it up and down. 

“I have _explained,_” Remus huffs back. 

“Explain again,” Sirius bids. “My feelings are hurt.” 

Remus aims a pointed sigh back at him. “The shoulders, the biceps, the forearms, the pecs, the V,” he rattles off, waving his hand behind him. “That thing shows ‘em all, so there’s going to be no doubt about it that two blokes are coming out of this field.”

Sirius double blinks before looking down at his midriff from above. “Nice try, you can’t see the V,” he returns. 

“Oh, no no, you can; you just have to be looking for it,” Remus relays in a tone that suggests he really knows what he’s talking about here, and just like that, Sirius’ feelings go into an upswing. “The jeans you recklessly picked definitely help accentuate that part, however.” 

Sirius sashays behind Remus, humming daintily. “I think it helps that you know it’s there already,” he puts up, jabbing the small of Remus’ back with a forefinger.

“Well, that’s possible,” Remus lets him have. “In any case, this is a good reminder that we have to be a little more careful around here, OK? It’s nothing personal, I’d like to be totting you around, but this isn’t necessarily the time or place to be too handsy.” 

Sirius gives out a reluctant sigh. “Obviously not once we get into town,” he returns, casting his right hand up past Remus’ head and fluttering it toward the two silhouettes that are now public enemy number one for the transgression of ruining his whimsy, “but here we were home free until those fuckers wandered up; who buys an empty plot of land and then goes and hangs out there the day after the check goes through?” 

Remus hums vaguely. “I don’t know, I feel like it’s something you might do,” he puts in.

Sirius blows a single, pronounced raspberry back at him for that point before two sharp stings occur on his body simultaneously, one at the inside of his right ankle and the other at the small of his back between the hem of his shirt and the waistline of his jeans. Sirius stops short, reaching around behind him with his left hand to slap the spot on his back, and lifts his right leg to smack his right ankle, but a new sting emerges at the back of his neck. 

“I’m under attack,” he tosses out, getting Remus’ attention right quick, who has been steadily wandering across the field unbeknownst to his plight until now, stopping and looking round at Sirius with a supremely torn expression on. “Don’t you laugh.” 

“I’m trying not to,” Remus returns, his mouth at a twist before he beckons Sirius along with his right hand outstretched. “Come on, we’ll go quick.”

Sirius’ might surges at the no hand holding rule getting waved under account of an attack on him, reaching to grab it before another sharp sting radiates at the back of his right thigh through his fucking jeans, no less, garnering him to slap the shit out of it with his free hand. “Why are there so many?” 

“Sometimes there are nests in the grass and they just swarm, I’m sorry,” Remus returns, working to speed Sirius through the rest of the field. 

“You had sex in this?” Sirius shoots out, getting a pronounced shush for it before he clicks his tongue hard. “They can’t hear me from here.” 

“With the state of your pipes, they just might,” Remus returns, rushing Sirius toward the yard, and it’s not far by any means, but it definitely feels like it’s getting further and further away from them all the same. “And we’d usually be covered in spray when _studying_ out here, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.” 

Sirius huffs, not particularly looking to shove blame around at the bloke who continuously remembers to care about gamma rays affecting him, oddly enough. “What, you’re supposed to think of everything around here?” he puts up plainly, but very quickly his moment of fairness and reason is over when he feels a sting on his left kneecap of all sordid places, putting out a crazed noise. “OK, why are they only coming for me?” 

“They’re not,” Remus replies, lifting the both of his arms with a rather plain gesture.

Sirius blinks at the back of Remus’ head, the calm energy about him, and is forced to contend with the fact that clusters have not only effectively created dissonance between them in terms of burns, but now the universal experience of skeeter bites, but he doesn’t have much time to reflect when a sting one hundred percent occurs on his right arse cheek, and that’s just not allowed. 

Sirius lets out an overcome noise, lets go of Remus’ hand, and torpedoes past him, sprinting across the yard. He takes a hard left up the a-frame steps and into the cabin, dropping to his knees in front of his knapsack and fishing his bug spray out of it. He uncaps the plastic cover around the nozzle and douses as much open skin as he can reach with his right hand before switching to his left to finish the job, and Remus comes into the cabin as Sirius moves onto spritzing over his shirt and jeans. 

“Did you just spray your arse?” Remus asks, hanging out in the open doorway. 

“One got me on it,” Sirius returns emotionally, and thankfully Remus has the tact to return a sympathetic hum for that. 

“Make sure you get your face,” he advises. “They’ll go for the temples if they get anywhere else and that’s just mean.”

Sirius pauses short, finding the one drawback to living out here staring him in the face. He shuts his eyes and spritzes over his visage before giving each temple a spray. “Try and get me now, bitches,” he challenges, reopening his eyes and beckoning Remus to him. “I don’t care if you can feel them much or not, get over here.” 

Remus dutifully moves to stand in front of him, shutting his eyes and lifting his arms, ready for a spritzin’. “Thank you,” he offers as Sirius starts with his temples. “I’m sorry I’ve been distracted; I should have made sure we had that covered.” 

“Remus, we’ve been blasting all over the place,” Sirius insists, giving Remus’ visage a nice, well-rounded spritz. “I can be the bug spray lord to your sunscreen king, and together we’ll be unstoppable.” 

Remus smirks through his nose, chancing his eyes open. “You’re so kind to me, even when I mess up and the consequences fall on you.” 

“Stop that,” Sirius returns, spraying the front of Remus’ neck pointedly. “There’s a bigger picture here than just me getting swarmed.”

Remus leans in to sneak a kiss as Sirius moves onto spraying his arms. “I may go grab my mask and put it in the freezer just so it’s ready to go when I’ll need it,” he raises. “That’s one thing we ought to be proactive about.” 

Sirius smiles wide as he sprays over the front of Remus’ shirt. “I might’ve packed a care package myself, so you don’t need to go very far,” he shares. Remus puts his head on a left hanging tilt, smiling pointedly at him. “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I packed a some boosts too, and I think we ought to keep one on us whenever we’re out gallivanting around just in case one comes on; I know we won’t be able to get back here all that quickly if that were to happen so that leaves out the masks, but at least we’d be able to get a boost in you ASAP and go from there.”

Remus breathes in and out via his nose, leaning in to start a new kiss, only this time he gives a light pet of Sirius’ jaw with his right hand and draws this smooch out a bit more, and that leaves Sirius without the ability to keep spraying him when this kiss is _quality._. Remus pulls back with a contented sigh, his mouth all twisted up again. “I do like it when you go above and beyond,” he offers.

“I really just couldn’t tell,” Sirius returns, smiling brightly as he gestures for Remus to spin around and show him the back of him. Remus does as bid and Sirius sprays over the back of his neck, lifts his tee and sprays underneath it, holds off on being a bitch and spraying beneath his trousers for a funny, and instead simply gives a few good spritzes over his hips and legs before giving a solid spray over that arse; it needs protection at all costs, after all. 

“Done,” he chimes, moving to leave the spray bottle beside the sunscreen on the desk. He moves for his knapsack again, pulling out the tote he put the cluster essentials in and wiggling the mask he got to keep at the Flat that’s got two huge eyes on it with some striking green eye shadow on the over the lids. “Now, I will be requesting the pink one eventually, of course, but for now we’ll settle with the eyes.” 

“Don’t you find that one spooky to look at when I’ve got it on?” Remus raises, laughing a little there.

“Not even a little,” Sirius insists, walking the mask out of the main room and sticking into the freezer of his new favourite fridge on the planet. “It really just takes even a little bit of the pressure off, seeing you in the strangest colours at a time that’s inherently horrible.” 

Remus hums from the main room. “That’s fair,” he offers agreeably. 

“Small things, am I right,” Sirius returns, leaving the kitchenette as he plucks a boost out of the tote and sticks it in his front right trouser pocket. “I’m the most prepped I’ve ever been just now.” 

“You could potentially leave the lube behind seeing as I doubt we’ll be finding a bush in town to roll in,” Remus mentions. 

“Remus, at the rate we’re going, who the fuck knows if that’s even true,” Sirius returns brightly. “I’m keeping it right where it is.” 

Remus gives a reluctantly amused huff, turning and leaving the a-frame. “Come along, then,” he bids. 

Sirius leaves his tote on the desk and follows him out, 

Sirius follows him out, pulling the door shut behind him. He catches up to Remus fairly quickly, who leads him around the outskirts of the garden to get to the shed on the right side of the house. Sirius stops as Remus does, blinking curiously at him while Remus moves to reach up past the height of the door and plucks a key off of the ledge. 

Sirius lets out a gasp. “A secret key,” he observes. 

“There’s one for the house as well, it’s hanging on a hook underneath the porch swing,” Remus passes along.

Sirius flails his hands around. “The secrets to this place,” he puts up. “They don’t end.”

“My dad put it in after an incident where I was sent home early from school with a fever and then couldn’t get into the house because I’d left my keys inside,” Remus shares. 

Sirius gives out a musing hum in reply. “What’d you do?” he asks. 

“Well, I was twelve so I would have probably gone to the shop and asked to use my dad’s to get in, but I was really hot so I just kipped on the swing until my mum got home,” Remus offers, waving Sirius’ concern off easily. “And after my dad heard about it, he figured putting a spare somewhere would avoid a situation like that happening again.” 

Remus opens the shed door, leaves the lock hanging open, and moves into the shed with Sirius fast at his heels. Now, there’s much to take in,including gardening supplies, a large green watering can with a yellow sunflower for a spout, piles of extension cords, the large rider mower that may or may not be doing so hot these days, a standard mower nearby it, a leaf blower by the looks of it, and a snow blower beside it. 

“Fuck, I didn’t even think about it, but winters must be a time here, hm?” Sirius raises. 

“Can be,” Remus nods. “We don’t bother much with the field, but there are other trials to get into the forest that we’d keep up more than the one we went down — course, that’s when I was a kid and my dad was all gung-ho about it, but whenever that got too difficult for him, I’d take it on, so I don’t believe they even bothered to clear any of the trails out last winter with rehab taking up most of their time.”

“Well, new year, new Lyall, am I right,” Sirius raises. 

“He probably will get right back to it this year, he does like his walks,” Remus offers, moving toward three bicycles in the left-hand corner of the shed, but the one Sirius is most interested in at this point in time is the rose gold that’s got a bright white basket at the front. 

“Please tell me that’s yours,” Sirius pipes up. 

“That’d be my mum’s, and out of respect I don’t think we’ll ride it in case we crash along the way,” Remus reasons, moving for an opaque blue bicycle at the back of the pile, “but mine’s not so bad, see; it’s got a little bell—” he chimes the rotund silver one on the left handlebar, ding-dinging along with it, and Sirius takes in a breath that hitches half-way down his throat, finding this boy all too much and everything at once, “—_and_ it’s even got a little radio on it.”

Sirius' throat tightens as he puts out a praised noise, moving for the small grey box radio mounted onto the right handlebar. “Did you do that?” he asks, spinning the dial with his right forefinger.

“That was my dad again,” Remus forwards, taking hold of the bike and wheeling it over toward the door. “I mentioned off-hand that I didn’t really think it a smart idea to listen to my Walkman while riding — stop it, you, it’s what I had at the time,” he tacks on as Sirius heads right on into a guffaw, “—I didn’t want to be listening through earphones while riding in case I completely wiped out because I wasn’t aware of my surroundings, and then a week later my dad popped that radio on it and then I was able to ride along with tunes a-playing.” 

Sirius follows along behind Remus and the bike, quite pleased with the image conjured in his head of Lyall seeking out ways to improve upon various things around the house. “You’re dad’s the best.” 

Remus hums lightly, leading them up toward the front of the house. “He’ll just hear you talking about something, doesn’t matter how big or small, and he’ll be working out ways to fix it,” he forwards. “I think that’s a big reason why he and my grandad got on as well as they did; they were both busybodies in their own right, just though different means.” 

“A builder versus a tinkerer,” Sirius allows. “I get it.” 

“Well, he’ll be glad to get a supporter when my mum finds it a bit much at times,” Remus says, laughing up ahead. “Every now and again, you can hear a distant, ‘oh, just leave it,’ float up from a corner of the house, and it’s just the funniest thing to me even though we both know he means incredibly well with it.” 

“What did I tell you?” Sirius raises, picking up the pace to walk alongside Remus and the bike. “After school special; that’s what I’m in right now.” 

“Well, I just hope you can stomach it,” Remus offers, leading them around the front of the house. He gives a thoughtful hum, his head turned toward the two still milling about the property line, and looks back over at him. “I suppose I ought to say something, give me a second.”

Sirius nods, stepping in to take hold of the bike and watching Remus head off across the lawn to engage with what could very well be his new neighbours. Sirius hitches his right leg over the frame of the bike, settles in on the seat, and hones in on the radio on the bike in Remus’ relative absence, turning it on only to be greeted by more talk radio, and suddenly it’s like it’s five a.m. all over again. 

He looks round as Remus strolls up from behind him. “Are they the neighbours, then, or just a couple peepers?” he asks. 

“The former,” Remus answers. “They’re just getting a lay of the land, they said.”

“Peepers would say that, too, so you know,” Sirius mentions. 

Remus’ face comes alive with the cross point floundered and amused. “Could we not?” 

“Fine, did you find out if they’re erecting a strip club here or not?” Sirius inquires. 

“I didn’t ask, funnily enough, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see,” Remus offers, tapping Sirius’ navel twice in parting. “I’ll just lock up and we can hit the road.” 

“Hold on, there’s people talking at me,” Sirius brings up, pointing down at the little radio. “What’s a good station around here and which way do I spin?” 

“It’s already on a good one,” Remus assures, heading for the porch stairs. 

Sirius crosses his arms and looks off toward the highway, watching a few cars whip by, but Remus keeps his word, heading into the house and returning out through the front shortly, though Sirius does ring the bell on the bike a few times just to see if it’ll ruffle a feather or two. 

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Remus huffs, turning from the newly locked house and coming down the porch stairs before he stops, freezing on the last step. 

“You’re the funniest person,” Sirius calls over.

“Bags,” Remus returns, turning back. 

Sirius sends a _pfft_ after him, but this time Remus only has to go into the foyer before he’s locking up again, coming down the porch step with a reusable bag on his arm. “Do you mind holding them?” 

“Them?” Sirius raises. 

“There’s two more in here,” Remus provides, making it to the bike. 

Sirius makes grabby hands before hanging the bag of bags from his right shoulder. “How do you want to do this?” he asks, displaying his hands over him on the bike. 

“Well, here,” Remus says, moving in to toss his right leg over the bike so he’s straddling it, just a wee step or two ahead of Sirius on it. He holds the bike still with the handlebars and looks over his left shoulder at Sirius. “I might snag some of your lap as my seat if that’s alright with you.” 

Sirius scoots up on the seat with a put upon sigh. “I guess,” he smiles.

He lifts his feet to rest the inner sides of the heels of his shoes on the slanted bar on the frame to prop his thighs up a little more, and Remus tentatively settles in Sirius’ lap before giving the pedals a trial spin, taking the bike for a little test drive, but even with Remus’ legs for days, Remus has to wiggle up until he’s half in Sirius’ lap and half tooching his arse up so his legs can peddle without the bike wobbling, but Sirius doesn’t mind that one bit. 

“OK,” Remus says after a spin around the end of the drive, quite pleased by the sound of it, “I think it’ll work.” 

“Definitely,” Sirius returns at once. 

He hooks his forefingers into the belt loops at the back of Remus’ corduroys to lock him in should they meet any unfortunate bumps along the driveway, and Remus begins pedaling up the long driveway toward the road. He stops at the end of the drive to glance in both directions, diligent on a bike as he is behind the wheel apparently, and takes a left, keeping to the left-hand side of the road and leaving plenty of space for cars to pass them from either direction. 

While in the truck, Sirius had been a tad too overwhelmed to take in the sights, whereas now he almost has to take in the sight of the rolling hills of the valley he’s been dropped into, the clean air he can both smell and taste, the breeze wafting at them from their acceleration, and as if someone, somewhere in the universe avidly wants him to have the best time he can possibly have, the incessant chatter from the radio blessedly ends and the opening of The Cranberries’ _Dreams_ take over the airwaves. Sirius puts up an excitable trill as Remus sends a similar one back to him at perhaps the only suitable choice of accompaniment necessary for their travels with rolling hills like these in the backdrop, and if Sirius puts his hands up and out to help it feel like he’s flying while he basks in all of his senses going off at once, he thinks it’s justified given the circumstances. Sirius keeps his expectations fairly realistic here, presuming that Remus’ll be too concentrated on getting them from point A to B to croon along with him, but the man kicks Sirius’ expectations to the curb on this one, choosing to yodel along where necessary while piloting them toward town, and that just takes Sirius’ mood right up through the roof. 

Along the way, at least for to five loud honks sound out from behind them that have Sirius quite taken out of his stupor and a bit heated about it; it’s not as if they’re very much in the way where they are on the side of the road, but once the car behind them passes them from behind and the passenger waves excitedly out of the window, Sirius is reminded that Remus’ presence in town must be exciting news in its own right. 

It happens at least five more times before Remus veers off of the highway and takes them down a more burb-esque street. “What, are you the Queen or something?” Sirius puts up.

“Yes, and you’ll only refer to me as your majesty for the duration of this trip,” Remus sends back at him. 

“Oho, don’t go playing with fire, queenie,” Sirius warns, tugging on Remus’ back belt loop. 

Remus reaches behind his back to bat at Sirius’ hand playfully, now coasting along the road. “So, we’ve just crossed into Treorchy, it’s where I went to school and where my mum and dad work,” he raises, playing tour guide, much to Sirius’ pleasure. “And I don’t mean to brag or anything, but the main is just adorable if I may say so myself.”

“Are you taking me to it?” Sirius demands. 

“I’ll take you down it for now, but I want to drop the bike off first and then we can wander back that way,” Remus imparts, taking a right, a left, and pedaling them down to what’s got to be the main with its rows of shops on either side of them and the road with folks milling in or about them all along the sidewalks.

Sirius gives out a bright, celebratory trill at everything happening around him. “I’m in love,” he declares. “This is like, a Christmas village during the off-season.” 

Remus ducks his head a little through a bout of mirth before slowly looking back at Sirius, giving him a profile view of his crooked smile. “There’s a Christmas parade every year here.” 

“Shut it,” Sirius demands, and Remus faces forward with a sharp laugh. “You’re lying to me.” 

“I sort of wish I was,” Remus tosses back. “I was an elf on it one year before I decided all the fuss of being on the float just wasn’t for me.” 

Sirius lifts his hands and pounds out a drum on Remus’ back, unable to handle that image and yet it’s all he wants to see just there. “There’d better be photographic evidence of this.” 

“Unfortunately there is,” Remus assures. “My mum will happily show it off, it’s one of her favourites.” 

“She and I are going to be the best of friends, I can already tell,” Sirius imparts, going back to drumming on the small of Remus’ back just to have a little contact between them, though this time he just uses the tips of his forefingers. “We clearly have mutual interests.” 

A chorus of various stylistic choices involving calling out for Remus echo from their left and the two of them look over toward a pub terrace with various folk at the tables waving over at the man of the hour. Remus waves back brightly as they pass and tosses a smile back at Sirius quickly before facing front again. 

“That’s the one my dad worked at,” he puts forth, Sirius livens up even more than he already is, craning his neck to have a look back at it. “He rented the flat up top.”

Sirius darts his gaze up to the two triangular windowsills jutting out of the building a little above the storefront. “Cunt, that must have been a fucking prize place to live, hm?” he raises, facing forward again. “Right on the main and everything.” 

“Mhm, he said he liked it there a lot, and my mum eventually joined him there, too,” Remus offers. “It was a bachelor suite though, so they lived there for a year, year and a half before they moved to a flat nearby after their wedding, and that’s where they had me.” 

“Perfect trade-off,” Sirius calls it. “We’re going to that pub, yeah?” 

“We can,” Remus affirms. “There’s six pubs through the town so we could even hop around one evening, it’s really up to you.” 

Sirius puts out a bark. “Six whole pubs, woah-ho,” he returns. “And yes, I want to do just that, but starting and ending with that gem back there.” 

“I often get a free pint when I set foot in there, so I will pass that along to you,” Remus divulges. 

Sirius gasps feverishly. “Boyfriends in high places.” 

“It’s more like they still love my dad there,” Remus confesses. 

“Does he still go to the watering hole?” Sirius raises. 

“Lesser when he wasn’t doing so well, but lately he’s been meeting up with his mates now and again for a pint, yeah,” Remus affirms. “My mum joins too sometimes, it’s kind of cute they’ve got their little group, you know?” 

Sirius gasps, tapping Remus’ back excitedly. “Can we go have a pint with your parents?” he surefire begs. 

Remus snorts up ahead of him. “I didn’t know that that’d be on the docket, but ask them, see what they say.” 

“I fucking will,” Sirius manifests, hanging onto Remus’ belt loops as they make a wide right around a bend. 

The opening to Fastball’s _The Way_ crinkles and crackles out of the radio right as they turn and ride as they ride down the lane toward an unmistakable garage and car-wash establishment with Lyall’s truck in the lot out front, and there Sirius is a bit morose about their journey coming to and end right when such a tune would start up. “Shit, this station is good," Sirius lets Remus have. "Leave it on." 

“I wasn’t about to turn it off,” Remus instills, pulling the bike to a stop at the cusp of the parking lot. “My dad would know just by energy force alone that I switched them off and that’d get me sent right out of here.” 

“An under-reaction, really,” Sirius quips. 

Remus gets down off the bike, freeing up the handlebars for Sirius who rides the bike at an easy crawl up the driveway while Remus walks it. “Now, I’ve a sneaky sense that I will be heckled the second I walk in there, so enjoy that,” he imparts, reaching his right hand over to pat Sirius’ left arm. 

Sirius gives his shoulders a shimmy while he weaves the bike to and fro as he rides along beside him. “Oh, I will,” he assures, tapping along on the handlebars to the tune playing out.

On their right sits the garage while on the left sits the car-wash station where a white car is currently getting one hell of a rub down by bright red automatic brushes, and just beside it sits a small, all-windowed room where a bloke about their age sits controlling the show. 

“I wish I could turn into a car for the amount of time it would take to get a wash done,” Sirius pipes up, tapping his forefingers along with the beat of the tune playing.

“Again, odd in itself perhaps but not for you,” Remus returns, veering toward the large open windows at the front of the garage. 

Amazingly, though Sirius ought to have known this would be the case given that he’s dealing with an extension of the Lupin’s, as they head into the workshop, a radio somewhere inside is on and tuned into the very same station as they are, and Sirius smirks, switching the small one off and finding this is the most fitting setting he’s ever ridden a bike into. 

Sirius halts the bike just inside, not looking to crash into anything and risk a terrible first impression, and stays mounted on the bike as Remus whistles their arrival.

There are three folks in the immediate vicinity, one working underneath the propped up bed of a station wagon a few feet away from them with only the legs of their blue coveralls and a pair of steel toe boots visible, a lady in an office set-up in the far left corner of the warehouse that’s on the phone from the looks of it, and someone who Sirius has to assume is Bubba in all of his fucking glory: a five foot two man in his sixties wearing his own set of blue coveralls with a greased-up rag hanging out of the right pocket coming right for Remus with such a funny amble that Sirius has to grip the handlebars to keep from dissolving into a round of snickers. 

“City slicker’s back,” he announces, heading right for Remus.

The lady in the corner puts the handset of the phone between her right ear and shoulder and calls over. “What gives you the right to waltz back in here, fancypants?” 

“Oho,” Sirius puts out jovially, leaning forward on the handlebars. 

He looks left as the sound of wheels roll out on the floor, finding that Lyall had been the one working on the wagon, who brings his creeper seat to a halt and looks over as Bubba speeds over to Remus. “Yeah, get him,” he goads. 

Remus sends his dad the two finger salute and Sirius watches in a hazy stupor as absolutely zero ramifications come from that decision before Bubba gets to Remus and pops him in the gut with his fists. Remus blocks two more fisted attempts with a lopsided grin on and bends to give the man clap on the back, and this is a version of ‘hello again’ that Sirius honestly might need to lie flat on the ground and mull over for some time in order to understand that this is real life; it’s so much and exactly the right amount all at once, and then Remus goes and pulls him into the fray, tossing his left thumb his way. 

“He’s a city slicker, born and raised,” he raises. “Get him next.” 

Sirius grins as Bubba squints up at him hanging out over the handlebars. “You want some of this, too?” he asks him, putting up his fists. 

“Can you reach up here?” Sirius checks. 

A gamble for certain, but thank Cunt on high that Bubba hoots and hollers about it, but if Sirius is honest, he’s got his sights set on Lyall howling over by the wagon when his specific ongoing approval is the most important thing in this room just now. 

The lady in the corner tosses the receiver of the phone onto the desk with a clatter. “Bub, it’s been twenty, I’m hanging up,” she manifests.

“Oh, hold on, I’m coming,” Bubba returns, ambling over that way. 

“That’s Mel,” Remus passes along. “She’s his daughter."

“She calls him that, too?” Sirius raises, looking between Remus on his right and Lyall down by the wagon. 

Remus nods lightly. “We all do.” 

“What’s his actual name?” Sirius asks.

“I don't think he even remembers,” Lyall delivers, brushing his right wrist past his forehead while his gloves are a little too grimy to use, and Sirius succumbs to a bemused fit. “Just popping in, then?” 

“Well, that and we were wondering if we could stick the bike in the bed,” Remus mentions. 

“Mhm, she’s all yours,” Lyall says. “Have you been anywhere exciting yet?” 

“Well, we came up the main on the way so he saw a bit of that, but I thought I’d show him the antique mall before we work our way back that way since we’re already so close,” Remus extends, and the last bit is news to Sirius, garnering an enticed noise out of him. 

Lyall hums to agree, nodding up at Sirius, who's only just reeling it in. “Enjoy that; it’s quite something,” he passes along. Sirius presses his mouth into a firm line and sets a pair of overbright eyes on Remus, who smirks right back. “What happening to him?”

“Oh, he's fine,” Remus assures, waving Lyall off. “You and I are just a lot alike, that’s all.” 

“Out of my control,” Lyall deems it, laying back down on his creeper seat and skidding back underneath the wagon. 

“Alright, bye dad,” Remus calls, grinning ear to ear while Sirius snorts up a storm as he's backing the bike out of the shop. 

“See you in a while,” Lyall calls back.

Sirius rides the bike around in a mini circle in the lot before rejoining Remus on the route to Lyall’s truck. “Well, Bubba’s a fan of you already, so good work there,” Remus raises. 

“No, Remus,” Sirius starts, hoisting himself down from the bike as they get to the back end of the truck, “my heart stopped after I said that.” 

“Oh, he loved it, no need for that,” Remus insists, reaching to pop the door to the bed down before helping Sirius lift the bike up into it and shutting the door again. “Antiquing?” 

Sirius pitches a bright noise to the sky, windmilling his hands for Remus to lead him to it. The establishment in question is back up the way they turned, four streets over from there, and down a few blocks, and by the time they’re coming upon a large green building with a slanting red shingled roof that they’re clearly heading across a parking lot toward, Sirius is blinking like mad. 

“It’s so much bigger than I pictured,” he raises, looking sidelong at Remus. “How many floors are in there?” 

“Two,” Remus supplies. “Well, it’s more like one and a half; the ground floor is wall-to-wall while the second skirts around the edges of the building and somewhat acts as a balcony overlooking the main floor, so it’s got an all-in-one feeling at the same time.”

Sirius can’t fucking wait to see it when so far Remus’ descriptions have proven more than suitable. “What was your job?” he asks. “Cashier?” 

“A little of everything, but I did man the till plenty,” Remus affirms. “Zaya likes rotating staff around to all the stations because it gives you a lot more of an understanding of what goes into keeping a place like this going, so I’d also help load larger items for customers, help bring in deliveries, I’d help with inventory, answer phones when Zaya was out or on a day off, man the counter of the cafe in there during busier hours; all sorts of things.” 

“Ooh ooh, a cafe,” Sirius trills. “Got some training in early there.”

Remus snorts, shaking his head. “It’s not at all like work,” he puts in. “Even calling it a cafe was a bit much, it’s really the layout of it that’s the draw for most people, I think. It’s got a display case with treats that I’d serve, but the carafes of coffee and hot water for tea were self-serve, so I really just took money and then put desserts on a plate, so it definitely didn’t prepare me for what I was getting into at the shop, much less fast-paced.

“Taught you how to brew coffee, though,” Sirius puts up, pointing up at him. “I didn’t have to walk you through it like a toddler or anything, and oftentimes I’d have to do that with newbies.” 

“Alright, it did do that,” Remus allows. 

Sirius starts up a shoulder-shimmy as they get about a car’s distance from two sets of automatic doors and skirts right for the in-door, but Remus cuts him off a few steps away from it, garnering him to stop short. “Hello there,” he imparts.

Remus smiles. “Before we head in, I should ask you what sort of experience you have with this sort of thing,” he says. 

“Well, that all depends,” Sirius extends. “I haven’t been to a mall like this per se, but my parents sure did own a lot of antiques and made me go along to too many auctions?”

Sirius’ eyes come alive with wonder and curiosity as Remus takes on a calm, placid expression. “Then we’ll have to get some ground rules laid down first,” he asserts. “I’ve seen things in there.” 

“Alright,” Sirius prompts distantly.

“If you find something in there that you’re over the moon about, you will not be the only one to think the same, so you’re to pick it up and carry it with you,” Remus instructs. “Don’t put it down like some kind of a fool or it’ll be gone before you look back at it, and whatever you do, don’t wave it around and draw attention to the fact that you lucked out and found the thing because that’s a surefire way to get hawked; you’ve heard the jokes about antiquers? There’s nothing funny about antiquers.” 

Sirius’ eyes widen to capacity. “There’s so much that’s funny about this that I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Remus moves past that right quick, only his placid expression softens a touch with the quirking going on at the corner of his lips. “Underestimating your fellow shoppers is the first mistake, and it would do well to remember that ageism will be your ultimate downfall if you let it be,” he emphasizes. “This is much more than a simple, jaunty little hobby for some of these folk; they’re fast, invested, and wily, no matter their age or appearance because it’s a snooze, lose mentality once you walk in there, so keep sharp, alright?”

A bright grin spreads across Sirius’ face as he grapples with yet another example showing that Remus has taken a few classes at the Sirius Black School of Drama and Arts and passed with flying colours. “Sorry to them, but the folks in there aren’t going to know what hit them when I walk in,” he manifests, jogging in place to showcase his agility. “I’ve been training for this all my life and didn’t know it.” 

“Now, don’t go in there looking for a fight,” Remus warns. 

Sirius stops running in place with a huff. “Now he tells me.” 

Remus laughs through his nose a little there. “I just want you to be aware that nobody perusing inside there is your friend,” he reiterates lightly. 

Sirius does a few arm stretches he’s seen actual years ago and only vaguely remembers, but he’s not here for absolute accuracy here, he’s here for the performance. “So, like everywhere I go?” he raises. “I was made for this, young man.” 

“You may very well be,” Remus puts in fairly, “I did see some petty moves over the years.” 

Sirius coughs once. “Wow, heard that one.”

“Look, I was naive once too," Remus offers, gesturing fairly with his hands, "but then, round my second month working here, I saw a lady stop in front of an eighteenth century loveseat with a twinkle in her eye, and then another one stroll up and speak lovingly about the even better one on the second floor,” Remus details, stopping there with a pointed head tilt to the right. 

Sirius stops stretching at once, his eyebrows popping up toward his hairline. “There was no loveseat on the second floor,” he surmises. 

“Sharp as a tac, you are,” Remus concedes, smiling bright. “So: be careful, don’t believe everything you hear in there, and always gird your finds.” 

Sirius lifts his right hand to salute him. “Like my loins,” he entrusts. 

“Well, no, not like those,” Remus puts in. “That really wouldn’t work when those aren’t guarded at all.” 

Sirius uses his salutation hand to mime a sock to Remus’ gut before lifting the both of his hands to place on Remus’ shoulders. “I’ll make you proud, sir.” 

Remus smiles brightly. “That’s the spirit,” he accepts, turning on his heel and leading the way in.

It’s arresting from the first step inside, there’s no mincing words about it: Sirius has to contend with a massive sales floor complete with makeshift hallways made up of rows and rows of kiosks with vintage knick knacks, clothing, and furniture on display and various folks perusing about them while a rockabilly tune floats down from above. On their left sits a large, rectangular wooden desk with tills placed on both sides, both of them being used at the moment for there are two lines of people waiting to check-out so apparently they weren’t the only ones who thought antiquing on a Friday morning was a fine idea, and on their right, tucked into a little rotunda in the far corner is the pseudo-cafe Remus just spoke about, and while Remus did mention that the look and feel of that section was a major draw for patrons, Sirius doesn’t really know what to do with the fact that it looks like an ice-cream parlour got air-lifted straight out of the ‘50s and dropped right there in the corner what with its round, bulky table-and-chair sets and the black and white checkered floor that stands out even more so in contrast with the dark carpeting underneath their feet. 

Sirius lifts his hands to place them directly over his face, making a wanton noise behind them. “It’s like I stepped into a time warp,” he says, muffled. “I’m flatlining.” 

“I felt that at first,” Remus offers beside him, sounding like he does when he’s smiling. 

Sirius feels a faint touch on the small of his back that garners him to drop his hands from his field of vision before Remus tosses a thumb toward the time-warp. “You look around, I’m going to grab something to drink while we’re here,” he mentions, “and I’d get you something too, but it’s hot coffee only here, I’m afraid.”

Sirius lets a repulsed noise answer for him and Remus nods diligently. “I figured that’d be your stance, but I’m planning on taking you to an actual cafe that I’m almost certain you’ll absolutely love, so fret not, coffee on the rocks will be had,” Remus tacks on, starting off toward the cafe. 

“Then I’ll definitely wait,” Sirius returns, shimmying down the first aisle and feeling incredibly looked out for as a whole this morning. He looks left and right, glancing over the kiosks on either side of him and sweeping his gaze over the trinkets laid out on display, blinking wondrously over at Remus when he shows up again shortly with a bottle of water on him. “How does this all work?” he asks. “Is it done by donations, are recruiters that go out and scout for new items, does the stuff just magically appear here; tell me.” 

Remus swallows, caps his water, and takes in quite the breath, suggesting a fine explanation coming his way. “So, Zaya does do a ton of recruiting and scouting, particularly with estate sales in the valley and beyond that really, for some items,” he puts forth. “Some of these kiosks are kept up by the staff throughout the day for when donations come in or Zaya brings in a slew of vases from the Bates family down the way or what have you, and then some of the kiosks are run by vendors who rent out the space from the mall to sell their own items, and they tend to care after their sections so they’ll come in to tidy after shoppers, set the pricings for their items, and add new ones in, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.”

Sirius nods, logging all of that away. “Did you constantly get shit on for a price tag you had nothing to do with setting?” he checks. 

Remus sighs through his nose, nodding solemnly. “At least that, I had practice with ahead of the shop,” he forwards. “And the thing is, the stuff in here is really quite reasonable; usually when I’d see something higher up in pricing it’s because it was a large armoire from the 20s or something, or there was an arcade machine brought in by a vendor a few years ago that was in an arcade in the 70s and that thing was seven hundred pounds out the door, but that’s novelty for you. The everyday items, the clothes, the trinkets, I would see the price tags for them while on my way by a kiosk and I’d think, ‘alright, yeah, that’s doable,’ so it’s all subjective, isn’t it, and I suppose you’ll get yellers anywhere you go.” 

Sirius sighs out as he rests his hands inside the pockets of his jeans, strolling along easily. “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” he says, stopping at a table in the kiosk on his right that’s got a child-sized glass doll on a mount dressed up in the frilliest getup and looks it in the eye. “What say you, hm? Retail hell, am I right.” 

“If that thing answered right now,” Remus starts. 

“I’d literally lay down on the floor and give up,” Sirius finishes, turning from both the doll and the kiosk it's sitting in. 

“Mm, you’ll like this; there’s a gent in town who rents out a huge section of the second floor to sell his record collection, and it’s _extensive_,” Remus declares. “I think he capped a thousand records in my second year here, so who knows what number he’s at now.” 

“Where?” Sirius demands at once. 

Remus sends him a bright smile. “Go back toward the stairs, take them, head right at the top and go down the way, and you really can’t miss them,” he instructs. 

“I’ll do a bird call when I need to find you again,” Sirius informs him, nodding once with his hands pressed together in thanks. 

“Right, because it’s not as if we have phones to communicate with or anything,” Remus returns. 

“I’m still going to do a bird call,” Sirius cements, taking off back toward the stairs. 

He takes them two at a time, heads right at the top, and moves down an aisle with tall wooden cabinets on either side of him with vintage video game consoles and games, board games, action figures, old comics; he’s strolling through Nerdcity obviously, but Music-nerdcity is just around the bend, tucked cozily into the right-hand corner of the building and with five long, wooden crates absolutely filled with records looking to be sorted by genre first and alphabetical order second, and all arranged side by side perhaps to give off the impression of aisles to peruse, and peruse Sirius shall. 

His skin buzzes as he starts from the bottom right, figuring he’ll snake around to all five crates eventually, plucking records out to inspect as he goes. The keepers are tucked between his left arm and side, the losers go right back where Sirius found them, and Sirius knows he needs a ton more time than he realistically has here to comb through for gems, but he’ll have to request they come back on a less packed day in order for him to properly look around the section. 

Nevertheless, Sirius winds up with a pile of twelve to fifteen records, having lost count after ten, and heads down the furthest aisle to his left, figuring he’ll have a sweep of the floor up here before taking the stairs back down to the main floor. He looks left and right, glancing over the kiosks on either side of him and taking in various trinkets and collectors items on display, and as if a metal detector honing in on a coin in the sand, Sirius locks in on a tan acoustic guitar propped up against a darker wooden bureau probably from the year 1912. The guitar itself gives Sirius a heck of a 70s vibe, but there isn’t a sign nearby stating for or otherwise, so he’ll just have to assume the instrument is quite a deal older than him at the very least. 

Called to it, Sirius reaches his right hand out to run his thumb over the fretboard experimentally and ends up giving out grunt of revulsion as a woefully out-of-tune note bounces off the walls of the kiosk he’s in and likely clangs out to the other ones in the surrounding area. Sirius’ right eye twitches, his face sours over, and he decides that just won’t do. 

He almost, _almost_ acts a fool and sets his collection of records down nearby before remembering Remus’ cautions. He scans his surroundings, finds a fellow browser up the aisle and a few kiosks over, and another down the other way flipping through a large book that from here appears to be some sort of historical society’s collection of pictures and looking real busy, but Sirius isn’t some kind of chump; he drops his load of records to the ground, inwardly thanking the establishment for keeping a thick carpet about the place, and moves to cross his legs underneath himself and overtop a fair chunk of the pile like a woodland creature protecting his territory perhaps, but this is how it has to be out here in the wild. 

He reaches for the neck of the guitar and hoists the bulky frame closer to him, placing it in his lap and turns his focus onto the task at hand. Since he hasn’t got a tuner in any one of his pockets and lube isn’t going to help here, he’s just going to have to play it by ear and tune the guitar to itself, and since he never knows where his damn tuner is back a the flat at any given point, Sirius has tuned by ear more than he’s really even done it with a standard tuner, so he’s feeling rather in his element as he works down from the top, starting with the E string. He plucks it a few times, winces at it’s horrifyingly high pitch, and tweaks the corresponding knob down, tries it again, finds it almost there but not quite right, and tweaks the same knob some more until the string rings out as it should. 

He works down from there, tweaking and twisting knobs until each string sounds correct, and tests it out with a strum, hearing the instrument ring out like it’s meant to; full and whole and right. 

He pauses to scratch at the skeeter bite on his right ankle, criss-crosses his right thumbnail over the red bump to make it chill out, and perks as he hears the opening chords of _Eight Days A Week_ come on over the sound system, and then he feels he’s gotta play along for a few bars, wouldn’t be right not to. 

He doesn’t indulge for long, sensing that Remus must be somewhere about the place bobbing along as he strolls around, and there’s no way in hell Sirius is going to miss that show in real time. He lifts the guitar out of his lap, aiming to prop it back up where he found it, and glances over his right shoulder to find a tyke has apparently come looking for the source of the noise and seems to have found Sirius to be one incredibly interesting sight. 

Sirius blinks up at him, unsure of what to do or say when he really only knows how to talk to one kid and one kid only. “Want to take over?” he offers, holding the guitar up quizzically. 

The boy shakes his head quickly, scampering off up the aisle, and Sirius smirks as he reaches to set the guitar back against the bureau ahead of him. He lifts off of the ground, gathers up his pile of records, and heads back up the way he came, figuring it’ll be faster getting downstairs if he goes a way he’s already travelled. He heads down the stairs, keeping to the left as two other patrons head up it, and takes a sharp left down the aisle he left Remus in and has a feeling he’ll be in or around it still for there is no more meticulous a browser than he. 

True enough, Sirius finds Remus one aisle over, humming and lightly swaying his hips as he looks over an item down at a kiosk on the far end, and Sirius strolls up to him with a keen grin painted on. Remus spots him once Sirius is a few steps away from him and starts, moving to hold the item in his hand behind himself, and since Sirius is no antiquer looking to snatch his find, he’s going to have to assume that’s for him. 

He’s on Remus in an instant. “What’ve you got there, _hm?_” he asks, crowding Remus into the corner of the kiosk. 

“It’s nothing, leave it,” Remus objects. 

“Mm, mm, I want to see,” Sirius chimes, holding his pile of records to him with his left arm while snaking his right one around the back of Remus to get a hold of whatever’s in his hand. 

Remus gives a pronounced huff as Sirius pries all five of his fingers apart. “It’s a surprise,” he insists, all while Sirius wrangles the thing out of his grip.

Sirius gives out a shrill gasp as he holds up a corkscrew with a massive, ceramic mustache for the handle, garnering a startled noise out of a lady up the aisle somewhere. “It’s perfect.” 

Remus gives him a pointed look, but there’s a bit of a smile happening there too. “I know you’ve already got a few, but this really seemed like it should be at the Flat,” he supplies, leaning to stick his water bottle into the bag on Sirius' right arm. 

“I’m throwing out all the other ones when we get back,” Sirius announces. 

“Well, don’t do that,” Remus chides. 

“I didn’t know this was gift hour,” Sirius raises, letting Remus have the corkscrew back. “I’d have scoured for something for you, too.” 

“Well, I just figured if we’re going to bring some things back for everyone, this would be the spot to find them,” Remus provides. “I was initially looking for an Ugly Pot replacement but then I found that, but that’ll be a little thing for you and I’ll keep looking for James, I think; it’s got to be just right.” 

“Whatever the replacement is, it’s in here,” Sirius puts down, backing up the aisle the way he came. “I’mma be right back.” 

“Where are you going now?” Remus asks, eyeing his movements. 

“It’s gift time, bye,” Sirius chimes back, swivelling on his heel. 

He heads right when he gets to the end of the aisle, wandering down the next row of kiosks in search of a gift of equal or more measure. Everything he sees around him is interesting in itself objectively speaking, but it’s all garbage as far as Sirius is concerned, simply not good enough to bring back to Remus. 

He stops short in the next aisle over, gape/grins, and saunters up to a kiosk that’s got a rack filled with vintage clothing: _jackpot, babey._ He’s got to choose between four cardigans at first, whittles those down to two contenders, and holds the both of them up side by side by the hangers, superimposing Remus into either one, and picks the one that Remus will undoubtedly wear more often the second fall comes along, and seeks out Remus again, aiming to go back the way he came, skirting back around to the second aisle where he believes he left Remus in minutes ago, and spots the head o’ curls he’s looking for, facing the other direction and in-convo with a lass down at the end of the aisle. 

Sirius goes ahead and assumes that’s Angela given the ferocity the two of them appear to be speaking with, heads up behind Remus, and reaches around in front of him to drape the cardigan in front of his visage. 

Remus startles and grabs hold of the garment, quietly brimming with enticement as he looks over his right shoulder at Sirius. “This is the greatest thing you’ve ever brought to me,” he deems it. 

“Isn’t it,” Sirius puts up, tucking the cardigan under his left arm along with his collection of records and smiles at the lass with a name tag on her shirt displaying Angela in all caps. “Hey Angela.” 

“This is Sirius,” Remus provides, gesturing at him with the stache on the end of the corkscrew. “It’s his first time here, lucky lad.” 

Angela perks, putting her shoulders on a wry tilt, and already Sirius likes her energy. “What do you think?” 

“It’s everything,” Sirius insists. “I have to know, do you get first picks of the litter around here, if you know what I mean?”

“If you’re quick about it,” Remus nods. 

“And I am,” Angela tacks on, pointing to the cardigan in Sirius’ possession. “That one came in with a whole load of gems and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t nab a couple of them while the load was coming into the warehouse.” 

“Perks of the job, hm,” Remus chimes, smiling away over there. 

Angela perks up again, only this time she taps Remus’ right wrist eagerly. “So, Patty’s dropped down to major part time for retirement, and Zaya picked me to take over for her,” she divulges. “I’ve been ASM since April.” 

Remus imps his neck down a little so he’s closer to her height, but it also does wonders to show how enticed he is by this fact. “Stop, that’s great,” he stresses. 

“She’s like, moved me into her office and everything,” Angela describes. “I’ve got my own desk and a little plaque with my name on it, and she’s been taking me on all these scouting trips with her and I’m getting to see her hustling in full force, and it’s just been a blast.”

“Good, I’m glad it went to you,” Remus returns emphatically. “Next thing you know she’ll be picking you to take over for her.” 

“Don’t, I can’t get ahead of myself,” Angela returns. 

“I’ll get ahead for you, then,” Remus sends her.

A male voice calls down the aisle from behind the two of them. “Angela, you’ve got a call." 

“You’ve got a call,” Remus repeats, snapping his hands like he’s got a pair of castanets in them, and Sirius is melting, straight up. 

Angela reaches to tap Remus’ left wrist in parting. “Text me, OK? I want to see you before you leave,” she imparts. “And you’d better find Zaya before you head out or she’ll have your head and mine too for letting you walk out of here without so much as a hello.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of doing that,” Remus insists. 

Angela gives Sirius a polite parting wave as she heads up the aisle toward the front of the mall. “Nice meeting you,” she sends back. 

“Yeah, you too,” he returns, giving a wave with his free hand before turning to Remus pointedly. “Why are you this cute?” 

Remus gives him a puzzled look, shaking his head. “I — I don’t know what I did."

“Of course you don’t,” Sirius huffs, making like he’s tossing his behind his right shoulder despite the fact that it’s all tied up into a bun on his head. 

On his left comes a wee, bitty woman, between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, give or take, and gets a little too close to Sirius’ bounty. “Ah ah, these are mine, sweetie,” he declares, only to get yanked down the aisle by Remus by his free wrist. 

“I can’t take you anywhere,” he huffs back at him.

“I can hear you smiling up there,” Sirius mentions. 

“That was my kindergarten teacher, you knob,” Remus shoots him under his breath. 

“You told me not to trust anyone here,” Sirius returns airily. 

“OK, but she wasn’t actually interested in your record pile, she was trying to get at the cookbooks,” Remus informs him. 

“Or so she made it seem,” Sirius returns, enjoying the fuck out of this one. 

Remus sends a grand huff toward the ceiling. “Alright, clearly I made a mistake prepping you ahead of time, but I know too many folks around this town for you to start calling people out willy-nilly—”

Sirius stops walking and engages with a man on his left inspecting a shelf of paperbacks in one of the kiosks. “Do you know him?” he asks him, tossing his head toward Remus. 

“Fuck off, kid,” the man barks. 

Sirius gape/grins before he takes off sprinting up the aisle, yanking Remus along with him into an unoccupied kiosk on their right before the two of them dissolve into a mass of snickers. “That could only ever happen to you,” Remus pushes out, shaking out of Sirius’ grip in order to rub at his leaking eyes. 

“What happened to small town charm?” Sirius raises, holding onto both Remus and an armoire for support. “Who was that coot?” 

“I have no idea,” Remus insists. “This is a bit of a tourist trap; you get all kinds.” 

“I’m never getting over that,” Sirius sighs, rubbing at his nose before a sniff. 

“Good to resume?” Remus asks, his shoulders still shaking a tad. 

“We’ll see,” Sirius instills, moving out of relative cover and into the aisle again. 

The two of them stop still as a vast array of jingling sounds out from behind them and the two look round before observing a lady with bangles for days, a long flowing skirt, and a veritable lion's mane of brunette curls flowing behind her due to her accelerated speed. 

“Thought you could sneak off without saying hello?” she demands, coming for Remus with her arms outstretched. 

“I’d never,” Remus assures, stepping into the hug with open arms. 

Sirius is already obsessed with Zaya and everything about her even after just a moment or two, but he steps further along the aisle, glancing over his shoulder at Remus engulfed in quite the squeeze and figures he’ll let them catch up. He gestures that he’ll be wandering some more and Remus catches his signal over Zaya's shoulder and him a sheepish smile. He slips into the kiosk on his new right and becomes entirely engrossed in an ancient typewriter on a table inside of it. He peers down at the paper lodged into the machine and takes his chance, typing _sat and forever am at work here_ and enjoying the click-clonk of the keys under his fingertips. He hits the return bar with an air of completion and a bit of a smarmy smile on his lips. 

Somebody comes up behind him and leans up against his back to have a look at what he’s doing and Sirius sure hopes it’s Remus before a huff sounds out by his left ear and then it’s inevitable that it’s him. “Sirius, there’s a sign right there,” he says, reaching his right hand up to point at one smack dab above the typewriter that reads Don’t Touch.

“Well, why in Cunt’s name is it right here if I can’t so much as touch it, hm?” Sirius demands, clicking the space bar for a dot of punctuation. 

“I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest it could be because the thing is nearly as old as Britain and is more meant as a decorative piece,” Remus supplies. 

“There’s no way it’s that old, the keys don’t stick at all,” Sirius insists, typing a line of gibberish below his little message for show. 

“OK, stop playing with it, please,” Remus bids, tapping on Sirius' right arm to beckon him along. “I’ve got to find a replacement for Ugly Pot and I know it's in here; I'm on a mission.” 

“Well, if it’s a mission,” Sirius allows, allowing himself to be tugged out of the kiosk. 

The two of them sweep up the aisle at an easy pace, the both of them keeping an eye out for any spectacular standouts, and Sirius perks up as Remus makes an amused noise in his throat. “What?” he asks, wanting in on the funny. 

Remus points up ahead, toward the end of the aisle where a whole whack load of furniture pieces are arranged at the back of the store. “The pew’s still here after all this time,” he says fondly. 

Sirius’ gaze darts around until it hones in on an actual church pew attempting to co-mingle with the rest of the couches and seats available on the floor. “Strange no one’s in the market for a single church pew,” he offers. “That said, did you want to get it?"

"Yeah, let's get it," Remus returns faux-jovially. 

"Laugh now, but that could easily replace Ugly Pot and turn this whole thing on its head," Sirius maintains. "James would walk in, spot that thing, and hoot and whoop so hard his lungs would risk collapsing.”

Remus stops still, openly piqued by that by the looks of it. “He would,” he concedes wistfully.

“They do delivery here, yeah?” Sirius asks. “Or is it BYO-vehicle?” 

“Both, really; you’re free to come pick up an item but they do help set up postage for those who need something shipped,” Remus supplies, tilting his head back and forth with it. “It’ll be steep if it’s going all the way to London, though; this might be too big an idea.” 

“Well, I didn’t figure it’d cost a crisp twenty or anything,” Sirius offers. “Plus, we could split it if it’s hefty, alright? Or you could easily remember that I’ve a windfall that I just can’t spend all on my own and simply not fork over anything for it. 

“OK, there is a difference between helping me out for school versus a gag gift,” Remus returns. 

“Is there, though?” Sirius raises. “Conveniently, I’m suddenly in the market for a new bench in the front hall and this came along at just the right time.” 

Remus sighs big. “Well, go see the price at least,” he urges. “You might think it’s too high for a bench, even with the gag factor.”

“You got it, boss,” Sirius returns, strolling right over to the pew and reading the pricing posted on the top right-hand corner of it. “Well, I don’t know, Remus; do you think one-hundy is going to break my bank?” 

Remus gives a guttural noise from behind him. “They really brought that down.” 

“Well, it’s been here since when?” Sirius raises. 

“Four years, about,” Remus deduces. “I mean, you did say it: who’s really in the market for a church pew.” 

“Me,” Sirius manifests. “How does it work around here? Do we lug it up front or do we wave someone down?” 

“There’s a number on the tags that corresponds with each item,” Remus offers. “That way if customers can’t come take it away right away or the piece needs to get shipped, the item gets a sign put on it that states it’s been sold — like that one there.”

Sirius looks off the way Remus nods, finding a hot pink _SOLD_ sign taped to a green plasticine chair with a dome hair dryer attached to it that also appears to have been airlifted out of the ‘50s. “This place just keeps getting better,” he raises, pulling his wallet out of his back left pocket. “Well, here: take my card up to the front and secure it immediately—” Remus fans his hands in front of him, openly refusing that plan, “—well, someone’s got to guard it and my bark is louder than yours.” 

“I know that, but it’s your card, Sirius,” Remus frets, wringing his hands. 

“At this point, I’ve rather moved it into an ‘our’ sort of thing,” Sirius mentions vaguely. “Would love it if you started letting that idea blossom, mind.” 

Remus huffs disparagingly. “It’s unbelievably kind for you to feel like that, but it’s not mine, Sirius,” he puts. “If it’s been here four years, I think it’s safe to assume it won’t walk out the door today of all days and we can both go up there.”

“That’s what a chump says, Remus,” Sirius champions, flapping his card at him. “You know better than this.”

Remus continues dodging all of his attempts to pass the card off on him before Sirius finally just tosses it at him like a frisbee. Remus grapples to catch hold of it, frowning as Sirius shoos him toward the front of the store, and truges off. 

In his wake, Sirius decides stretching out on the pew is more than fair since it’ll be bought momentarily and the move will be a mark of his territory; a win/win. He sticks his prior findings on the left-hand side of the bench, moves to lay with his head in the right-hand corner, and crosses his arms behind his head to block the hard edges of the arm of the pew from bothering his head. He leaves their reusable bag filled with more bags on the carpet by the pew, crosses his ankles at the other end, effectively securing his record pile before pushing the cardigan further into the corner of the pew and locking it all in. He shuts his eyes, bopping his feet back and forth to a swanky tune playing overhead for nearly two minutes at least before his body won’t let him not look it up; he pulls his phone out, thumbs through it, and lifts it up toward the closest speaker to him, and after a few seconds his screen displays _Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On — Big Maybelle _ and Sirius saves that to his search history, thinking he might like a little of this sort of thing on one of his playlists in the future. 

“Sirius, _Sirius_.” 

Sirius sits up the moment Remus’ urgent tone registers, but a solid moment’s worry turns right into giddy curiosity as Remus waves a plastic bag filled with strange cutouts at him, the grin on his face going from ear to ear. “I found this on the way back, and it’s incredible,” he says, coming straight for him with it. 

“Give,” Sirius says, holding his right hand up and out for inspection. 

Remus bounces on his heels as he hands the baggie over along with Sirius’ card, and Sirius turns it around to the accompanied pamphlet at the front, mouth falling open at big-blocked red letters reading, _What Would Jesus Wear?_ and then underneath, in smaller sized font, _Jesus of Nazareth’s Mix n’ Match Magnetic Wardrobe. _

“Oh, what’s in his wardrobe?” Sirius trills to no one in particular, the ether maybe, and shakes a few flat magnets out of the baggie, letting a long-haired and heavily bearded Jesus, a tye-dye shirt, a golf polo, a pair of board shorts, a sombrero fall onto the pew just to name a few, and Sirius is living. 

“Oh, see, he can be business up top, but party down below,” Remus raises, placing a white surplice over Tiny Jesus’ torso before placing a pair of flashy track pants over his legs, and Sirius takes to seal clapping. "This could be part two of the Ugly Pot replacement front." 

“See? I fucking knew you’d find something worthy to replace it, but boy, we’re out in the stratosphere right now,” Sirius puts up, working to put each item of Jesus’ attire that fell onto the pew back into the bulging baggie before putting Tiny Jesus back in there too. “You be good in there, pal.” 

Remus snorts hard, moving to stick a pick _SOLD_ sign on the back of the pew, and comes around the front of it to pull his water bottle out of their bag to have drink from of it. “I only paid for the pew itself just now, but we’re to ring Zaya once we’re back home, and then she’ll help us figure out rates and all that," he passes along. 

“Sweet deal,” Sirius puts up, sticking his card into his front right pocket when he's just going to need to pull it out again when they're officially finished with their browsing. 

Remus nods his head back toward the right side of the store where Sirius isn't sure he's made it to yet. “I also saw something back up there that’s something you’ll want to see,” he raises, sticking his water back into their bag. 

“I’m there,” Sirius insists, sticking his card back into his wallet. “You take Jesus and his clothes, and I’ll take everything else.”

Remus recaps his water bottle, sticking back in his pocket before taking hold of the baggie. “Wait, give me the cardigan, too,” he bids. 

“Ah-ah, nice try,” Sirius returns. “It’s a gift, Remus; you’re not buying it.” 

Remus pushes a horse-breath out. “Fine, give me a record or six,” he says, holding out his free hand. Sirius splits the pile in half and hands Remus’ share of the load over to him, who restructures his hold on his items, using the records as a makeshift tray for the baggie as well as the corkscrew. “Come on, it’s this way.” 

Sirius follows after Remus, piqued about what he’s being taken to. He gets led down to the sixth or seventh aisle, he can’t really tell anymore, and follows along as Remus takes him around the bend and into a corner kiosk where stands a wooden record player stands almost as tall as he is with a gargantuan brass megaphone sticking out of it. “Oh my Cunt, could you imagine?” Sirius raises. 

“I’ve been trying, the issue you obviously don’t have a parlour so I’m not sure where you’d even put it,” Remus puts in thoughtfully. 

“Alright, that’s it; you’ve done it,” Sirius returns, looking wildly around for anyone with a name tag before figuring he may as well just call out for one. “Assistance, I need assistance.”

“What are you doing?” Remus sends him, more amused than he’s even bargained for likely.

“I’m going to purchase this and put it right in the center of your living room area for that one,” Sirius insists. “I think it’ll really pull your whole room together—” 

“We need to get you out of here,” Remus decides, dragging Sirius down the aisle, but jokes on him when this still counts as physical contact in a public place as far as Sirius’ skin is concerned “It’s your first time and you were bound to go a little mad in here, but you need some fresh air.” 

“No, I’m finally home,” Sirius returns. “Let’s stay here, kip on our pew, forage for berries in the woods; we can do this.” 

It takes a few seconds before Remus can manage speech around his breathy laughter, but Sirius is willing to be patient when he’s the one who caused the fit. “The antiques have gone to your head,” he insists. “It happens to the best of us, but—” 

Remus stops short, bringing Sirius to a stop by extension, who looks round as Remus lets go of him to scope out a white, rectangular box sitting on a cute little wooden desk in a close by kiosk. He flips two silver latches on the front, opening up the top of the box and putting out a bright trill. “Oh no, not you too,” Sirius puts out gravely, moving over behind Remus to urge him via a shake of his shoulders. “Get out of here while you still can, I’m too far gone, but you’ve a life to live.” 

“_Look,_” Remus trills, flying his hands down at the box, which Sirius realizes now is a portable sewing kit complete with a wee staircase that holds spindles of thread, a little transparent tin of needles, safety pins, a white netted pouch filled with buttons of all shapes and sizes, and one large tomato-shaped pin cushion. 

“Guess your mum’s getting a new hobby,” Sirius chimes. “Let’s get it.” 

“I’m getting this one,” Remus insists, inspecting the sides of the box for the price tag before his face clears off of any expression. 

“Remus, we can get it, it’s fine,” Sirius insists. 

“No — it’s too affordable to contend with,” Remus returns, putting the box on an angle to show the tag and the whole kit is fifteen fucking pounds; a steal and a fucking half. 

“OK,” Sirius accepts, lifting his hands for allowance. “I didn’t know if we were panicking or not.” 

“Very not,” Remus says, closing the box and flipping down the two silver latches on the front. “And, I’m thinking rather than send you half of the pew bill and risk you not accepting it like every other transfer I keep trying to get to you, how about I handle the groceries and that way we’ll be at about fifty-fifty anyway.” 

Sirius’ eyes narrow as he eyes Remus sidelong. “I’ve been saving so I’d have some mad money to put in while we’re here, Sirius,” he puts down. “I’m not unable to pitch in for things, and you can’t get everything for me, here or otherwise.” 

“I don’t, though,” Sirius puts out. “You won’t let me.” 

“Do we have a deal?” Remus asks, doubling down. 

“We’ll see who’s closest to the machine when the time comes,” Sirius trills, wandering out of the kiosk. 

“For that, I’ll send you out front to wait for me while I get in line,” Remus returns, strolling behind him be the sound of it. “Did you want to keep looking around?” 

“I’m running out of arms, if I’m honest,” Sirius puts up. “I will be requesting we come back again very soon, but I wouldn’t mind a refuel as is.” 

“Oh, I want to have a long look at the books, so I’ll agree to that,” Remus says, catching up to Sirius with very little leg work involved. 

Sirius snorts there. “We’ll never change.” 

“No, doubt it,” Remus affirms. 

They head up their aisle toward the front, where Remus guides them back toward the checkout, and Sirius gives out a sigh at the sight of the two queues. “How did you buy the pew so fast when the queues just never stop?” he raises. 

Remus lifts his shoulders for effect. “I turned up right when the one on the left was clearing out so I zipped right through,” he offers. “Why, did you want to step out?” 

Remus mimics holding a cigarette to his lips to pair with and Sirius gives him a hum to affirm. “Really wouldn’t mind one.” 

“OK,” Remus nods. “Let me get in line and I’ll run your stuff through for you.” 

“Are you sure?” Sirius checks, but Remus waves him off. “Will they mind you using two cards, ‘cause the cardigan and the records are on my bill, sweets.” 

Remus huffs at once. “No, they won’t mind,” he insists, going for the queue on the right when it’s definitely the shorter of the pair, and turning to eye Sirius’ pile before eyeing the delicate balance he’s got going on. “OK, you slide the records in underneath first, and then you can just leave the cardigan over one of my shoulders.” 

Sirius smirks, maneuvering his pile of records underneath Remus’ foundation base. “You’re the best,” he says, hanging the cardigan over Remus’ right shoulder. 

He reaches into the reusable bag on his right shoulder, pulls out a folded up one and unfolds it, and Remus smirks as Sirius hangs the strap of it by Remus’ left shoulder. “I’m regretting this,” he raises, a veritable Christmas tree of oddities. 

“Mm?” Sirius hums. 

“I’ll be out as soon as can, go on,” Remus imparts, nodding to free Sirius. 

“Well, you have magical powers with queues, so I’m sure this one will move quickly now that you’re in it,” Sirius says, taking out his card from his pocket and handing it off to Remus, who tips his chin toward the little collection he’s got going on top of the records. 

“I’ll protect it with my life,” Remus assures as Sirius sets it down beside the sewing kit. 

“Please don’t, it’s just a card,” Sirius returns plainly. “See you in a few.” 

He heads around the queue to get to the out-door, takes a right once leaving the entryway, and spots a massive hound tied to a post right about where he was planning to wander to. He strolls over to the pooch, has himself a seat in front of it, and tilts his head at it, smiling brightly even though he can practically hear Remus chiding him for getting that close, but thankfully this dog is but a large marshmallow and really only whuffles and paws at Sirius’ collar for pets. 

Sirius gives him a good ruffle on the head before lifting off of the again and strolling over to a wooden bench that’s sitting nearby. He lights up while he’s still standing, moves to sit cross-legged on the bench, and trades between watching folks go in and out of the mall and makes faces at the dog until it borks at him, and then he pretends he didn’t do anything as the apparent owner of said dog comes out of the mall and heads for his still-borking canine with a pronounced _no._

Sirius keeps his gaze trained above innocuous until the man and his dog are but wee silhouettes across the parking lot and takes another haul, looking left as his favourite walks out the door of the mall with his sunnies back on, the bag Sirius left with him on his left arm, and his phone at his ear. Sirius does a bird call, making up for the fact that the Beatles stole his opportunity last time around, garnering Remus to look right and head over to him with a smile too sweet for words. 

“OK, I will,” he says, lifting his left forefinger in a gesture for Sirius to wait just a little more. “Perfect, see you then. My mum says hi.” 

“Hi,” Sirius puts out even though she’s already gone. 

“I wanted to know if they needed anything since we’ll be at the store, but you’re not going to like the answer,” Remus passes along, pocketing his phone and having a seat beside Sirius. 

“Milk,” Sirius presumes, making a face. 

“Mhm,” Remus affirms. “Well, that and she had the last bag of English Breakfast this morning and we’re going to need a replenish of that in order to survive.” 

“Understood,” Sirius nods, going for a haul and making to lift off of the bench. “See? You’ve magical powers involving queues.” 

Remus smirks to let that one be, but reaches to tug on Sirius’ left arm before he can stand. “We can sit until you’re done at least,” he offers, moving to have a seat beside him on the bench. “We’re only just past noon, we can spare five minutes here.” 

“Well, shit,” Sirius puts up, settling in again with his cigarette at his lips. “That pesky time thing's at it again.” 

Remus nods knowingly. “So, dinner will take a bit of prep, so I’m thinking if we start that around four, just to get all the parts set up and ready to go in the oven around five-ish so that we can eat between six and seven, but that’ll also mean we’ll already be well into the process by the time my mum tends to get home and she won’t have any other job to do but sit and enjoy a dinner made for her, wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I mean, she’ll still try, I’m gathering?” Sirius raises, flicking a bit of ash off of the end of his cigarette. 

“Oh, believe me, yes,” Remus allows, “but we’re not going to let her, you hear?” 

“I’m hearing,” Sirius returns. “You’re the boss.” 

Remus tilts his head back and forth, smiles before wetting his lips, and has an experimental look around the vicinity of the parking lot, and at this very moment, not a one person is leaving their cars to head toward the building and not a one is leaving it; the coast is clear and Sirius is ready to be smooched. 

Remus turns back to him and makes a go at him before stopping short at the sound of his name, turning his head toward the doors as a lass waves at him as she heads for the parking lot. “Oh, hey,” he offers, smiling over at her. 

“Home for a visit?” she asks. 

“Mhm, long time coming,” Remus returns. 

“Sure was,” she returns. putting her head on a tilt as she gets to the front of her car parked in a spot near the walkway in front of the mall. “Are you stopping by?”

“In minutes, even,” Remus raises it. 

“Good, I’m just about to start,” the lass passes along, pulling her passenger door open to leave her shopping bag in the passenger seat.

“See you there,” Remus puts up, looking over at Sirius. “She works at the cafe.” 

“I — yep, worked that one out,” Sirius nods. Remus’ brows go for a journey before Sirius sighs his weight out of his lungs, going for that thing called reason that Remus gets so hot about. “OK, I’m aware that was snarky, and it’s not her fault she interrupted a pair of lovers about to embrace.” 

Remus huffs grandiosity. “Is that really it?” he raises, bringing his voice down while the lass goes around to the driver’s side and gets in. 

“Yeah, what of it?” Sirius goads.

“We have been all over each other, all morning,” Remus puts down. 

“Yeah, _but,_” Sirius comes back, “excuse me if I wanted to kiss a bit.” 

“Well, I did too for a bit there, but it wasn’t smart of me either,” Remus puts in, frowning a bit. 

“OK, no, it has nothing to do with smarts,” Sirius counters. “I saw: you looked around, decided the coast was clear, and you committed to a sneaky kiss,” he amends, and Remus turns his head toward the lot again with a sigh through his nose, putting it on a tilt, “and I was all in, I wasn’t expecting a love scene to occur out here on the antique mall bench, but a smooch? Yes please, and then chicka walked out here, destroying said moment; unknowingly, yes, but I’m still—” 

Remus looks forward with his head on a tilt, leans over, and plants one on him; plush lips, firm pressure, and a short flick of the tongue before it’s done. “Still what?” he asks. 

Sirius looks around a moment, finding the lasses’ car gone and the surrounding area still for the moment. “I was going to say 'unkissed,'” he informs him, keeping his head held high despite feeling rather warm and gooey in the chest area. 

Remus breathes a laugh through his nose. “Well, I’m really glad I went for it when I did, then,” he says. “I’m sorry, Sirius; I know this is a thing for you, but once things are out, so to speak, maybe we can broaden the circle a bit.”

Sirius lets a sigh leave through his nose, looking up and out at the view. “I know,” he nods, solemn about it for a beat or two before he pivots toward something that makes his mouth quirk. “It’s where you are too, I think. It’s bound to bleed in, right?”

Remus hums agreeably for that. “It’s not very London here either,” he puts up. “We’ll just have to sneak some sugar in when we can.”

Sirius nods, straightening up some more, feeling like that’s the only real compromise they have in front of them, but he does like that there’s one being worked out. “And hey,” he starts, reaching to tap Remus’ right knee, “me complaining that I didn’t get one snog doesn’t mean I’m not seeing the effort you’ve been putting in; the fact that you even gave it a go is proof in itself, really.” 

Remus breathes in next to him, budging Sirius’ left shoulder with his right one. “Little by little, right,” he raises. 

Sirius shakes his head, giving Remus a pointed smile for pushing major work under the rug. “It may seem little, but your little back taps and wrist tugs are everything,” he puts down, flicking the cherry of his cigarette off onto the pavement below. “And it’s bleeding into sex, too, holy shit; I mean, it’s all been happening for us, you’d have never kept going to town with James right on the other side of an open doorway, and I sure as hell know I couldn’t have gone down on you on a train even a month ago, so come on now, credit’s due; something’s shifted with you and in you as of late, and I’m happy to serve it in any way I can.” 

Remus laughs inwardly, a tiny lift of his shoulders coming with it, and when he speaks next, it’s lower down though that might have something to do with the newcomer who just pulled into one of the vacant spots in the lot. “I’m still wrapping my head around how hot that was,” he divulges, his mouth at a twist. “The train, I mean; it’d be a little weird if I got off on the James thing, I feel, but I wasn’t about to stop when he well knew what we were doing back at yours, the shit.” 

Sirius gives an internal trill, keeping things on the lower end for Remus’ sake though that doesn’t stop a shoulder-shimmy when not much does. “Go on,” he demands. 

Remus ducks his head, his hands lifting as a gesture for a little time while a woman heads past them toward the in-door. “Let’s start walking, hm?” he raises, handing Sirius one of the two bags. “We’re a little exposed here.” 

“If you keep talking,” Sirius wagers, lifting off of the bench and hanging the ties of the bag around his left wrist. 

“I’d just feel better if we’re a little further away from a building I used to work at,” Remus supplies. 

Sirius waves him off, heading to toss his cigarette butt it the bin to the left of the doors before fishing in his pocket to toss the one from earlier in as well. He heads back to Remus, who leads the way diagonally across the parking lot toward a large lot of grass to the right of the mall, and presumably he's leading them toward the street adjacent to them, but Sirius’ll find out soon enough either way.

Remus budges Sirius’ right hip with his left one after they start heading across the grass. “I’ve only had bits and pieces of this morning to think it over, so I’m not far ahead on it,” he prefaces, lifting a semi-halting hand that Sirius nods diligently for, “but before you, I’d never have considered doing that, when my experiences were always more about finding places that nobody else was.”

“Right, having an unbeknownst audience wouldn’t have come into it at all,” Sirius offers. 

“Mhm,” Remus says, pointing up at Sirius for the insertion, “and you’re right, I wouldn’t have been so keen to even a month ago, so I don’t really know what this is; is it bigger than a train blowie in that it’s a smaller allegory for me finally allowing myself to be more open with you and therefore more open with myself and to discovering new parts of that self with you, is this the natural progression of things given that I’ve clearly had a language kink for, what, actual years and I was perhaps always going to end up having that experience anyway, or did I just wake up from a nap and get all hot and bothered by your dastardly fit self and throw caution to the wind?” 

Sirius blinks a ton over the theories raised. “What if it can be all those things at once?” he puts up. “All three of the check out on their own, if I may be so bold as to say, so what’s stopping it from being a bit of everything? You’re already too complex to box in, we’ve been over that, but perhaps this is an extension of that.” 

“Maybe it is all three,” Remus echoes, lifting his free hand to suggest he’s quite stumped. 

“T’is a journey, this life,” Sirius puts in airily, doing a little twirl before they reach the sidewalk on the other end of the grassy patch. 

“Oh, what a nice little touch,” Remus says, eyeing Sirius’ twirl with a pointed smile before gesturing that they’ll be heading right. “All that said, it was off the charts.”

Sirius trills pridefully. “I did some of my best work there, so we’re all squared to one.” 

“Oh, I fucking know,” Remus returns blatantly. “I know it was to do with getting me there in as little time as possible and the time efficiency you showed was impeccable, I won’t deny that, but—” he puts out a heavy noise there, pitching his head back a bit to emphasize just how good a memory that encounter is for him and puffing Sirius right up with it. “I couldn’t feel my legs for a good while there.” 

“Ohoho,” Sirius champions, dusting off his shoulders in turn with his free hand. “You also did this strange tappity-tap on my head like you were some kinda mid-90s French House DJ serving beats; it was really something."

“Oh, stop it,” Remus returns, ducking his head through a sheepish laugh. “I was losing it, Sirius; it was taking everything I had to keep it together.”

“I mean, you also hid under your quilt for a couple seconds there, so I figured you’d gone through something,” Sirius allows, “but believe me, I’m ecstatic that I seem to have been able to awaken something laying dormant in you.”

“Now, I don’t know how far this is going to extend,” Remus puts in. “I think the circumstances were helpful: it was early, half of those passengers were asleep and the other half were very into whatever they were doing, but I don’t know that the tube would be an acceptable place to branch out, you know?” 

Sirius sends a bright, agreeable hum back at him. “We’ll cross the lorry off the list too, I’d think.” 

“And I’m still not the quickie in a pub bathroom sort,” Remus conditions. “Especially if there’s somewhere else we could go that won’t possibly catch us a disease.” 

“OK, you don’t stick anything important down on anything when you’re in the stall, Remus; it’s zip, bang, boom, and your back at the table with everyone else” Sirius returns, getting a huff of a laugh for it, but a firm shake of his head. “Alright, you say that now, but who knows where you’ll be on it a month from now; I do have receipts on that.”

Remus budges Sirius’ left shoulder with his right one. “Well, until we come to that,” he starts, displaying his free hand over his front with a flourish that’s definitely Sirius Black inspired, “if you want this, you’re going to have to bring it somewhere classy first, like your kitchen floor or a fairly comfortable seat on a moving train, apparently.”

Sirius shoots out a bark, tripping up a little on his feet. “Does this mean I can get you on the way back, then?” he checks.

Remus hums somewhere between lightly and noncommittally, only his reply comes back very decidedly. “Yes,” he puts down. “Unless we strike out and can’t get a secluded spot.”

“I’ll make it my mission to not let that happen,” Sirius assures, gliding along the pavement toward a small intersection. “Which way?” 

“Straight across,” Remus passes along before waving his hand off to the left while they wait for the light to change. “So, my school is just down that way, but I figure we won’t go visit it when it really just looks like every other school building and wouldn’t be all that breathtaking.” 

“I’ll take your word for it today, but I did say I want to see every pothole,” Sirius reminds him, keeping step with him as they get the green light to cross the street. “I request we take an evening and explore, but I really do need a refuel or I’m going to get punchy.” 

“Well shit, the main’s just up here a few blocks if you can withhold it,” Remus supplies. 

“I’ll do as much as I can with what I have,” Sirius offers, swinging his shopping bag easily as he walks. 

The establishment in question is a good few blocks up the main, which is great for Sirius in that he’s highkey in love with the little shops they pass and it gives plenty of townfolk a chance to stop Remus every other step to say hello, and getting to see Remus at home and having a blast from the past is it’s own blast for Sirius to get to witness. 

Remus is right, yet again. This time it’s because Sirius loves the cafe he’s been strolled into more than he knows what to do with: Shiny Toy Guns' _Don’t Cry Out_ is playing about the place, bringing Sirius right on back to the wild and tender age of sixteen; going for drives with Marlene with her newly acquired license in tow and playing all the mid-00s electronica their hearts could handle, and Sirius can almost feel the wind in his hair like he could back then. The shop’s interior is longer than it is wide, the decor is red themed, just what he likes, with booths all along the right-hand side of the shop, two tills and a decked out bar behind a counter along the left-hand side and down a bit from the entryway where they are, and directly left is a series of wall shelving units with massive jars filled with all sorts of teas; no wonder Remus likes it here. 

How are you ever going to decide on a tea?” Sirius asks, waving at the booming number of jars at his disposal. 

Remus gives a light laugh, waving it off. “I need a kick, so I think I might go with a chai,” he puts in. 

“You still tired?” Sirius asks, putting his head on a tilt. 

“Well, I did just bike us into town and then run around a vast antique mall with you,” Remus raises. “That could have something to do with it.” 

“I did offer to switch with you,” Sirius puts up, pointing up at him from beside him. 

“It would have been too difficult to have to direct you, it’s fine,” Remus says, waving him off. “I’m just explaining why my energy went down a bit.” 

“Well, I’ll go order and you can just go pick a booth and chill,” Sirius offers. “You are the queen, after all.” 

Remus nods, smiling for that, and reaches into his back right pocket for his wallet, which isn’t precisely what Sirius had in mind and is an action that he eyes very pointedly. “Oh, it’s your turn, isn’t it,” he says, nodding briskly. “OK, you’d better remember our grocery deal, hm?” 

“Yeah, yeah, get going, pal,” Sirius instructs, shooing him off with a light move of his right hand. 

Remus makes sure to budge Sirius on the way by, moving to take the first booth on the right, which is really his only choice of booths when the rest are taken up already. Sirius heads up to stand near-ish to the tills, where two baristas are milling about, the lass from the antique mall parking lot busy at the bar while a bloke hangs around the till with an obvious head tilt down at his phone, but that’s something Sirius has been notorious for doing so he cannot blame him one bit for that. 

He lifts his gaze to the menu boards hanging up above, searching for what he’d like to partake in himself, and that’s right about when the lad notices him and springs to life in Sirius’ peripheral. “Hi there, what can I get you?” he trills. 

Sirius gives him a smile and points up. “Just looking first,” he passes along. 

“What are you craving?” he asks.

“The biggest kick you’ve got primarily,” Sirius offers. 

“Well, we did just get the nitro infuser put in, just so you’re aware,” he passes along. “Makes for one hell of a cold brew and that’ll definitely have a kick.” 

“Well, I can’t say no to that,” Sirius returns, fishing his wallet out. He glances side long at Remus who’s dutifully chilling in the booth over that way and sends a pleasant smile back to him, and Sirius wonders if he, too, might benefit from this sort of kick. He’ll probably huff and puff about it, wince the whole time he’s trying to swallow it down, but he’ll be back up before he knows it. “Can I get two of those? One small with a splash of milk, and the other as large as they come and just give it full force, and both in to-go cups.” 

“For sure,” the bloke says, moving to gather them up. 

He comes back to plug the order in and Sirius pays with his card before forking over some change for the tip jar, partially because he must and also because it’s a mug shaped like a trout. After that he wanders his over toward the bar, Robyn’s _Handle Me_ starts up over the sound system, and suddenly it’s shouldertown in here; Sirius bobs them along to the tune, 200% expecting Remus to be watching the performance from over there, but when Sirius checks to be sure, Remus has a bloke standing by their booth talking him up, and Sirius just feels foolish now. Foolish and on alert. 

It’d help if he knew what to look for: a hair colour, a height perhaps, but for now he’s only got a gender to go on. Remus is smiling like a fiend, which has him feeling reluctant to think it’s him, but the bloke heads off toward the door, leaving Remus as he was, and Sirius heads up by the table, leaning his palms on it. 

“Did you give him your number?” he asks huskily. 

Remus sends him a lofty _pfft_. “He’s Angela’s boyfriend,” he puts forth. “We went to school together for twelve years; makes sense he’d stop and say hello, don’t you think?”

And just like that, sweet ease. “So, did you give him your number?” Sirius doubles down, cracking a smile after it. 

Remus huffs, shaking his head with a lopsided smile on. “Are we getting drinks, or?” he asks, trying to get a look around Sirius to have a glimpse of the bar.

“I’m waiting for them,” Sirius puts up, lifting his hands. 

Remus points up at the speaker above their booth with a bright smile on. “It’s like they knew you were coming,” he raises. 

“I was just thinking,” Sirius returns, swaying back to wait by the bar. 

The lass from earlier on is just finishing up with the large of the two drinks, placing it onto the counter. “Next one’s just coming up,” she says. 

“Sounds good,” Sirius chimes, gathering up a few bags of sugar in a tin on the counter, thinking Remus is definitely going to need a few of those, pockets those, and grabs two straws as he passes the tin of them, making it back to the counter in time to get a glimpse of the infusion part. 

The girl finishes up with it and flickers her gaze up to him, smiling a bit. “It’s actually really fun to do,” she says. 

“It looks it,” Sirius allows. “I used to work at a cafe but we never got one of those.” 

“I’ve been hounding my boss for ages to get this put in, and do you know what?” she raises, pouring a little bit of milk at the top of the cup, creating quite the infusion of light and dark. “We can’t keep the cold brew’s from coming now.” 

“Oh, I love validation,” Sirius puts in. 

“So do I,” the girl returns, popping a lid onto Remus’ cup and sliding it over to him. “Enjoy.” 

“We will,” Sirius returns, plucking both drinks up and walking them over to their booth. He leaves Remus’ in front of him along with one of the straws and the sugars from his pocket, slides in across from him, and blinks innocently as Remus stares down at the concoction in front of him. “Hm?” 

“What did you do?” Remus asks. 

“I got you a nitro cold brew since you’re in the market for a good kick,” Sirius smiles. 

Remus huffs, reaching over the table to thwack Sirius’ left shoulder with his straw. “Why’ve you done this?” he drags out. 

“It’ll be fine,” Sirius insists, popping the paper off of his straw and sticking it in his own drink. “Look, I gave you sugar and I asked them to put milk in it, so try it after everything’s mixes and you will be back to business.” 

“Nitro?” Remus puts up, looking up at the ceiling like that’s going to explain what’s happening here. “What, a regular cold brew wasn’t enough, they thought adding gas to it was necessary?” 

“Yeah, get with the times, Remus,” Sirius chimes, and Remus blows the paper of his straw across the table at him, only it flutters to the left of Sirius and lands on the cushion beside him. “Alright, fine, I’ll go get your cutesy, small time drink, and you can leave that for me if you really can’t hack it, no harm done.” 

“I can’t just let you ingest two nitro brews,” Remus returns. “I want your heart to keep beating.” 

“Well, you’ll just have to drink it, then, won’t you?” Sirius raises, leaning in to have a sip, and Cunt Almighty, it tastes like somebody dropped a double of whiskey into his cold brew. “I’m a changed man.” 

“Go back to the other man,” Remus sends him, but he does lean in to try a sip of it without any sugar added first and promptly hiccoughs around it. “This is battery acid.” 

“Even with the milk added?” Sirius raises. 

“Yes, and I don’t even want to think about what that one’s like,” Remus says, nodding toward Sirius’ cup as he plucks the lid off of his own. 

“It tastes like happy hour meets me,” Sirius puts up. Remus piles the sugar packets up together, shakes them out, and tears at the seams, pouring it all in. Sirius watches him use his straw to stir in the mound of white atop the drink as well as the milk inside until the entire drink is officially beige top to bottom, and takes a deep before the plunge. “And?” 

Remus swallows it down, tilting his head back and forth. “Still strong, but better.” 

“Then are we any worse for wears?” 

“My heart might be,” Remus puts up. 

“With the amount of caffeine you ingest on a weekly basis? Doubtful,” Sirius returns. 

“Oh, fine,” Remus returns, bumping Sirius’ left knee with one of his under the table. “I can’t get away with saying anything around you.” 

“Welcome to my world,” Sirius returns, smiling around his straw. 

They stick around the place to a) hear more bops, b) finish their drinks, and c) simply enjoy a chance to sit and relax before they’ll have to be up and at'em again. Sirius finishes his large cup a solid five minutes before Remus sips the lasts of his, but that’s hardly surprising. 

“You know what?” he raises. 

“You’re still mad that I got you a coffee instead?” Sirius guesses. 

“I was going to say I actually enjoyed that after my taste buds fully disintegrated,” Remus corrects, pulling a quick, hearty gasp out of Sirius. He plucks up the sugar packets on the table one by one before popping the lid off of his drink and dumping the packets in there. “Can you hand me the paper?” 

“The one you blew my direction?” Sirius raises. 

“The very one,” Remus smiles, holding his right hand out for it.

Sirius pulls it off of the cushion beside him and hands it over to Remus, who sticks both his and Sirius’ in his cup-bin and plucks up Sirius’ own empty cup. “I’m going to toss these, say hi to Sam, and are you good to go after that?” he raises, scooting out of the booth. 

Sirius hums an affirmation, giving Remus a royal wave as he heads over to the bar, and busies himself with trying to make out what the painting hanging between their booth seats is trying to tell him, but it’s just a series of mulitcoloured blobs, and that’s about all he’s got by the time Remus turns up by the table again. 

Sirius points up at it with his left hand. “I’m getting a sense of ambivalent loneliness from this; an understanding of the feeling trapped inside the rib cage, but the lack of ability or desire to pull on the strength to—” 

“Oh, you do not,” Remus cuts in, flicking Sirius’ right shoulder with a lopsided grin. 

“Nah, not at all,” Sirius concedes, sliding out of his booth seat.

The grocery is up at the very top of the main as per Remus’ imparting of that knowledge as they leave the storefront, which means more strolling and window shopping and people watching, and Sirius requests that they cross the road to head to their next stop so he can see all new things along the way, and he’s glad he did when they come upon what looks like a liquor store. 

“Hold it, let’s take a wee gander,” Sirius bids, beckoning Remus toward the door. 

“Oh, you cannot get pissed before we get groceries or you’ll buy the entire store,” Remus quips.

“It’s not for me,” Sirius chimes, reaching to pull the door open. The shopkeep or employee, either or, sends a bright hello toward them, garnering an echo back from the two of them. “Now, what’s your mum’s favourite scotch?” 

“Sirius,” Remus says, smiling wryly. “You can’t get her pissed at dinner, I’d like her to remember what we tell her.” 

“It’s not for tonight, you party horse,” Sirius returns. “It’s a gift to show my gratitude for letting me come stay and to win myself one more Fine Young Lad point, and it’s meant to be a gift she’ll actually enjoy from me rather than giving her yet another tchotchke for the cabinets.”

Remus sighs with the wry smile still on, leading them down toward the scotch. “She would be happy with just about anything, OK?” he puts down. “You don’t need to be going and buying something fancy.” 

“Who says?” Sirius raises.

“I do, and she would too,” Remus cements. “She’ll know if it’s fancy, too, and she’ll have a cow, so you’re to pick something slightly higher than run of the mill if you really want to make her glow, but that’s it, that’s all, and I’m putting my foot down on this one.” 

“Oh, you’re no fun,” Sirius says, waving him off. 

“She likes Bowmore,” Remus supplies, displaying his hands underneath a few options available for that brand. 

Sirius sizes them up, making a tight hum in his throat. “I know nothing about scotch except it makes my face warm and light,” he confesses. “Which one should I pick?”

“Do the twelve,” Remus suggests. “My dad got her that one year and she really liked it, so she won’t be pretending any when she’s thanking you for it.”

“Done and done,” Sirius says, lifting a box off of the shelf. “Easy as pie.” 

“Speaking of, would you be at all interested in making a fruit pie with a bit of cream cheese filling?” Remus checks. 

Sirius blinks wildly at him. “Why would I not be?” 

“Well, we just haven’t branched out from your regular filling,” Remus explains, “but I have a recipe that looks really good, not too complicated, and if I’m honest, if we mess up a little on the layering, are we going to actually notice? No, we’ll still taste it all and we’ll try again next time.” 

“You’ve already sold it to me,” Sirius returns. “What about the pot pie, any changes to that?” 

“No no, I think we’ve struck gold with old faithful,” Remus puts it, heading down toward the till counter. 

“So many pies,” Sirius puts out gratefully, carrying the box along with him as he follows. 

Sirius takes a bag for it once the transaction is finished, then stuffs the bagged bottle in his shopping bag for double the cushion should something unfortunate arise, and they’re off again, grocery bound. 

-

Sirius scans the massive crate holding many, many bags of potatoes in front of him, trying to figure out which one will yield the best results. “D’you suppose if I bought all of these potatoes, they’d throw in the crate?” he raises, glancing over the top of the display toward Remus, who’s stuffing a few carrots into a bag while clutching a bag of celery stalks to his chest.

He smirks, tying the bag of carrots at lightning speed. “I mean, you could probably charm your way there, but what would we do with thirty bags of potatoes?” 

“I’m sure I’d figure out something to do with them,” Sirius says assuredly. 

“I don’t know that chucking them at passerby counts as putting them to good use,” Remus mentions, moving to stick both bags into the cart.

“Well, that would really depend on who they’re being thrown at, but I digress,” Sirius says, picking a bag out of the pile and carrying it over to the cart. “Have you decided on which fruit for the second pie?” 

“Well, the recipe I found had instructions for blueberry and strawberry but my dad’s not such a fan of strawberries in general, so blueberry it is,” Remus passes along. 

“Heathen?” Sirius returns. 

“Tell him that for me, would you?” Remus quips. 

“I will not,” Sirius denies. “And I’m fine with blueberry, want me to get them?” 

“Two packs please,” Remus bids. “Enough for three cups, and some snacking because we’re us.” 

Sirius smirks there. “True,” he drags out, going for the fruit side of the produce section and having a gander around for the blueberries.

“While you’re doing that, I’m going to run to get the flour,” Remus forwards, moving away from the cart and slipping off down the aisle. 

It’s not great timing for Sirius finds the berries and brings back two packs about ten seconds from when Remus took off, and now he’s tasked with either waiting here or scouring the store to look for him, and they could both keep missing each other for hours and hours if he does that; he might as well stand by the cart and wait it out, and besides, the nitro brew officially hit about a block away from the supermarket, so his legs alone will carry him back speedily soon enough, Sirius should think.

He waits there while a sultry, no-name tune he’s never heard before and doesn’t particularly want to hear again plays throughout the store, and here he thinks not for the first time at all that sometimes the general, three and a half minute rule for playable tunes can be far too long. He spots Remus coming back up the opposite way he took off down, holding a carton of chicken broth in his right hand, a package of two chicken breasts in his left, and clutching a 4lbs bag of flour to himself like it’s a throw pillow.

“Oi,” Sirius puts up, lifting his hands. “You could have waited ten seconds for me to finish up and I’d have come carry something.” 

“This was easier,” Remus resounds, zooming up the aisle toward him. 

“Was it, though?” Sirius raises, moving to take the broth and chicken out of his hands to put them in the cart. 

Remus moves to maneuver the bag of flour into the cart before shuffling the contents around a little to avoid squashing anything. “I feel like a steed at the races,” he pipes up. 

“You look like one, too,” Sirius passes along brightly.

Remus moves in to prod him in the gut with both forefingers at an accelerated pace that Sirius is equally ready to block, meeting each of Remus’ prods with an open palm. “Try harder, punk,” he goads. 

The sound of a prominent throat clearing sounds out to Sirius’ right, revealing a lady trying to get at the stack of carrots behind their cart. The two of them hop to action, Sirius moving to grab the cart and move it along, pushing it around the bend while Remus slips up by the left side of the cart and glides along beside it. 

“Where to?” Sirius asks, sticking his left foot onto the back bar on the cart and scooting it along. 

“Dairy and then frozen foods,” Remus passes along, pointing righteously down the back aisle they’re traipsing down. “Straight ahead.” 

Sirius accelerates with his right foot before pitching the cart off in said direction and sticking both feet at the back of the cart, gliding down the aisle. “Meet you there,” he says, but already Remus is up by the cart, matching the pace with the speed of his already rapid legwork, and then they’re both distracted by the intro to the luminescent Katrina and the Waves hit, Walking on Sunshine coming on over the speakers throughout the store. 

The two of them immediately find each other’s gaze, size each other up with matching gape/grins, and Sirius drops off the back of the cart as Remus begins the routine with just his arms as he glides around the bend and into the dairy aisle. 

Sirius, on the other hand, has a cart to consider, one he takes to budging forward with his waist while mirroring the routine with his own arms. Remus side-sweeps by the cheese section, stopping mid-routine to flutter his arms toward the shelf on his right littered with cream cheese options. “Light or full?” he prompts. 

“Don’t insult me,” Sirius returns, stopping the cart and going into a full bodied routine now that he’s able. 

Remus grabs hold of a standard slab of cream cheese and rejoins the performance all while holding the product in his right hand while he does it, and it’s somehow the best version of the routine Sirius ever did see. 

“...Remus?” 

The sound of his name paired with the perplexed tone it's spoken with stops Remus short right quick, and Sirius sends a side eye to the beanie, bearded bro coming up the fucking aisle to them when fuck off, mate, they’re obviously busy here. 

“Having a dance-off?” he asks, slowing to a stop just ahead of them. 

“Well, Zumba, and it’s more a team effort than a competitive one,” Remus amends, lifting his hands evenly before using the right one in a gesture toward him. “Congrats on Cambridge, really; that’s amazing.”

"Thanks, I'm flying there Monday to scope out flats for the week," he offers.

And whatever the fuck is said next is completely lost on Sirius for it takes everything he’s got in him to keep cool. He’s by no means a religious man, but he’s about ready to get down on his knees and clutch a rosary between his hands in thanks for the actual, living, breathing picture in front of him somehow surpasses all he’d already imagined this former flame to look like. 

He looks like one of those kids who can be found ordering doppio espressos in an indie coffee shop spouting on and on about the groundbreaking novel he’s penning while avoiding shutting it and actually writing said novel. He looks like the sort to order a matcha green tea latte, extra hot and hold the foam as if that combination makes getting rid of foam a painstaking process for any barista at the mercy of the order and then makes a cheap shot loud enough for them to hear about the micro foam at the top of his drink when it’s all said and done. He looks like the type to argue the slight price increase on a drink while carrying a shiny, spanking top of the line Macbook along with him to take up space in the cafe to do his Art History readings alone because he just can’t find someone to willingly spend time with such a seething bore of a person. 

A loud, loud snort comes right out of Sirius’ throat, causing both Remus and Tommy McGee to glance his way, effectively assuming he’s laughing at whatever they’re discussing, and Sirius doesn’t know if he could really care any less about it. 

Remus pushes the bridge of his sunglasses up his nose a bit with his right hand, his left moving in a gesture toward him. “This is Sirius,” he forwards, poised to continue before that becomes utterly impossible with the extreme left turn that occurs. 

“Lyall’s looking great, hey?” Tom offers, and Sirius feels his eyebrows take up permanent residence at the top of his forehead. 

Remus’ entire chest inflates as he accepts that, though his nod is thankfully rather slight. “Yeah, he bounced back quicker than we all thought, aside from him of course,” he extends. 

“Well, he’s always ahead of the curve than the rest of us, isn’t he,” Tom allows. “It’s really something, though; you almost can’t tell that there’s anything off.” 

Remus smiles there. “Well, there isn’t,” he translates. “It’s a prosthetic, after all, not a peg leg.” 

“Oh, no, but I mean his speed is impressive, not to mention his outlook is really quite inspiring,” Tom reiterates. “One would expect the whole debacle to have chipped away at him, or make it so the topic isn’t particularly welcomed, but not for Lyall.” 

Sirius bends inward, leaning his elbows over the handle of the cart, not even trying to hide his absolute fucking embarrassment on this tactless piece of shit’s idea of what an appropriate conversation is; it’s gutting, to be sure, but wonderful somehow. 

“Well, yeah, it might have something to do with the fact that he elected to have it taken off,” Remus puts up. “Sort of takes most of the resentment out of it when you’re the one making the choice.”

“Wait, he did?” Tom raises. 

Remus hums there, nodding. “After his last operation didn’t take and he was back in again, his doctor came into his room to tell him amputation was the only real option ahead of him, and he was apparently ready for a bit of a fight from my dad about it, but my dad beat him to it and ordered him to, I believe it was, ‘_cut this fucking thing off_.’”

Sirius drops his hands, putting out a bright laugh at the pitch perfect impression of their dear Lyall and his dulcet tones, unfortunately Tom guffaws right about there as well. “_Lyall,_” he implores, and bitch, that’s not his line; Sirius wonders there, his smile dissipated in under a beat, what might be the consequence of sending the cart careening toward him and whether he much cares what the consequences could be, and there’s fucking Reg again, clutching around his windpipe like the decaying, judgmental hand that he always did have too tight a hold on him. 

“Well, good on him,” Tom tacks on. “I see him out driving the truck quite a bit, and you can just tell he’s over the moon to be back in it.” 

“Yeah, the fall was rehabcity, but he was determined to back behind the wheel,” Remus nods. “Can’t take that away from him, can we.” 

“No, we’ll let him have this one,” Toms allows, like he’s even got a say in the matter, the schlub. “He told me all about your Paris plans, though I can’t be too surprised about that, can I; once you take London, you really might as well; I’m just wondering how I didn’t hear your scream of joy from over here, you must be right chuffed.” 

Remus pushes out a breathy laugh. “Understatement,” he says. “Lot’s to get done before then, of course, so I’m working through the list one at a time.” 

“Well, hey, same here,” Tom raises, shifting the shopping basket on his right arm. “I’m actually flying in with my dad on Monday for about a week’s stay, scouting for flats, getting a lay of the land; do you know where you’re staying, then?” 

“Not quite, no,” Remus offers, and Jesus Actual Cunt; could this bloke pick one, just one topic that won’t cause a fucking fester festival inside of Remus, that’d be just fucking lovely. “I’ve got work lined up, and I’ve got a pseudo-cousin in law keeping her ear out for anything with the network she has there, so I’m keeping hopeful about it.” 

Sirius can’t deny that he loves this direction they’ve gone in, just about as much as he loves Tom’s right eye twitch at the wording of ‘pseudo-cousin in law,’ before the twitch is smudged away. “Must be rough, not knowing,” he frowns, stroking at his beard thoughtfully, just digging and digging. 

Sirius pushes off of the handle of the cart, gesturing with his right thumb for them to get back to it and shut this down, but Remus stays put. “It is, but she’s just inherently driven and has taken the task of finding me leads quite seriously, so out of respect for her, I won’t start panicking until August, so we’re about a fortnight too early,” he supplies, tapping the side of the slab of cream cheese still in his hands. 

Tom nods to allow it. “Right, still a little bit of time left,” he offers. 

Sirius feels an immense push and pull; a part of him wanting Remus away from this if this going on five minute conversation is even half a snapshot of what six years between them would’ve looked like with Tom honing in on just the right sort of digs at him, the other finding this bird’s eye view enlightening; it brings him a feeling of pride knowing that the way he knows how he comes at any one of Remus’ set-off topics, with a genuine curiosity and a penchant for finding solutions rather than pouring gasoline on the fire. 

“You know, it’s funny,” Tom raises when Remus leaves his offering hanging, “when Hope mentioned to me that you switched your major, I couldn’t help but find it fitting when I still use some of the tools you gave me this many years on, so I think you’ve found the right spot for you.” 

“Oh?” Remus prompts, tilting his head to the left plainly. 

Tom smirks there. “No, I’m not pulling your leg,” he doubles down. “In a way I really owe you for getting me in there.”

“Oh, no, I know,” Remus insists, beckoning with his right hand. “Go on, finish the thought.” 

Sirius only just holds off from raising his hands to rejoice in this wonderful turn-around, but Tom huffs out a laboured breath, ducking his head as his smirk moving into a pointed grin, and Sirius would like nothing more than to slap that thing off of his face; quit it, he’s not flirting, you actual scab. 

“Well, particularly when I wrote my letter of intent, I went through it as a final edit, pinpointing parts that were a little too thin, and I could just see you pointing at and urging me to just fucking elaborate on, and every time I heard it, I did just that, and it really paid off.”

Remus nods to accept that. “Well, I’m glad my advice didn’t end up going in one ear and out the other.” 

“No, it’s definitely lodged in there,” Tom allows, reaching behind himself to pull out his phone. “Well, I’ve got to get on, lots to do before the trip but you’ve got a different number by now, I’d imagine?” 

Sirius straights up tall as Tom hands his phone off to Remus to plug it in for him, who shouldn’t even have to be entertaining this clown anymore when he’s the nicest bloke to ever nice, and Tom fucking knows it, knows Remus won’t say no, Sirius can see it in his fucking beady little, celebratory eyes as Remus hands him his phone again. 

“Really good seeing you,” Tom bids, stepping back from them toward the way he came. 

“You, too; have a safe flight out,” Remus returns, holding his hands at his sides. 

Sirius lifts his arms in Tom’s wake, turning toward Remus for a prime explanation, who merely huffs a laugh and lifts his hands plainly. “Anyway,” he says sardonically, moving to put the cream cheese slab into the cart. 

“You’ve seen his balls,” Sirius mentions, getting a prompt shush out of Remus for it, “well, are they _enormous?_”

“Standard size, and could you please keep your voice down?” Remus bids, pulling out his own phone for their list and scrolling through it with his right hand. “It’s over with, can we keep to what we’re here for? We’re almost there.” 

“No no, I feel like he’s got to be carrying fifty-pounders on him for pulling that at all, let alone while I’m standing right the fuck here,” Sirius insists. “What am I, a statue?” 

Remus sighs, the unbothered air about him blowing Sirius’ mind. “It was just for show,” he puts up. “He routinely forgets how to use a telephone, I promise you that; now, let’s focus on tonight, OK? 

“Are you sure you’re OK?” Sirius asks, stepping in to try and see past Remus’ shades. “He hit you with a thousand arrows back there.” 

Remus lifts his left palm to Sirius’ chest. “I’m fine; I’d like a shower, maybe, but other than that, I’m good,” he insists. “We just need the milk, the frozen peas, and the sugar, and we’re done with our list and we can get back to gallivanting; just of course two are over this way and the sugar’s across the store; I should really structure my lists in order of appearance in-store rather than have us go back and forth.”

Sirius looks up and around, finding the dairy section blessedly unoccupied aside from them, and leans in to leave a kiss at the right corner of Remus’ mouth. “Nobody structures their lists like that,” he pardons. “Where’s the sugar in here?” 

“Aisle four,” Remus supplies, chasing Sirius’ mouth for a quick peck while the coast's clear, and is immediately struck by a thought. “Oh Cunt, the tea.” 

Sirius smirks, nodding for that. “I’m on it,” he instills, lifting a hand to push it through Remus’ fringe. “Which aisle for that?” 

“Five,” Remus forwards, a dusting of pink over his cheeks. 

Sirius taps the tip of his nose, strolls back to the end of the aisle, and makes the right turn back to the previous aisle they were on, switching to a brisk stride and scanning each aisle as he passes them in search of that tan beanie, giving out the first genuine prayer he’s ever really given in hopes that it’ll help keep the little shit from leaving the building before he can get to him. 

He passes aisle five a little too quickly, skids back and makes such a sharp right turn that he almost bashes his left shoulder against a corner display of picnic essentials, but he gets his stride back as he heads at double speed toward Tom at the middle of the aisle. 

The fact of the matter is, he’s a man on a mission, so the fact that Tom looks away from the shelf in front of him and jolts back as he sees him coming is as understandable as it his hilarious. 

Sirius gives out a bright laugh as he stops in front of him, lifting his hands in mock surrender, but Tom immediately puts a good three steps, long steps in between them. “Hey, at least you knew better than to take off running,” he raises. “I’m Sirius, the partner of his since you made sure to skip that detail, and I simply cannot let you leave here until we have a chat.” 

Tom goes on quite a face journey, making a series of expressions ranging from discomfort to a spot of outrage to plain disbelief before settling on a face one might make if they stepped in dog shit. “You know what,” he returns, waving his right hand dismissively, “whatever this is, I don’t want it,” 

Sirius reaches up and strikes that dismissive hand down and out of the way in a snap, causing Tom to whirl back to a five step distance. “I don’t give a fuck what you want, you’re going to let me finish speaking—”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Tom barks. 

“What, afraid you’ll like it?” Sirius goads, stepping in again.

Tom steps back again with that. “I’m not about to be harassed—”

“No no, shut the fuck up, I’m talking now,” Sirius asserts, waving it off with a stark wave of his hand. “It just wouldn’t be on not to thank you, after being the weakest sack of shit I’ve heard about in a long time and setting the bar so ridiculously low, you’ve made it that much easier for me to step over; all I’ve got to do is _show up_ and he’s already dumbfounded by it, so when I do any more than that, I look like a fucking king compared to you and peanuts you threw his way, so thanks for that, and while we’re here, _thanks_ for all the fucking damage control we’ve had to do because _you_ got to him first.” 

He meant to shoot to kill, take him down nine pegs, but the wounded expression Tom’s face breaks into isn’t welcomed at all now that Sirius got it out of him. Tom speaks there, but truth be told, the noise sounds too like an adult off of the Peanuts cartoons so glorified honking isn’t really what he’s asking for here. 

He puts on the best work smile he can muster, coming in to cut off Tom’s honking. “Now, a clever, Cambridge bound lad like you can probably muster up the wits to understand that the way you talked to him and stunt you just pulled was wildly inappropriate, and I’m willing to let you walk out of here without a limp so long as you understand that using his number would be disastrous for you,” he puts down. “Cambridge isn’t far from London, which I’m sure you’ve already looked into, and if you so much as whisper in his direction, today, tomorrow, I guarantee I’ll be paying you a visit up there and you don’t want that.” 

“I can talk to whoever I fucking choose to,” Tom asserts, brass balled all over again. 

“Wrong answer, Tom,” Sirius returns. “Not him. Pick somebody else to drag down with you; you’ve plenty of experience in that area, don’t you?” 

He leaves Tom with a look of warning before he turns away and strolls back up the way he came, pulling a box of Remus’ favourite brand of English Breakfast off of the shelf on the way by and whistling _Walking on Sunshine_ as he goes. 

He rounds the corner to head for aisle four, _Rocky’s Theme_ blaring in his head for his service, feeling like a hundred pounds and as if there’s two queues off people formed on either side of him, waiting to shake his hand or give him high tens. In reality he turns into aisle four and scopes out the sugar, going out on a limb and presuming if Remus didn’t mention an amount then a standard bag is likely what he’s looking for, pulling one off of the shelf. 

He heads back to Remus with both items in tow, glancing down aisle five to find Tom very much gone and replaced by nameless other townsfolk, and thinks he’ll smile even easier if he gets to Remus and finds him alone. 

He doesn’t find him alone, but it’s not Tom who's taken up his attention, rather a woman who in turn is just setting off the opposite direction from the way Sirius is coming. “Say hi to her for me,” she calls in parting. 

“Oh, I will,” Remus nods, waving as she moves along with her cart. 

Sirius steps up by the cart, leaving his share of the last few items in it. “Who’s that?” he asks. 

“One of the florists in town,” Remus passes along. “She’s known me since I was but ten pounds, and every time I speak to her I get the sense that she cannot accept that I’ve grown past that point.” 

“Oh no,” Sirius offers for sympathy’s sake. 

“Mhm, just shy of pinching my cheeks,” Remus relays, moving to pilot the cart down the aisle toward the front. 

“Could give her a quick show of the other ones and that'll probably clear things up,” Sirius suggests. 

Remus ducks his head through a breathy laugh. “That or get me dinged for indecent exposure,” he wagers. 

“Jokes on you, you like that sort of thing,” Sirius says, strolling along beside him. 

Remus sticks his left foot out to mime tripping him. “We’re in public,” he puts up. 

“Is that where we are?” Sirius puts up airily, having a curious glance around. 

Remus sends a grand huff to the ceiling, bringing them and the cart around the bend on their left, revealing the checkout aisles where three registers appear to be in use, all of them having surprisingly short queues, but then it’s not quite dinner time rush, is it. However, Sirius’ blood takes to a boil as he spots Tom at the register at the top of the first queue and can’t help but glance sidelong at Remus, but whether he sees that, Tom, or pretends not to see either one, Sirius can’t say when Remus is already wheeling the cart toward the third queue.

“Now, you,” he starts, pointing sidelong at Sirius with his right hand, “are to take our bags out of the cart and get over to the other side of these tills.” 

Sirius claps a hand against his breast bone in half-mock, half-genuine surprise. “I thought you said you’d send me right out of the building,” he mentions. 

Remus pauses as he’s rifling through the cart to retrieve the bags from their prior shopping, looking up at him. “Did you want to go out there?” he checks. 

“No no, I’ll wait,” Sirius very insists. 

“OK,” Remus allows, resuming before he lifts the two bags up and out to him. “There’s a gap just up there at the end of the tills you can cut through.” 

“Oh, thanks,” Sirius returns, looking over that way before he takes hold of the bags. He heads past the unopened tills to get to the end of them, moving through the previously advertised gap, and heads over to wait near the queue he left Remus in. 

He looks left, watches Tom leave the market with a sordid glance in his direction, and sends him a parting smile before he heads out of the store. He looks back at Remus and watches him unloading the cart, able to see him from the shoulders up over the head of a older gent ahead of him in line every time Remus slips a new item onto the stalled conveyor belt, but Sirius just cannot see a single sign that he could be spooked. It’s possible that he’s got his hands too busy to pick at his nails or back-pocket them, and even then, once he’s finished putting their haul onto the counter, he’s pulling out his phone, typing on it, putting it to his ear, calling for the taxi likely, again too busy to show any unspoken signals, or he’s really just that unbothered, and Sirius can’t help but think one option is far more likely than the other. 

The man ahead of Remus finishes up at the till, heads off with his bags in hand, and Remus moves up to smile brightly as his cashier, who very clearly knows him and his Lupin spawned self, engages him all through the scanning process, giving Remus even more of an excuse not to subconsciously fret. 

Instead he multitasks like the champ he tends to be with that, handing the bag boy the reusable bag he made sure to bring along with them, pulling out his wallet, taking his card out and tap-tap-tapping it on the counter as he chit chats, and is that the sign? Is Sirius sleeping on a new one? Is he just looking for trouble where there isn’t any?

Remus turns up in front of him, the shopping bag hanging off his right shoulder, and pets the crease between Sirius’ brows with his left forefinger in such a quick move that Sirius is half-unsure if he even experienced it or not. “If I can do anything to help, just say, OK?” he raises. 

Sirius fights a stutter at the notion that he’s having mope time over anything that has to do with his own sordid baggage. “You too, yeah?” he hints. 

“I know,” Remus replies, beckoning him. “Our ride's probably out there.” 

It's definitely outside when they get out there, and from the moment they’re in the backseat, Sirius watches impishly as Remus and the driver chat each other up like old drinking buddies; the fact that their rapport is snappy and quick should inherently make the drive back to Remus’ place shorter, but it gives the opposite effect, making it feel like upwards of an hour rather than a twenty minute ride down the highway, and the fireball burning in Sirius' gut isn't helping the journey either. He's more pumped to drive up to the Lupin abode than he was earlier this morning, and that was a tough one to beat. He sits forward in his seat, pulling his wallet out of his back left pocket to signal he’s getting the fare, but the conversation is still popping so Remus doesn’t really react either way. 

He gets out of the car as soon as the payment goes through, leans into the car to lift his share of the load out from between the foot of his seat and the back of the driver’s, and gives a quick thanks before shutting the door. He heads round the front of the car while Remus moves up from the other side of it, fishing his keys out of his left trouser pocket. 

The cabbie driver does a u-ie in the parking lot and honks twice from behind them, garnering Sirius to look over his shoulder, and off the car goes up the drive. “Another old friend?” 

“No, he must be new to town,” Remus replies, flipping through his keys to get to the right one, and Sirius is left staring sidelong at him as they take the porch stairs though Remus doesn’t seem to note his quandary.

Sirius gives up on trying to make the lively drive home make sense, moves aside when they get to the door to let Remus unlock it, and follows him into the foyer, which fits the two of them while they foot their shoes off easier than this morning when they had a lot more in tow. Remus heads into the front hall and down it, checking the time on his phone and speaking while Sirius follows after him. “Now, it’s only two-thirty so we’re even earlier than I was even banking on, so I’m thinking the best plan would be to get the delicates put away and the rest we can leave to the side until we start otherwise we’d really just be putting it all away just to take it back out again,” he offers, leading the way through the dining room and into the kitchen. 

“Solid,” Sirius returns, hardly against that.

Remus moves to set his bags on the table in the center of the room, and Sirius figures he’ll stick his share on it too for now, moving over to be doorman to the fridge while Remus works the dairy products out of the shopping bags first. He hands them over to Sirius, followed by the vegetables, and that’s right about where Sirius feels they’ve done their dues for now. 

He shuts the freezer door after sticking the frozen peas in there, and moves away from it and more toward Remus, sorting out the rest of their groceries into frankly unnecessary piles on the table. 

“Hey, can we pause?” he asks, coaxing Remus to face him rather than the table. 

Remus goes with the coaxing, putting his head on a left hanging tilt and smiling for him, but the sunglasses are just going to have to go. Sirius reaches up to ease them off of Remus’ face, leaves them on the table with the rest of their haul, and moves in close, slipping his arms around Remus’ back and curling the fingertips of his right hand up underneath the hem of Remus’ shirt; the tracing of them over Remus’ skin are equal parts automatic in that the move is inherent and driven by purpose, in hopes it’ll coax Remus into being a little more open. 

He searches Remus’ eyes, finds they’re not exactly dinner plate status but they aren’t their typical oval shape either, and he breathes in, poised to speak before Remus reaches up to tip Sirius’ chin up with his right hand and leans in to steal a kiss, and it isn’t Sirius’ fault that his knees go all wobbly and he gives a soft noise at the back of his throat; that maneuver is trademark Remus. 

Sirius traces semi-circles underneath Remus’ shirt with the both of his hands, backing Remus into the edge of the table and swallowing the rather pleased hum that comes out of Remus before he takes to sucking on Sirius’ tongue in what must be a showcase of grave appreciation, and Sirius’ eyelids flutter shut against the soft, wet pressure against it, rolling his hips up against Remus’ in a near-pleading motion. Remus slips his feet apart first, then his knees, and finally his thighs before he tugs Sirius in for more, and Sirius fucking gives him more, dropping his right palm to the table top and definitely lands it on something on it that he can’t decipher just now, that’s not important; driving Remus into the edge of the table, however, is. Remus reaches round the back of Sirius and dips his fingers underneath the waistband of Sirius’ jeans before working them in further best he can with the tight state of Sirius’ Good Jeans, going for a full squeeze of him before locking Sirius’ hips in so all Sirius can really do now his drive his hips in fast half-circles before making the rounds again, and the two of them part their lips, breathing roughly between each others as they rock together, and Sirius would fucking love it if the burn in his gut would go the fuck away; this is paradise, this is fair, they _deserve_ to enjoy each other, and yet telling himself all of that won't make that feeling go anywhere but his exuberantly troublesome gut. 

Remus speaks there, a stuttered breath between their lips. “We have to—” he tries, halting Sirius’ altogether with a fierce grip on Sirius’ arse, and Sirius grips the table top/random grocery item hard.

“Yeah,” Sirius breathes back, relieved Remus can see it too, “we do—”

“—Pick a different room,” he finishes. 

Sirius forces his eyes open, curses his fucking gut for ruining this for the both of them, the fiend. “No,” he tries, forcing himself to think past his throbbing dick, but that's a lot to ask.

“I want you so bad, but not in my mum’s kitchen,” Remus doubles down, pushing a breathy laugh, “I just can’t do it.” 

“No, that’s fair; I just, we shouldn’t be—” Sirius tries again, only no matter what he says, it’ll sound like a decline. He lifts his right palm from the table and presses it to Remus’ left cheek, locking eyes with him determinedly. “I really want to, OK?” 

“Alright?” Remus says, tossing a glance down between the two of them and their rather pronounced, trouser-clad appendages pressed tightly together, and Sirius supposes now that it was pretty obvious. 

“Right,” Sirius says, stepping back a step. “I just — we should really talk about it, Remus.” 

Remus blinks, looking around the room like somebody’s going to appear in it to explain. “Now?” he checks, looking back at Sirius. 

“Well, I was trying before, you’re just my biggest weakness,” Sirius gives to explain. “That must have been a really strange sidestep to your day, and I wouldn’t blame you at all if you were feeling all sorts of weird about it; I really wouldn't, I’m not just saying that, and if we tackle it now then we'll be—”

Remus breathes out through his nose while his mouth’s in a line and reaches up to cup Sirius’ face in between his hands. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says decidedly. 

Sirius would reel if he could, but his face is stuck. “Well, I want to,” he returns, wounded. 

Remus lets his hands fall from his face, changes up the placement of his jaw, and averts his gaze to the wall past Sirius’ left shoulder before he sticks the bottom of his tongue against the side of his mouth like he’s only just holding back on a devastating zinger, and to be frank, Sirius doesn’t even want to hear it. 

“I don’t like having to guess where you are on this,” he keeps on. 

“It’s done, I saw my ex, everybody does,” Remus puts up, far too commonly for the occasion, honestly. “I can’t change anything about it so there’s not much point in going back in and dwelling on it.”

Sirius pushes a pointed laugh out of his nose. “So, you’re just going to give me something that wooden and not like you at all, and I’m just supposed to believe that all of a sudden you're as chill as can be?” he puts up. “I know you better than that.” 

Remus looks back at him now, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead in plain alarm. “I thought you be—” 

“What, proud?” Sirius tosses up, blinking. “Yeah, I’m super proud to know that you’re forcibly not talking to me; love that." 

“Of me,” Remus enunciates. “I’m trying to go with it, Sirius; could you let me?” 

“No,” Sirius returns at once. “I’m not going to.” 

“I don’t like how I feel when I think about it, thanks,” Remus sends back. “I don’t like the fact that he’s got all this information on what I’m doing, and I don’t like that my mum and dad keep obliviously giving away ammunition like that, and there’s no way to control that because I dug my own hole with that, so until he moves the fuck out of this fucking valley and they can’t keep running into him, he can find out anything he wants to from them because apparently I’m their favourite conversation topic.” 

Sirius hears all that loud and clear, but the face Remus pulls after it is what really had him bent in half. “Oh, poor you,” he returns bluntly, and he knows it is because Remus’ shoulders go rigid and that’s a fine clue that Remus well-knows he’s stuck his foot in his mouth, but Jesus Cunt, read the fucking room. “Those two fucking adore you and it fucking pours out of them, so you can wince and huff and moan about it all you want to anyone else but the least you could do is not act like they’re burdens when I’m around.”

Remus rapidly shifts his gaze to the single tile between their feet, breathing so slightly Sirius has to squint to tell he’s even doing it. “You’re right,” he says, lifting his shoulders once. “I’m sorry I haven’t been better about that.” 

Sirius huffs a fast breath out. “Sorry wasn’t what I asked for, was it,” he returns. “This is ridiculous; we’re just dancing around the issue instead of just looking the elephant at the grocery in the eye, and fuck off, this wasn’t even about your mum and dad sharing intel with him, you’re prickled about it and you’ve pretend that’s all you’re bothered by and it didn’t work: I’m not falling for it, and you haven’t once asked me if I’m doing alright after that and you sure as fuck could have by now.” 

“What?” Remus says, breaking his staring contest with the floor to look at him again; quite bamboozled by the looks of it and that’s just too rich.

“What?” Sirius quotes. “Of all the things that could have happened back there — here, here’s what could have been done: you could have went and crouched behind him so he’d have something sturdy to go tripping backwards over after I sunk my fist into his jaw, even better, we both could have tag-teamed him and taken turns wiping that smug grin off his face, we could have stolen his wallet, bolted out of there, and returned to use his papa’s money to buy our things, but no, instead you greeted him like an old friend, congratulated him on something you fucking can’t stand while sounding ecstatic for him, you snarked him a bit later on like he deserved, I’ll give you that, but then you gave him your fucking number.”

Remus pushes out a long sigh. “It’s not as if I saw that last one coming,” he puts in tightly. 

“It’s almost like you want him to give you a shout?” Sirius inspects. “Don’t know why you would with the way he spits daggers at you every chance he can, but hey? Why not give him easy access to you, right? That'll be smart.” 

“I was on autopilot, Sirius,” Remus emphasizes. 

“Not the best time to take a break, Remus,” Sirius chimes. 

“What was I supposed to do?” Remus snaps. “I wanted him to move along and I wanted to get out of there so I just did it; I sure am sorry I didn’t fall apart in the middle of a supermarket for your validation, but I’ve been _reeling_ since the second he walked up; are you happy to hear it?” 

“Yeah, I am,” Sirius returns at once. “At least now you’re not pretending everything’s all fine when it clearly fucking isn’t.” 

Remus shoots him a look so loaded that Sirius begs the earth and all her trimmings that he won’t call him out on that one, lifts his right hand to drag it over his face, and bites out his reply. “Of course I’m not fine.” 

“Could have fooled me, and did for a smidge there,” Sirius returns brightly. “Get Viola Davis in the room, I bet she’d just love to have the chance to act alongside such a natural talent.” 

Remus drops his hand at once, revealing a pair of wild eyes. “Fine,” he sends back. “What kind of bullshit serendipity was that, seeing him? What’d I do to anger the universe this much, hm? You’re the expert on me here, not me.”

“Well, if there’s only one grocery in town, that might just do it,” Sirius puts up flatly. 

“There’s three,” Remus returns, clipped. “Two general stores on top of that.” 

“Alright?” Sirius raises. “It’s a hot, Friday afternoon in a town of, what, two thousand?”

“Try close to eight,” Remus retorts. “Sixty-five if you want to talk the whole valley.”

“Well, fuck, Remus; I tried,” Sirius snips. “This wasn’t personal, it was always going to fucking happen.” 

“Not today,” Remus tosses out, flying his hands up, and Sirius might as well have set off a fire hydrant. “I could have had us go earlier, I could have let us stay at the cafe just a little longer and we could have missed him completely, I could have not grabbed an armful at once to cut time so we wouldn’t have hit the dairy aisle so soon and he could have left before we even got to it, he could have left last Monday instead of this one and I wouldn’t have had to see him at all, but no, I got to run into him on the day I planned to come out to my parents on, zumbaing along the dairy aisle to Walking on Sunshine while waving a block of fucking cream cheese in the air; that’s it, that’s my fucking life.

Sirius has absolutely no control over the fast laugh that leaves his throat; it’s Remus, he’s got a way with words, but a particular word sinks in and hits differently after that, and then laughing is sorely unappealing. “Planned,” he repeats. 

“What?” Remus asks, drained by his rant. 

“You want to pull out of it,” Sirius translates. 

Remus falters. “Sirius, I’m don't,” he says. “I’m not expressing myself well at all right now; hence why I didn’t really want to get into it.” 

Sirius hums a denial. “No, that was pretty telling,” he nods. “So, what was the plan, then? Push it down, pretend it wasn't there, get to dinner, the moment, decide for sure that you’re out and leave me hanging for the moment that wouldn’t come—” 

“Sirius, stop,” Remus cuts in, openly upset, but that’s not a denial, though, is it. 

“No, I mean, I’m real glad I carved it out of you before that could happen, but I shouldn’t have had to,” Sirius puts in numbly. “Maybe my gut fucking knew, you know? It was on fire the whole way home, wouldn’t quit while we were fused together, but now, I’m kind of glad I’ve got to guide me if I’m actually on my own out here.” 

Remus gives out a gutted noise, shrinking in before he slips out from between the table and Sirius. “I really need to think,” he provides unhelpfully. 

“I don’t know that you do,” Sirius returns, reaching to snag a hold of Remus’ right wrist before it’ll be out of reach. “Seems to me you’ll think yourself into a corner and bail before I even get half a say, and we’ve done already done that plenty, haven’t we.” 

“I’m not fucking bailing on you,” Remus says, shaking Sirius off all the same. 

“What are you doing right now?” Sirius returns. “It’s a slippery slope.” 

Remus’ right arm goes limp all the way down to his wrist. “That’s not fair,” he returns, but it’s slight. 

“No, you know what’s not fair? Being branded the way I have and constantly getting referred to as too impulsive, too careless, too afraid of commitment when you’re the one who’s got way more of a problem with it than me,” Sirius delivers. “I’ve been in this since day one, I took arrows to justify this when I shouldn’t have had to, and you’re the one who's been standing with a foot out of this since we started; you’re the one who’s afraid of relationships, and you’re even more afraid of one with me.” 

Remus darts his gaze around the room, anywhere but him, looking a cat in a cage as he wrenches out of Sirius’ grip so fast that the small voice that comes out of him is wildly unexpected. “I think we both need some time,” he says, turning for the den. 

“Sure,” Sirius nods. “Gotta get to him before Monday, right? And Godspeed, Remus; he’s such a catch.” 

Remus stops, looks back at Sirius with a placid expression, and for a moment there Sirius is certain it’s about to fall into the same look he gave James for stepping out of bounds, but all he gets is a hint of exhaustion on Remus’ unmoving stare and that’s somehow so much worse. 

Remus resumes his route, leaving the kitchen for the den and taking a right to open the back door. “What, you’re really going to leave?” Sirius sends him. 

“You fucking bet I am,” Remus calls back, letting the slam of the back door punctuate it. 

It echoes out through the den and into the still kitchen before Sirius makes the only movement in the room, pulling a jagged hand up through his hair while his eyelids continually replay that image of Remus so fed up with his bullshit, and the blood in his veins slows to a crawl. 

He breathes in hard, taking off out of the kitchen and the house next, catching Remus as he makes the left turn on the porch and springing up the porch after him. “This is good; we’re really airing out some dirty laundry,” he puts up, rounding the bend in the porch and nearly getting within reach of Remus before the man surges down the porch stairs and into the garden. “Oh, come on, really?” 

“Stop it, stop following me,” Remus huffs back at him, starting through the windy, cobblestone path. 

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Sirius returns, sighing before he makes quick work of the stairs and rushes after him. “We can’t chase each other through a garden this intense, Remus.” 

“There’s no 'we' about this,” Remus sends back to him. 

What’s unfair about this is Remus has the same amount of experience with this pathway as Sirius does, but he’s taking every twist to it in absolute stride while Sirius keeps almost staggering into bushes on either side of the path as he tries to make the turns. “How are we supposed to take any of this seriously? We look like fools.” 

“I don’t fucking care what we look like,” Remus retorts. 

“Is there some kind of shortcut in this thing?” Sirius sends back up. 

“How should I know?” Remus tosses back. 

Sirius feels immense relief as he soon sees the break in the garden he exited to get to the yard, surging forward to grab Remus’ right wrist and hunker him down before he takes off in any direction. “Where are you trying to go, honestly?” he huffs. 

Remus whips his arm out of Sirius’ grasp in a mere second, but he does face him even if it’s done in a whirl. “Tell you what, either I’m running to him or I’m trying to get away from you,” he puts up cheerfully. “Pick whichever option fits the narrative you created here, I don’t care.” 

“Yes, you do; you obviously do,” Sirius returns, lifting both of his hands to signal they’ll be coming in, aiming for a soothe of Remus’ shoulders. “Let’s just restart, OK? We can go back to being calm, fair, and careful with each other, like we did all morning—” 

“Don’t,” Remus cuts in. “You wanted a reaction out of me and you can’t turn around make me the problem here; you made this happen.” 

Sirius shrinks back on a dime. “Remus,” he says, feeling awfully transparent and far too small. 

“What? Remus, what?” he returns. “I’ve watched you say some horrible shit to other people just because you know what to say to set them off, and maybe it says a lot about me but I didn’t think you’d ever try that with me.” 

Sirius presses his mouth into a firm line before lifting his hands to signal for a pause. “I tried numerous times to get you to talk to me about it and that last time you really blew me right off,” he says. “And I know I came at you hard with a few of those and I’m sorry, I’m not saying I did anywhere near well with the method I used, but I know a thing or two about self-sabotage, and you are textbook; the second you’re afraid that this is going to fall out from under you, you try to bolt before it can.” 

“I’m not bolting,” Remus snaps. “I was fine back there before you dug and dug and dug until I halfway gave you what you wanted to hear and you came back swinging, and you know what? That sad excuse for a last word did nothing for you; to even pretend like I’m harbouring anything but major contempt for him at this point is so below your intelligence level that it’s almost more insulting to you than it was to me, so if you’re not going to respect me enough not to throw him in my face just to cut at me, at least show yourself some.” 

“OK,” Sirius starts, “I appreciate that you managed to be semi-kind while tearing me a new one, but it doesn’t look good when you start second guessing this not long after you saw him, it just doesn’t, Remus.” 

“Grow up,” Remus tosses at him. “I’ve had to deal with your past flames; I couldn’t go for a pint without seeing one, I couldn’t go for a bite without seeing another, I had to sit cool in a pub with three of your past flames breathing down your fucking neck last week, Zumba King is more fit and far, far more into you than you ever let on, and you still talk to your old fuck buddy nearly a year on from your last hook up, but I just have to fucking take it all, lick your wounds for you, and take your word for it that I somehow fucking beat them all out of the running, but you don’t see me flinging mud at you for having them — and if you even so much as start saying you’re seeing me do it now, so help me, Sirius—” 

Sirius huffs loudly. “Those were all short-lived, and the fuck buddy I have declined to meet about a dozen times because I’m all fucking set here,” he corrects, flourishing his hands toward Remus. “Completely different cases than what you two had.” 

“Sex, Sirius; you’re familiar,” Remus puts down. 

"Stop calling it that," Sirius snaps. 

“No, I've a quick question," Remus prefaces thoughtfully, "if you’re really all set, why keep him hanging on like that?” 

Sirius puffs up, holding his head high because he’s gotta do it. “I like knowing that I’m hard to get over and I’m not about to be made to feel bad about it.” 

Remus huffs out a breathy laugh. “Right, can’t have your ego taking a hit.” 

“And what about yours, hm?” Sirius raises, nodding at him. 

“What ego?” Remus sounds out, looking around the yard as a performance enhancer. “Where is it, Sirius?” 

Sirius shoves out a sigh to avoid anything close to a laugh, but it’s tough going. “I’m not saying you have one, I’m saying you hardly do,” he clarifies. “You have no clue when someone’s trying something with you, it just doesn’t register; I’ve heard it from you, I’ve seen it myself, and I saw it today with Tom, I did.” 

“Well, you also don’t have the best track record considering you thought my old friend’s man was putting the moves on,” Remus puts in politely. 

And there, Sirius can’t stifle a laugh. “I thought he was Tom, you knob; it’s not like I had a frame of reference for him to go on, I saw a bloke and went on alert and immediately got over it the second I knew it wasn't him,” he returns, and the corners of Remus’ mouth twitch a bit there; slight, but it happened. “That was a non-issue obviously, but Tom was one and a half issues; he had the flirt gaze on, the beard stroke, the smirks, the smug grins, oh and he made sure to get your fucking number before he went, and only you would miss all of those signs.” 

Remus breathes in fast, gearing up for a whammy, and gestures broadly at Sirius because he’s too fucking nice to get his hands anywhere near Sirius’ face even in combat mode, and that alone chips away at the anger under Sirius’ bones; there’s no way he can lose someone this good. “You have a fuck buddy’s number in your phone,” he reiterates. “Where do you get off saying any of this?” 

Sirius reaches into his back right pocket and pulls out his voice, showing the screen to Remus when he’s finished deleting the problem off of his phone. “There,” he says, putting his phone back where it was, “gone like my interest in him after getting even one shot at you; is that something?” 

“No,” Remus returns, staring at him wondrously. “That clears your conscience so you can point fingers at me for not knowing how to leave that situation without giving him my number, that’s literally the least you could have done.” 

“I thought you wanted him to use it,” Sirius returns. 

“Yeah, so he can keep side-slinging my dad and me while he’s at it,” Remus nods. “I wish I’d gotten his number so I could get that going quicker.” 

“Stop it,” Sirius pleads. “I don’t want him bothering you anymore, and I really don’t appreciate you equating my fuck buddy situation with your six fucking years with him; you loved him, for years even when he ran over you over and over again, and if you’re really getting second thoughts on me and our plan that we’ve championed for months because he strolled up to you, then that’s a huge fucking problem and we need—” 

“I didn’t love him like I do you, I told you that,” Remus comes in. “Get that through your head and get it the fuck together because I’m fucking rattled now and half of that’s on you.” 

Sirius wilts, stepping in close to they’re only inches apart. "I can’t help fix the other half that’s got you rattled if you won’t talk to me," he puts down, his throat tight. “You’ve been checking up on me every single time you even get a sense that I’m off, and I know how much you fucking worry about me, so if you have to just try to see it like that, but on my end; I'm worried about you.” 

Remus breathes in harshly, reaching his hands behind him before catching himself trying to pocket them and lifting his right one to rub over the back of his neck, the other hanging limply at his side. “I don’t want to pull out of this, but I keep thinking they’re better off not knowing it,” he puts up, holding himself horribly stricken, but the admission leaves Sirius stricken too, and too much so to risk trying to ease Remus down when he can’t really fix their combined misery, “I’m not afraid of being with you, I don’t want to lose you, and I hate that I’m thinking it, I don’t want to, it’s not fair to you or me, and I tried to snuff it out, but I don’t know what else to think: I don’t know why I wouldn’t run into him today of all days unless it’s some sort of cosmic reminder that I’m I'm going to end up tossed aside—” 

If Sirius could throw his head back to shriek at the sky and get away with it, he would, only it’d never go over well and he’d be right back in the dog house after finally getting let onto the stoop; instead he reaches up in a snap and pries Remus’ right hand back from his neck, settling it down in between the two of them and keeping it held tight in his grip of his left hand. “You’re not,” he puts down, lifting his right hand to Remus’ chin to hold it, too. "I wish you’d just hear me when I tell you that I thought I could forget you; I pitched a fit and dropped out on you when things weren’t going my way, couldn’t forget you, and was miserable trying to; I’ve never said that because it sounds so fucking lovely and cheerful, or to lure you in just to drop you right when you get comfortable, I’m telling you the truth. You make me happy, Remus; I'm not going anywhere.” 

Remus' eyes are closer to dinner plate status than they’ve been yet, but his expression is too pained for Sirius to really enjoy it much at all. “I don’t know what to say when I hear it, Sirius,” he gives him. “I’m happy you came back to me and I’m happy we ended up clicking so hard and so fast, and for how well you took all of me on, and I’d rather them never have known what you are to me than have to explain to them that somewhere down the line that I drove you away.” 

Sirius shakes his head at full force. “I love you,” he puts down. “You’re not driving me anywhere; your fretting hasn’t turned me off at all, the clusters haven’t sent me packing, I’ve never thought since we started that you’re too much of anything. I fucking know as well as anybody that this isn’t going to be an easy fix for you; we’re working against years that he was lucky to get and fucked up so hard with, but you’re worth all of that work, and if you didn’t run the other way on me the other night, then why the fuck would I ever decide you’re too much to handle?” 

Remus pushes a gutted breath out and fixes his gaze on the sky, the effort put in to remain composed crystal clear, but nah, sorry Remus. “You and I both know how much of a tough bitch timing can be, but she’s a hilarious one too, if you’re willing to look for it,” Sirius keeps on, moving down the list of grievances, “and I’m not just saying that because I’ve a penchant for finding that sort of thing just to get by because here’s the thing? Yeah, we bumped into him hours before the big reveal and it’s a shit day to have all of that dreadfulness come back up, but he did bump into you looking fit as all hell and having a song and dance with your hunky, hunky boyfriend, and you know what? You fucking won.” 

Remus pushes out a huffy little laugh, dropping his gaze to Sirius again and giving him a pointed smile, and they’re already on the mend, he thinks, he just needs to push just a little more. “Take that altercation as a reminder of what a sack of shit that guy actually is and the bullet you fucking dodged there if you must think about this in terms of timing and a sign from the cosmos, but our timing is right and you know it is,” he gives concisely, for Remus and for himself. “You know it is; you’ve wanted to tell them for months before you told me the ball it was going to start rolling, you set the dates, you took the leap, and you wouldn’t have set all of this up if you didn’t know we’re right and that I’m worth bringing back home with you to show something for it, and I’m going to look those two in the eye when we’re telling them and they’re not only going to realize, but they’re going to be downright verklempt when they learn that somebody loves their son as much as I do. They might even burst into tears right then and there, I haven’t decided yet, I’ll see when we get there but I’m not ruling it—” 

Being cut off by Remus’ lips this time around is everything he needs and more, especially when he’s got Remus in such a verklempt tizzy himself. It’s more three kisses back to back than one full one, but there’s so much to the way he’s kissing Sirius like he’s some sort of elixir. He lifts his hands and presses them to the sides of Sirius’ head before pausing for a breather and pressing their foreheads together, taking a forlorn breath in. 

“I’m sorry I keep drowning you out when you’re right fucking there,” he rushes out. 

Sirius reaches his arms up and wraps them around him in an instant. “It’s not your fault,” he puts it, shaking his head best he can like this. “I shouldn’t have dragged it out of you that way.” 

Remus hiccoughs there. “Are we ever actually going to meet in the middle from the get?” he raises, exasperated. 

“We’ve been doing it, Remus,” Sirius returns. “This doesn't mean we're starting from zero again; we got spooked, I know I did, but we're back; we always come back.” 

Remus nods harshly and that act brings their foreheads apart, but then he’s pulling the hair tie out of Sirius’ hair with three quick pulls and carting his hands through the mass of it like it’s fine silk, so that’s something huge. “Don’t be upset by another sorry, but I really am sorry I didn’t check how you were doing with it,” he says, sniffing before his tone evens out to something a lot more blunt. “And I’m going to get one more in because I let him blow you off like that and you didn’t deserve it; I should have just shut it down right there.” 

Sirius sighs through his nose, giving Remus a tight smile. “Well, he went straight onto something you two had in common, and Lyall’s bound to get you talking,” he raises, lifting his shoulders once. “He’s a real piece of shit, Remus, but blowing off a certified babe on your proverbial arm is the least of his transgressions today, of course he did it.” 

Remus ducks his head through a laugh, bringing it back up again through a shake of it and fixing Sirius with a smile that lives and breathes adoration. He takes in a soft breath as he reaches to tuck a loose lock of hair behind Sirius’ right ear. “What time are we?” he asks. 

Sirius hums, turning both his head and body toward each other to peek back at his phone as he slips it out of his back right pocket enough to see his screen light up, smiling to himself as he lets it slide back into place and turning back to Remus. “Just past three,” he says, closing the short distance between their lips. 

Remus breathes an obliged breath through his nose, hooking his forefingers into the belt loops at the front of Sirius’ jeans and starting a backwards walk, a-frame bound, and Sirius can’t argue with that spot. He gives a valiant effort to be Remus’ eyes, slipping his arms around back of Remus and crossing his wrists there as he walks Remus toward the stairs, giving a muffled, ‘stair,’ followed by, ‘’nother one,’ and, ‘one more,’ against Remus’ lips, and getting a few huffs of laughter back for the method used while Remus heeds his warnings. 

Remus reaches behind his back as he gets to the top step and working the door open and the two of them shuffle in through it before Sirius kicks back and knocks it shut with his right foot, steering Remus across the room and down onto the bed diagonally, and there isn’t a single need to correct their placement on it as far as Sirius feels, and by the way Remus pulls Sirius down and over him suggests he couldn’t care less how they landed on the bed either. 

Sirius can’t see any reason to rush this one when they’ve plenty of time to work with, and if he’s honest, he wants this one to last, and if he’s reading Remus’ signals as well as he thinks he is, they may just be on the same page here; Remus isn’t rutting underneath him for a tease of friction, isn’t hurriedly pawing at Sirius’ fly, he’s got his hands teased up underneath Sirius’ shirt, fingertips and the occasional scrape of nails over Sirius’ back, he’s leaving space between his thighs that Sirius fits right up between and is rolling them in and out like low tide, he’s licking up into Sirius’ mouth with languid flicks of his tongue, punctuating each with the slow slide of plush lips, and all of it calls Sirius to give it all right back, moving his left hand and tousling it up in Remus’ curls, slipping his right hand underneath the hem of Remus’ shirt and splaying it over his navel, tracing shapes here or there, pulling soft whines from behind those stellar fucking lips still drinking Sirius in. 

Remus decides after a particularly wanton noise garnered by Sirius arrowing his hips down to increase pressure between them that maybe their clothes are just getting in the way, and with the heat in the cabin and the beads of sweet building at the small of Sirius’ back, he can hardly weight to get out of them now that Remus is tugging up on Sirius’ shirt. Static goes off when Sirius pulls it off of his head, leaving his hair in quite the state from the bright lilt to Remus laugh as he dances his gaze over Sirius from below, and Sirius can hardly mind what it looks like when Remus reaches up and sinks the fingers of his right hand into it, tugging it out of its bun and pulling Sirius back in for another round before he works his left one in between the two of them. 

Sirius braces his palms on either side of Remus’ body, lifting his hips up to be of some help, and Remus works well in the space afforded to him, flicking the button on Sirius’ jeans and taking the zipper down a few teeth at a time. Remus goes so far as to give footing Sirius’ trousers down a solid go, but they are the Good Jeans, after all; they’re not coming off that easily. Remus puffs out breathy little laughs against Sirius’ lips, letting his feet fall down on either side of Sirius’ thighs, effectively done trying to be of any help here, and Sirius gives him one more kiss before pushing up onto his knees and attempting to maneuver himself out of his jeans, but he’s going to have to get off the bed and stand to get this done properly. 

Remus smirks at Sirius tugging the jeans off of his legs, laying back easily with decidedly too many clothes on, and Sirius makes that observation known via a sharp once-over as he tosses the lube on the bed and his jeans aside. Remus concedes that maybe he well ought to join Sirius on his way to the land of the nude, starting with his corduroys first like the smart lad he is, for it’s inevitable that they’ll be the most difficult to slip off. 

Sirius rids himself of his briefs and tosses them semi-near his jeans, moving around to the end of the bed as Remus sends both his shirt and trousers soaring nearby Sirius’ own, shifting to meet Sirius closer to the middle of the bed before he gets rid of those pesky briefs blocking out the show. Sirius moves onto the bed via his knees, shifting forward on them as Remus pushes himself down toward him, crossing his legs underneath him before reaching up to tug Sirius down and presumably into his lap, and that’s where Sirius has to pump the breaks. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” he inquires. Remus pauses trying to tug Sirius down into his lap, leaving his head on a left-hanging angle with a pointed smile like it’s pretty well obvious what he’s doing, but Sirius leans in, pressing his palms over Remus’ knees and rubbing them back and forth over them. “Turn over.” 

Remus’ eyes shoot to dinner plate status before he’s scrambling to turn around on the bed, and Sirius could easily wait until he’s fully situated before starting in on him, he could, but he can both see and hear the way Remus reacted the last time Sirius got a bit too gung ho in that respect and wants that yet again, and honestly, he likes the way Remus’ looks knelt on the bed like that, en route to laying forward on it but not quite there yet. 

Sirius reaches up to hold Remus’ hips in place, shifts down onto his stomach, and goes for it, making Remus clutch the mattress hard in front of him before he curls his own arms around the front of Remus’ spread thighs, locking him in and going to fucking town. Remus breathing takes to a harsh cadence, his left arm outstretched in front of him for balance’s sake, his right hand prattling aimlessly over Sirius’ arm curled around his leg, before he rocks back on Sirius’ mouth, and Sirius is far too into it to let that stop any time soon. 

He starts with slowing down a little, seeing whether Remus’ll let him get away with that, and smirks against him as Remus writhes back for more, and there he slows it down even more so he’s giving him nothing but the slow drag of the tip of his tongue, willing to lay patient until Remus either tells him or shows him exactly what he wants, but Sirius only has to keep that up for upwards of ten seconds before Remus is reaching behind him and sinking his right hand into Sirius’ hair, holding Sirius’ face in place, and Sirius drowns his moan out against him before kicking it right back up again. 

He ruts hard against the bed as Remus keeps his head locked in behind him, rutting back on Sirius’ tongue at a metronome and putting out wanton noises ahead of him, and Sirius gives a hum in reply at each one, encouraging more of that, and because he gets more of it, Sirius is actively lost in devouring him, and because this may just be his favourite act on the fucking planet, in takes Sirius a long hazy minute or two to register Remus’ redistribution of his weight on his knees, balancing himself back on the haunches of his ankles and stroking himself with his free hand. 

Sirius uncurls his left arm from around Remus’ thigh and bats at Remus’ hand until Remus pulls it off of his cock, freeing it up for Sirius to take up the charge, and Remus whole body strickens up as he puts out a wanton noise thrusting up into the grip of Sirius’ hand and rocking back on his mouth, and that carries on until Remus starts tapping pleadingly on Sirius’ left arm, urging him to quit pumping him before it’s too late, and Sirius lets go of his cock with a quick snap, wholly agreed upon that sentiment, but he’s not about to quit eating him out until he’s got the bottle of lube flicked open and the fingers of his right hand coated. It’s likely more than necessary after all of this, but if he’s going to be fucking Remus into tomorrow shortly, and he will be; it’d be fair to be liberal about the amount used. 

Sirius lifts his mouth off of him and drags kisses over Remus’ cheeks, taking in the scenery as he goes, pulling harsh noises out of Remus as he works him up, watches Remus with his head hanging back on an angle, haloed by the glow of daylight pouring in via the window ahead of the bed and luminescent the whole way through. 

He lets Remus decide when he’s ready, which comes in the form of a series of harsh ruts down on Sirius’ fingers, and shoots up the bed the moment he hears his name called, kneeling half underneath Remus’ legs and guiding himself in before he snaps his hips, pushing a repeat of his name out of Remus’ mouth, this one filling up the cabin. 

Remus moves whip-fast, pulling Sirius’ arms in front of himself and putting them right back where they were, curled around his inner thighs, and uses Sirius’ forearms as a place hold for rocking back on on Sirius’ cock, but Sirius has a feeling he may also just want to hold his forearms, and fair game, Remus. 

Sirius dips his head forward, licks a line between Remus’ shoulder blades, and tastes sweat and Remus, huffing harshly against the back of Remus’ neck as he basks in all the sensations firing off at once; the tight rim around his cock, the precision they’re meeting each other with, the pitch of Remus’ voice each time Sirius strikes gold, the smell of him, the taste of him, the fact that he knows for a fact that this is already the best time Remus has ever had in this cabin already and they’re nowhere near done if Sirius can see to it. 

As if reading his thoughts, Remus hooks his right hand behind him and places it haltingly over Sirius’ navel before pushing his hips up and out, easing off of Sirius’ cock with a wanton breath that goes straight to Sirius’ own cock. He watches in delight as Remus shifts around on the bed to face him, feeling called to brace the bed behind him, and it’s a good thing he does it because Remus has Sirius’ legs pulled out from under him in seconds. 

Sirius’s breath hitches as Remus sets his legs down and crawls over them to straddle his hips, and Sirius takes in a deep breath, clutching the bed sheet in his hands as he readies himself for the storm that is Remus on top of him, and hangs his head back with a praised noise as Remus brings it in terms of speed, fucking down on Sirius with a blinding staccato that leaves him gasping. 

“Shit, Remus—” he gets out. 

Remus is hardly making any speech patterns above him, more stuttered breaths and bright moans and Sirius wouldn’t mind if that changed, but he’s got to pull on every bit of strength he’s got in him to focus while he’s got Remus riding him this hard if he wants Remus calling out for him the way Sirius wants him doing. He refocuses through the hazy stupor clouding over him, he sits up straight, scoots his knees up so they’re bent behind Remus, and sets his feet flat on the mattress, readying himself for a tricky maneuver. He waits for Remus’ next drawback on his cock before he grabs hold of Remus via his hips, breathes, and rolls them over, landing Remus in a sprawl beneath him. 

Remus’ whole chest lifts with the reactionary breath he takes in, looking up at Sirius with a gaze that’s a challenge, and Sirius shifts on his knees, lifting Remus’ hips clear off of the bed, and gives it to him like he’s packing a drill, pulling a grateful noise out of Remus’ throat as his face reads unbridled pleasure, and that’s nothing Sirius is going to scoff at, but that’s not his name either, is it. 

Sirius gives it to him like this a little longer, and he may even get a little lost in it himself for a bit there, but his goal remains a proverbial banner hung over his head as he indulges in each thrust. He watches Remus hang his head back on the bed after a particularly rattling nudge at his prostate, and takes his shot while Remus is distracted, pulling right out of him and skirting back between his legs before hooking them around his shoulders. Sirius smiles politely from up the bed and curls his left arm up under Remus’ hips, lifting them once more, and Remus arches his back straight off of the bed as Sirius sinks his mouth down on his cock, giving his complete lower half over to Sirius. He stutters out a series of words as Sirius swirls his tongue over the head and rocks his head left to right as Sirius adds two fingers into the mix, his hands pressing at the top of Sirius’ shoulders at different pressures, one pulling while the other pushes, and Sirius knows by that movement that Remus thinks he’s getting more than he can handle but wants it all despite it. 

Sirius takes to a steady bob up and down his cock, flicking his tongue over the head at each drawback to taste him, and times the crook of his fingers to match the swipes of his tongue, and watches Remus fall to pieces under him, because of him. Feeling exactly when Remus’ body begins to ratchet tighter and tighter, Sirius fancies himself rather ambitious, but he’s got to wait for the signs to come — heaving chest; check, slack jaw; check, twitching vein at midriff; check — and times it to the second. 

He pulls his hand out of Remus and mouth off of his cock at once, crawls up between Remus’ legs, and keeps them lifted as he slams back into him before he can miss his shot, and Remus lights right up, his whole body tensing up before he bares down hard on Sirius’ cock, and Sirius has to call on the willpower of the scribes to keep it together while he drives into him, watching Remus’ face break open as he comes hard, hands-free and with Sirius’ name on his lips. 

Sirius hits the breaks knowing he’ll come in seconds if he doesn’t, goes still with Remus’ hips still in the air, and gape/grins down at Remus, who stares up at him with plain incredulity but at least has it in him to huff a laugh at the face Sirius has on. 

Sirius sets Remus’ hips down onto the mattress, shifts to lay over him, and switches to slow thrusts, seemingly alerting Remus to the fact that he hasn’t finished yet for Remus lifts his legs so they’re pressed to Sirius’ sides, locks him in, and settles his palms over Sirius’ arse, driving Sirius deeper into him, and Sirius reaches up to grapple at the end of the bed, curling his right hand over the edge of it and dropping his left hand to grip at the back of Remus’ hip. 

He rolls his hips to match the pace so obligingly set for him and Remus puts out sharp, tight breaths as Sirius gains momentum again, half of his head is hanging off the edge of the bed but he doesn’t look to give a shit about it, just keeps his heavy gaze fixed on Sirius, and Sirius’ feels hot underneath that stare, feels his breath hitch as the coil in his stomach burn bright before drives both Remus against the bed and himself toward release, and Remus sneaks in before the finish, catching Sirius’ lips in a feverish kiss, and Sirius comes with bursts of white behind his eyelids. 

Sirius flattens out, head down, forehead pressed to Remus’ collar, at least he feels a wee tap on his back and lifts his head, only to find Remus laying comfy beneath him with his right hand splayed. He smirks brightly, meeting Remus’ high-five with gusto before he settles his head down on him again, working to catch his breath. 


	23. 23.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is part one of a two-part extravaganza (!!!) and i'm putting that out there ahead of time so we all can hopefully heed that and keep it in mind. :)

Sirius has about ten to fifteen seconds to simply exist in his spent stupor, head down, eyes shut breathing somewhat easier against Remus’ skin than he was, relishing in the weight of Remus’ left arm curled in at his left hip and anchoring him down, but Remus lifts his hips and budges up on Sirius sprawled in between them the second Sirius slips out of him. 

“Not the comforter,” he fusses, but Sirius does hear a laugh in there. 

Sirius smirks against Remus’ chest, calls on the strength to lift off of Remus, and leaves the bed, stepping most shakily over to his suitcase. “I’ve a towel in here, hold up,” he bids, rifling through it. 

He tugs it out from beneath a few rolled up shirts, unrolls it, and turns back to the bed with it outstretched, snorting when he finds that Remus has taken to holding his knees to his chest and his hips way up in the air. “I’ll just set it right over here, m'lady,” Sirius forwards loftily, flapping it out and draping it down at the middle of the bed. 

Remus lets go of his knees and scoots up the bed, planting his hips down on it before aiming a pair of grabby hands up at Sirius, who climbs back onto the bed and over him before he plants himself between Remus’ hips once again. Remus curls his left arm back around Sirius’ waist and tosses his legs limply over the back of Sirius’ calves, tangling the two of them up and allowing Sirius to feel warm and invited in all over again. 

Two movements come next, one in the form of a faint trace of fingertips in a vague circle at the small of Sirius’ back, adding an even more personable note to go along with the weight of Remus’ left arm curled around him and anchoring him down, and the other, a series of quiet, unhurried kisses pressed to the top of Sirius’ head forehead. 

There’s a part of Sirius that has to assume this is a good sign, and yet, he can’t help thinking they’ve been on the wrong page a time or two before. “Are we still on?” he asks, knowing he sounds woefully hopeful, and that’s fair, he really is that. “That felt rather like a consummation of sorts to me, but I’ve been wrong before.” 

Remus pushes a quick, amused breath through his nose. “I thought we’ve established you’re usually right on the money,” he puts up. 

“Cute, and I’ll remember you said that,” Sirius slips in, garnering a good natured nod out of Remus for it, “but you have to say the words.” 

Remus sets his head back down on the mattress and pushes a subdued breath through his nose. “We’re still on,” he says, clear as day. 

“Yeah?” Sirius checks. “I know it’s petrifying, thinking that the second you admit out loud that you’re the least bit happy then it’s all going to come crashing down on you, but—“

“It is, but I’d only be pushing you further away from me sooner by letting that paralysis get in the way of this,” Remus comes in, his eyebrows knitted together. “This was yours too, and you’ve been championing this and me since the moment it started rolling, and I shouldn’t have made that all about could happen to me if I said the words out loud; I should have talked to you, let you cheer this on like you always do, and I should have stopped to think about how much I’d hurt you by not saying it them.”

Sirius pushes back a rather pitiful noise in his throat, not needing that to interrupt just now, but fucking Remus hears it anyway, biting back a laugh from escaping his lips. “And you were right again,” he starts, his smile petering off as he shakes his head in the way he does when it’s directed at himself, “I didn’t have to look at him walking up as some sort of omen against me, it’s just as much a reiteration that I’ve already upgraded to first class with you and it should have sent me back here ready for it more than anything else.” 

Sirius pushes out a bright, affected noise before he lets his smile finally fly free. “I’m so glad you could join me up here," he says, laughing there. 

“There air is a lot cleaner,” Remus plays along, giving an observant glance around them. 

Sirius lets out a deep, winsome sigh, crossing his arms over Remus’ chest to give both his chin and smile a raised platform. "Do you still want to do it over dessert?" he asks. 

Remus nods for him. "Yeah," he says. "Let's keep with that."

Sirius right beams for him. “So, tell me,” he prompts, making a show of settling in more on Remus' chest, “did I fuck you back online, did I already have you hook, line, and sinker before that point, or was it a nice blend of both?” 

Remus takes in a reactionary breath, blinking through a set of dinner plates. “It was both,” he answers. “You had me back at ‘verklempt,’ but you really hammered some sense back into me from there.” 

Sirius puts out a bright hum of a laugh, absolutely fine with that order. “How are your legs faring after all that?” 

“What legs?” Remus offers. 

“Good answer,” Sirius sends back, a prize grin on. 

Remus smirks with a lopsided smile on, learning his head back enough to give a sweeping glance over the ceiling and a heavy sigh. “There wasn’t a single moment’s hitch in that one,” he raises. Sirius smirks, nodding emphatically, and Remus drops his gaze back to Sirius. “How did you time that ending so well?” 

Sirius gives a bright trill from behind his smile. “I read your warning signs and took my shot,” he offers. “And listen, I didn’t know if I was actually going to be able to make that happen for you, but—” 

Remus gives a sharp laugh there. “I know you didn’t; you looked almost as surprised as I was,” he insists, doing his own version of Sirius’ gape/grin for an added visual, but that peters off as a pondering expression takes him over. “Wait, what are my signs?” 

“Well, you’ve three big boys I’ve come to know,” Sirius instills, speaking wryly. “Your breathing goes haywire and so your chest heaves, and I know you’re coming up on the finish when it starts heaving like mad, and then your jaw goes slack the closer you get, like this—” he pauses to do do a kindhearted imitation of it before leaning his hips back to squeeze his right hand between their sandwiched-together midriffs to tap up on Remus’ navel, “—and then the vein under here pops out and goes all twitchy and that’s when I know you’re seconds away, so I saw all three and got a little ambitious perhaps, but I’d hoped that if I had you already at the edge and was quick about getting back in there, I’d have a decent shot.” 

Sirius stops once he’s finished speaking, simply watching Remus’ glossy, out of focus gaze go left to right for upwards of ten seconds. “I’m inspired to try that on you, but your signs are more varied,” he determines, staring into the middle distance as he taps his forefinger between his lower lip and chin absently as he speaks, and oh, look at that; Sirius is peering through a pair of dinner plates of his own suddenly, “particularly your vocalizations are all over the place; I’m not going to be able to count on any of them as a tried and true sign.” 

“I—” Sirius starts, huffing a breathy laugh there. “I love it when you think out loud.” 

Remus blinks his head clear, pushes a powerful smirk through his nose, and his smile splits into a grin. “It’s true,” he insists. “It’s never all at once, first off, and I can never tell which one you’re going to lean on: I can’t rely on the French because that shows up sporadically at best and typically it comes actual seconds before you’re done for, and other times you give me gibberish or you’re big on my name on repeat but then that’s almost too much time for the moment to peter off, and then sometimes, like just before, you’re silent on the onset and do a whimper as you get there, so forget those: I’ll have to focus on your body first, and _then_ cross-examine that with the first vocalization I hear, and I may have a shot.” 

Sirius sends a prolonged _pfft_ up to him at the last bit. “May have,” he returns. “There’ve been plenty of times by now where what I just did to you could have been achieved for me, so I’ve no doubt you can make that happen.”

Remus’ expression goes from intrigued onto astounded and right on into outraged in the span of a beat or two. “What?” he sends back plainly. “When?”

“Uhh,” Sirius puts up through a throaty laugh, “pick a time you’ve been inside me?”

“That’s too many,” Remus returns, and his disarrayed expression sends Sirius right on into a round of stitches. 

“All I’m saying is the potential is probably always there,” Sirius insists, his chest shaking through a stifled laugh.

“No, but — _when?_” Remus demands. “I need more information.”

“OK, um,” Sirius hums thoughtfully, going with the time frame of the past month when any further back and it’ll all get muddled, and ends up tapping Remus once with his downward facing palms when he finds the perfect contender. “Pride; I’m not saying I’d change a single part of the way that tryst was above and beyond already, _but_ I’ve a strong feeling that had you taken your hand off me right when I was at the cusp and kept going otherwise, I’d have blasted right off; that’s my point, you could do what I did easily.”

Remus breathes in audibly through his nose, giving Sirius a strong look, a lopsided smile on his lips. “Alright,” he asserts, lifting his right hand to point up at Sirius starkly, “I’m going to make that happen for you; I’m manifesting it.” 

“When?” Sirius pushes out tightly, pumped beyond belief even just to test his theory, who cares if it doesn't work; trying would be fantastic. "Why so vague?" 

“Well, not tonight; I think we have to be realistic about my fortitude here,” Remus engages him, smiling pointedly. “I’ve blasted off three times already today, so I don’t know that I’ll be at my best.” 

Sirius nods, seeing his point rather clearly. “Right, you need time to recharge,” he raises, lips quirking there. “Like Goku to the spirit bomb.” 

Remus' snort seems to surprise him by velocity alone. “Or not like that,” he offers. 

Sirius shakes his head once and moves his right arm out from underneath his chin, pretending he’s pushing an earpiece into his right ear to hear it better. “Breaking,” he announces, his newscaster voice on full display, “our sources are telling us that Sirius Black will not come untouched unless boyfriend spirit bombs him; more on that as the story develops.”

Remus succumbs into a muted, breathy fit, lifting his left hand to rub his palm over his face. “Well, then I really am going to need a full twenty-four hours to recharge,” he returns, dropping his hand again.

“I’ll allow it,” Sirius forwards.

Remus breathes in, puts it out in a circumstantial sigh, and blinks twice, adopting a halfway dumbfounded look “Maybe I’ve just been woefully inexperienced in this particular area,” he prefaces, tiling his head evenly, “but I always thought the whole untouched thing was over-sensationalized at best and terribly difficult to attain at worst.”

“Depends which version of hands-free you’re talking about, I suppose,” Sirius offers. “Technically speaking _you_ came untouched, whereas _I_ blew you right up to the finish line, so that would disqualify me from getting the crown in some circles.”

“Not in mine,” Remus returns plainly. “I thought my back was about to break.” 

Sirius beams for that one. “That’s really all I care about, to be fair,” he passes along. “And you were onto something there; it’s not an easy maneuver if you’re committed to zero helping hands along the way — hell, I’ve only been with one bloke in all my days that could literally get off from poundage alone, and listen, I would love nothing more to be able to get that done for you too, but that’s more in the realm of ‘baby steps,’ I feel.”

Remus smirks, nodding there. “Maybe a one year anniversary special sort of thing,” he puts up. 

Sirius pushes an enthused breath through his nose, elated to even be discussing something like anniversaries with someone so tormented by the idea of speaking too soon and too uproariously of anything to do with that pesky love thing. “I’m willing to give it one hell of a go if you are,” he returns. “It’d be a Happy Christmas all around.”

Remus nods emphatically, smiling for him. “Even if it didn’t work straight away, I couldn’t find someone more fun to give it a whirl with,” he maintains, making Sirius warm all over. “Did we ever decide which day we’re officially going with?”

Sirius pushes out a thoughtful puff of breath despite knowing the answer to that. “I don’t think we did,” he offers pragmatically, leaving the door open just to see what comes of it. 

“I want to say Christmas eve just to give that kiss the respect it deserves,” Remus mentions, a coy smile on his lips, “but then I don’t know if that’s necessarily a qualifier in that we didn’t really speak on it.”

“Our mouths were busy,” Sirius excuses, pulling a bright trill out of Remus’ throat. “And listen, that kiss took me to a higher plane so I get the urge to give it its dues, but we got to business after midnight and officially spoke the defining words before midnight the following night, so I think by those factors Christmas day from start to finish is ours for the taking.” 

Remus breathes an affected sigh through his nose. “I’m trying really hard to feel excited about the fact that Christmas would be a double event for us and _not_ think about how badly it could be tainted for years to come if anything did go wrong,” he shares. “So you know. I’m fighting off the doom feeling this very second.”

Sirius nods there, feeling locked tight between feeling uproarious and like a tire tread for his behaviour back in the kitchen. “You want to know what I think?” he raises. 

Remus’ expression drops along with the curve of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he answers. 

“I think I’ve been taking it extremely personally when you won’t let yourself fully lean into this and me, but I’ve been awfully ambitious about that, and to a fault,” Sirius puts down. “We’re seven months in and I’m only just now beginning to see a clearer picture of why you’ve such a visceral need to not only be independent but also feel like you are by your own standards, and that started long before I ever came on the scene, and it’s not just me; your knee jerk reaction when you’re really down in it is pull back, don’t bother them, let them be, and I’m talking Hope and Lyall, I’m talking James, I’m talking Pete, and little ol’ me gets a share of that too.” 

Remus pushes a subdued, but imploring breath through his nose, but he doesn’t seem to want to interject which is rather convenient since Sirius isn’t nearly done yet. “It was unrealistic of me to think I could stroll in and fix all that for you, but I didn’t know the extent of it and I didn’t know quite how deep that runs for you,” he keeps on. “I didn’t know that you stopped bringing them anything you felt was trouble by the time you hit secondary, I didn’t stop to think that you handled things as best you could without leaning on them, and I really didn’t fully understand how much you shouldered over the years to help ease some weight off of their shoulders when it was getting to be too much, so where the fuck do actually get off negging you about it? It’s so much bigger than me.” 

“Well, you’re human and all,” Remus puts up, “and I know I can be a nightmare with that sometimes.” 

“But you’re not, though,” Sirius returns. “Here’s what I keep doing: it’s like you and I are a large expanse of green grass with a few dandelion patches here and there, and when I’m in a bad spot and you dig your heels in, all I see are the weeds rather than all that green, and that isn’t fair of me to bat away all of the times that you have shown me how much I mean to you just because you won’t show me it right the very second I need the validation.”

“Sirius” Remus chides, but Sirius shakes his head once, refusing to walk that back. 

“You’re going to have moments where you resist me, just like you do the others, so while I know this isn’t going away for you by tomorrow, I also know that it’s going to get better for you in that regard because you’re already learning the let all of us in more, in different ways," he puts down. "If I can just speak for me right now, you’ve let me in countless times and I’ve absolutely shone over them, they don’t go unnoticed, they go forgotten when I’m not at my best, but you, _monsieur_, just proposed a plan for an occasion of ours that’s six months down the line from now, so even though that doom feeling came ‘round again, that doesn’t mean you didn’t let yourself project us that far out, and I’m not fucking letting that go without a cheer, who do you think I am?”

Remus gives a faint noise from behind his imploring frown, reaching up to curl his right hand around Sirius’ left wrist, holding him there. “Sirius,” he puts out weakly. 

Sirius smiles. “That’s exactly it,” he allows. “You want this to go on as long as you can have it for; you just told me that out there, but here you are showing me that, too, and even that doesn’t mean you won’t feel undeserving of it next time you let yourself do that again, from your standpoint, happiness doesn’t come with a boot kick soon after, and getting too ahead of yourself makes you panic, makes you feel like you just jinxed yourself and if you could have just shut your trap about it sooner you could’ve kept it longer, and it makes you ask me things like, could I just let you know ahead of time if I’m thinking about wandering while we’re having an otherwise lovely perch chat, and I go ahead and read those moments as superbly callous when they’re really not.” 

Remus makes to cut in there, but Sirius can’t. “Just let me finish because I think you’ll be happy I did,” he bids, and Remus takes his lower lip into his mouth, but nods for him to continue. “It hurts in the moment when that happens, it does; it can feel like I’m not getting through to you and that I’m not up to snuff, even though I fucking know how much love is constantly transferring between us at any given moment, and that’s what ought to be the focus, not my pride. There’s no magical phrase I can say that’s going to convince you that I don’t want to wander anywhere else, I still know myself pretty well, Remus, and I know what having you as my other half has been like this year compared to the twenty-two years I went without and I’m not going back to that, and I know in my bones that I’m going to want to end every year with you from here on out, but until that can fully sink in for you, I think I’ve a pretty good idea of where we can go from here that’ll be fair to the both of us, do you want to hear it?”

Remus nods emphatically there, swallowing around a lump in his throat no doubt, and Sirius snuggles in some more, happy to be the blanket this time around. “We both know how much shit I’m carrying around over intimacy issues and what I tend to perceive as acts of rejection,” he puts up, copping right to it. “That’s a lot to put on you at full blast and it doesn’t make it any easier on you when you’re having a weak moment, so I’m proposing that we both try to chip away at our own automatics in order to be better for each other; if I make it a goal of mine from here on out to remember that this is an automatic for you and not something I need to be taking it like the end of the entire world and wind up making the situation so much worse, then I’d like you to do what you just did a little more often and try not to mentally slap yourself for dawning to picture us further along.”

Remus tugs Sirius’ left arm out from under Sirius’ chin and brings his hand toward him, pressing his lips to the inside of his wrist and blatantly reminding Sirius that this is the same absolute softie as he started with. “I don’t want to keep doing it,” he says, his lips moving against Sirius’ skin with it. "It's a miserable habit." 

Sirius splays his fingers out so they trace over Remus’ left cheek, breathing in softly. “Remember Hubie and his fella?” he raises.

Remus smirks there. “I sure do,” he assures, smiling up at him. 

“You had just as much of a starry-eyed gaze as I’m sure I was putting out, so don’t take that away from yourself,” Sirius maintains. “You’ve already pictured us as a pair of wise, old gays strolling a village square, so all I’m asking is you try to do that sort of thing a little more often and fight that doom because you deserve to look forward without hating yourself for it and I could do well to remember to go a lot easier on you when you do have hard moments with it because I don’t give you enough credit either.” 

Remus pushes out a heavy breath, curling up for a smooch on Sirius’ lips that rather feels like a seal on that agreement. Sirius exhales against it, parts his lips, and lets Remus in like he’d done on Christmas, and it’s still one of the best decisions he ever made for himself, but perhaps even more so now. Remus leaves a final peck on his lips that Sirius wants to chase after, but he gives a glance over his shoulder to check the time and breathes in fast. 

“It’s half four,” he puts out, turning back to Remus with a grimace. 

Remus hums a knowing note for it. “Yeah, it was going on four during the towel run,” he forwards. 

Sirius lifts his hands at once, flying them toward Remus in gesture. “How are you so calm about this?” 

“I wonder what could’ve done it?” Remus puts up thoughtfully, the absolute shitter. 

“I was trying to keep to the schedule _you_ made,” Sirius returns haughtily. 

Remus gives a flat laugh at the back of his throat. “Once we really started, I rather gave up on the idea of starting by four,” he shares. 

“You could have said as much,” Sirius returns. 

“Said the guy who made sure the foreplay lasted a good half hour alone,” Remus returns, his chest shaking beneath Sirius’ own. 

Sirius shuts his mouth there, opens it again, shuts it, and straightens his neck out with a strong note of pride. “I lose all sense of time and space,” he excuses. 

Remus snorts. “I’ve noticed,” he accepts, sweeping his hands up in a gesture for Sirius to get moving, in general and off of him so Remus can also get going. “Take it as a compliment, would you? I’m not complaining about it and we did really need to get back on the same page, so we needed that time.” 

Sirius dips down to kiss him full, thinking it fair Remus get a little something for daring to be flexible. “You’re the coolest,” he extends, fluffing up Remus’ hair before clambering out of the bed.

He goes for his suitcase again, stooping to scavenge for the tote he stuffed a load of toiletries in and holding it up after he locates it. “I wouldn’t mind living with the image of you darting across the yard like that just to get your essentials, but I do have everything necessary in here,” he raises. 

“It’s sweet of you to crush that impulse right down,” Remus returns brightly, leaving the bed himself and swiping a hand over Sirius’ back as he passes him. Sirius looks round as Remus heads for the closet in the hall and opens it for a gander inside, giving out a bright noise. “D’aw, she set you right up.” 

Sirius pads over on Remus’ right to have a look, finding a load of shelves tucked inside the closet with linens of all sizes sitting folded on them, but Remus lifts a strikingly yellow bar of hand soap up to him and suddenly Sirius knows exactly what Remus really meant there. 

He leans in to have a whiff and trills as lemony goodness fills his nostrils. “Nine out of ten, easy,” he deduces. 

“I’ll let her know she’s done it again,” Remus assures, grabbing two towels out of the closet before nodding for Sirius to go on ahead of him. 

Sirius moves for the bathroom, getting a look at his astounding sex-hair in the mirror and spinning to smile wryly at Remus who’s just making it to the room. “Should I wear it like this to dinner?” he inquires. 

“You’d better not,” Remus warns, passing Sirius to get to the tub with a pointed smile on. 

Sirius dips his head down, gathers it all up again, and leaves it hanging in a low bun, not interested in thorough hair care for a rinse that’s going to need to be brisk. He heads for the side of the tub that Remus is currently leaning over to test the water light stream out of the tap and drums an easy beat against Remus’ arse with his palms since it’s there. 

“We might have to give this a moment or two to start up,” Remus says, reaching for the shower knob. “It can take time for the water to travel from the—” 

The showerhead bursts to major and sudden life, cutting Remus right off and sending Remus a good three inches off of the floor out of fright, a startled noise coming out of his throat and echoing in the small bathroom. Remus dips forward and beats his right hand against the side of the tub through his mirth, and Sirius falls right into it with him once he’s officially over his alarm, and very soon he’s leaning into Remus as he steps into the tub to keep himself upright. 

A solid plan in any other case, but it’s rather apparent that Remus had a similar idea to Sirius in that he’s leaning most of his weight onto him, leading to the two of them having to lean on each other plus the shower wall for support. Sirius settles down right around the time Remus steals a kiss off of him and yoinks Sirius’ tote out of his clutches, turning toward the stream as he tugs out the loofah Sirius stuffed in there earlier on in the week.

Remus appears to be on the same page as Sirius is about bothering with hair care for the moment, and it’s a good thing that Remus’ head sits just above the height of the showerhead, for it rather gives him an easy ability to avoid getting it wet, whereas Sirius is going to need to be a little more careful when it’s his turn at the front of the shower.

In the meantime, Sirius moves in and presses up against Remus’ back, hanging out with his chin hooked over Remus’ left shoulder and half-hiding behind Remus’ frame to avoid the steam himself as Remus gets the loofah all soaped up under the stream. Sirius turns his head to the right, pressing a kiss underneath Remus’ ear and feeling like this in itself is what he and Remus at their best look like, but one thing does loom over their safe haven otherwise known as just about any shower setup, and Sirius’ throat goes a bit dry. 

He waits until Remus has rinsed off his front before tapping Remus’ waist and reaching up for the loofah, offering to get his back when he’s already well positioned to, and Remus hands it over with a budding smile on, and from there Sirius waits until he’s soaped up Remus’ back because he figures getting Remus to a soothed, pliable place beforehand would be rather on for the topic looming overhead. 

“So, in your opinion,” Sirius starts, garnering a pleasant hum out of Remus for it, “would you say Tom is in fact a typical rule follower, or does he have trouble with following directions?” 

“Uhm,” Remus puts up, “it would really depend.” 

“OK,” Sirius nods, dragging the loofah below Remus’ midriff, “so say I was to seek him out in the grocery and catch him in aisle five while on my way to fetch your tea and whatnot, and say I took the opportunity to warn him against using that number he so courageously got off of you, what would you say are the odds he’ll listen to lil’ old me?”

Remus breathes in once, swivels to the side so his left profile is visible to Sirius. “How bad?” he checks. 

“Not bad,” Sirius offers, starting to rinse off Remus’ back while he’s turned sideways. “If anything, you might want to be a bit proud of me because I managed to keep calm and collected, didn’t use force — well, I did slap up one of his hands a bit, but he was giving me a dismissive little wave while getting his hand a little too close to my face for my liking—” 

“Well, then, the slap-up was called for as far as I’m concerned,” Remus sticks in. 

Sirius pauses short, running his top teeth over his lower lip, not even knowing what to do with someone this patient with him. “You’re not upset with me?” he raises. 

“Well, it’d be a bit rich for me to be, no?” Remus offers in exchange.

“Well,” Sirius trills, tilting his head back and forth, “yes, in a way, but me going after your ex is a bit different from you going after the near-stranger I projected all of my brotherly angst onto.”

Remus breathes in with that, stands with it for a moment or two, and turns his head more to leave a peck on Sirius’ right cheek. “I’m not upset,” he doubles down. “And i don’t think you’ve anything to worry about there.” 

Sirius hums there. “Well, he argued with me at first, which only had me reiterating my point even harder, so in a abstract sense, I’d think he wouldn’t test out what would happen if I were to take a quick trip up to Cambridge in the event that he did choose to ignore my advice and bothered you anyway, which I very warned him against, and you know him better than I do, so do you think he’ll listen or are you going to have him blowing up your phone a day or two?”

“Well, he already wasn’t going to use it,” Remus puts in, “so you finding him and letting him know all that would rather seal it.”

Sirius hums a little more pointedly there. “Are you saying that because you’re so set in your belief that he wasn’t coming onto you in any shape or form?” he raises wryly. 

“Well, he wasn’t,” Remus interjects. “If we were talking about the version of him that I knew in the first couple years, I might think otherwise because back then, he was really very receptive to me and it was much more of a two-way street, but we’re not working with that one, we’re working with the Tom that visibly hated himself more and more every time we fell back in together, so I just can’t see it as having been a proposition, and it’s not that I’m being willfully blind to it; it’s what I have left to go on.”

“OK,” Sirius nods, wanting Remus to continue if it keeps him actively talking about it. 

“He could have asked for my number off of my mum or dad at any point since I’ve been gone and they’d have handed it right over without a thought, but he didn’t,” Remus puts down. “He asked for it after finally seeing me again, and maybe there’s a part of him that misses what I used to give him in terms of support and being in front of me again had him putting himself out there in hopes to rekindle that part of what we had.” 

Sirius breathes in long, a part of himself still very much in the camp of it having to do with a little more than just Tom missing his mate, but then, a specific retort of his sprouts up in his mind, one ‘I can talk to anyone I choose to,’ and that was, in itself, an interesting belief to cling to for someone simply looking to rekindle a past flame. “I still think it could have been just a little more nefarious than just that, but I’m rather biased toward you,” he raises, pausing there to get any sort of response.

Remus pushes an amused breath through his nose. “Just a touch,” he allows. 

“Exactly, so if I ignore my bias for a second, you might be onto something there,” Sirius tacks on. “I mean, I’ve been lucky enough to experience the way you come through for the people you care about, and I could see why he’d want that back in any form he could get it in.” 

Remus nods there, though it’d be better described as a circumstantial move of his head. “It’s a lost cause,” he says of it. “I just can’t be the one who props him up anymore, and I’m honestly glad you did seek him out and tell him what’s what because I’m sure it did crush any momentary nostalgia he may have felt for me in the moment, and now we really can just smooth this pothole over.”

Sirius exhales through his nose, nodding once. “Is he going to listen to me, though?” he reiterates. “He may very well realize on Sunday night that he’s got hours before the two of you won’t be in the same orbit, and my warning might not even count to him then.” 

Remus breathes in long this time, hanging his head to the left and giving Sirius a strikingly plain gaze. “How snappy did you get with him?” he inquires. 

“Oh, like a pair of castanets,” Sirius forwards, his lips quirking as he does a little snip-snap with his hands. “I went in, Remus.” 

“Then I really feel he won’t think it worth the risk,” Remus finishes, facing him fully and taking Sirius' face between his hands, a pointed smile on. “We’re OK.”

Sirius nods best he can, leaning in to seal it with a kiss. “We're ride or die, too, hm.” 

“Mmhm,” Remus returns, a laugh escaping midway through it. “Now, it’s not that I don’t love this, but we’re really running late.” 

Sirius sniffs, perks up, and points starkly beyond the shower curtain. “You’re done here, so you get the fuck into that kitchen and get a head start, and I’ll be right there,” he instills. 

Remus puts his fists up in a braced pose. “Deal,” he returns forcefully, and the two of them switch places so Sirius can get at the stream. 

Sirius smirks there, leaning his head back and away from the splash to keep his hair dry, but the new image conjured in his head after the little switcheroo. “Imagine we had a ridiculously complicated handshake for deals like these?” he raises. 

“Like in _the Parent Trap_?” Remus returns lively, reaching to pull one of the towels closer to him. 

“Literally that’s what I was picturing, yes,” Sirius affirms. 

Remus snorts as he steps out onto the mat, succumbing there to a breathy fit. “The thing is,” he puts up, turning back toward Sirius as he towels off his body, “no one who knows us would even question it if we did have one,” 

Sirius shoots out a bright hum of a laugh, nodding profusely as he starts his own rinse, and pauses with the loofah braced to his chest to accept a kiss in parting from Remus. “I’m going to knick an outfit from your supply and you can go ahead and knick one of mine down the line should you choose to even this out, deal?” 

“Have at ‘er,” Sirius returns, waving his free hand in allowance. “I have your jumper and all, so we’re by all accounts even already, I feel, but I can’t say I won’t take you up on that offer in the days to come.” 

Remus gives him a quick beam, tying his towel around his waist. “See you in there,” he bids, sliding the shower curtain closed again, and Sirius takes exactly twenty seconds to bask before it’s motherfucking showtime up in this shower. 

When he’s out and dried off, he wrangles his toothbrush and paste out of his tote, leaving the bag in the shower and freshening up at the sink. He rinses his toothbrush off, taps it on the sink’s edge, and studies the edges of the mirror, tugging on the left side to no avail before the right side brings results, opening up to show a wee medicine cabinet tucked in behind it. He leaves his toothbrush in there along with his tube of paste, closes the mirror, and takes care not to catch the eye of his own reflection as he gives one more glance over the state of his hair, but ultimately he rather likes the volume it’s got going even while wrapped up in its low bun. 

Sirius breathes in long, smelling that lemony goodness once more, and unravels his towel from around his waist before lassoing it up to hang on the curtain rod to dry. He strolls out into the main room and goes ahead and puts his prior outfit back on, thinking the Henley paired with the Good Jeans haven’t done him wrong yet. He piques with a new idea, glances at the the bed as he’s fastening his jeans, but Remus appears to have already disposed of Sirius’ towel; it’s a bit unfortunate when he would have rather enjoyed the chance to toss it down the laundry chute just to be able to say he’s officially tossed something down a laundry chute, but alas, there will be other chances to shout ‘_geronimo_’ and torpedo something else down it before long, he imagines. 

He books it out of the a-frame from there, shutting the door behind him and padding across the lawn toward the garden. He smirks hard as he heads back up the windy path, able to fully appreciate the image of he and Remus of them bickering back and forth over it from a bird’s eye view now that he hasn’t got the immense fear bumping through his veins as it was happening, and the image is one for the books. 

He zooms up the porch steps, noting Marshall Crenshaw’s _Someday, Someway_ floating out from the open window in the den, and bobs along as he takes the bend in the porch at a quick clip, and heading in through the back door. He gives a glance toward the couch, finding Remus has reallocated the bags of their antique mall finds to the middle cushion and remembering that they did, in fact, leave everything in a heap on the kitchen table that they’d likely need to use for other, more pie related things. 

He heads for the kitchen as the tune playing fades out and _Help!_ takes right over the airwaves, bringing an enthused hum from Sirius’ throat. “It’s like they know you’re here,” he puts up, moving through the open archway and finding Remus rustling through a cupboard below the meeting point between the L-shaped counter. 

“I was just thinking,” he offers, a smile audible on his lips as he rises to his feet with a large rolling pin in hand, but Sirius is a bit frozen over seeing that Remus has donned his newly acquired cardigan over one of Sirius’ tees, and not only that, the jeans he knicked from Sirius’ supply are the light washed blue pair that are a little high on Sirius’ own ankles even, meaning Remus clearly had to cuff them up under his calves to give the illusion that his gargantuan legs totally do fit into them, but shit are they doing wonders for the entirety of his legs as is. 

Sirius moves across the room for him, circling his right hand to gesture at Remus’ entire look. “All of this; yes,” he instills, leaning in to leave a ‘hello again’ kiss on Remus’ already quirking lips. 

Remus ducks his head through a laugh, pointing down and in between the cuffs with the other end of the rolling pin. “I was a bit hasty with my picking,” he says, lifting his left hand to showcase quite a chunk of space between his forefinger and thumb. “There was this much ankle showing after I put them on, but it’s not as if I had time to try them all.” 

“No no, you picked well,” Sirius insists, giving Remus’ tightly-hugged hips a once-over before focusing on the cardigan and all its glory. “Do you like it?” 

“Like it?” Remus returns, lifting his left hand to rub the inner sleeve of the cardigan over Sirius’ right cheek. “It’s so soft.” 

Sirius bites down on the smile on his lips, reaching up to clasp his right hand around Remus’ raised wrist, and taking in the image of Remus radiating something that really can only be attributed to pure bliss, and it’s exactly the sort of energy Sirius knew was missing the last time they were in here. “You look amazing,” he says. “And not just ‘cause you’re looking fit as shit, but all around; you really look so much better.” 

“So do you,” Remus offers candidly, leaning in to brush the tips of their noses together, the schmooze, and Sirius eats it right up when he himself may well be the biggest schmooze he knows. “So, I’ve made a station for the dough and another for the veggies, would you like to pound or chop?” 

Remus lifts his hands to display his left by the counter just by him that’s very evidently the dough station what with the collection of measuring spoons, cups, the flour, the butter, a rotund mixing bowl, and a fair amount of free counter space to roll and pound, while his other hand’s gesturing beyond Sirius’ left shoulder toward the table where a cutting board and chopping knife have been laid out along with the bags of veggies. 

Sirius weighs his options, but in truth, he’s a little too beat after their rigorous workout to start beating in some dough, and plus, he’s a chopping wizard. “Chop,” he picks, moving to rinse off his hands in the sink. He dries it off on the yellow hand towel hanging nearby, turns from the sink to take up the chair on the left-hand end of the table when it’s the closest one to Remus’ counter setup, only he realizes once he’s sat down that the chair is to the right of the oven door. “Is this spot going to be OK?” 

Remus looks over his right shoulder from the dough station and waves him off right quick. “The door won’t even come close, you’re good,” he assures, moving for the counter. 

With that, Sirius pulls the cutting board over in front of him, grabs the knife, and starts with the celery, removing the three stalks from inside the plastic bag and sticking two of them in the left corner of the board in the meantime. He slices up the middle of the first stalk before zipping up it with the knife, cutting the two halves into wee pieces. 

“I wish I wasn’t doing this so I could just watch you do that,” Remus raises conversationally, “but then we wouldn’t have pie, so.” 

“I’m sure you’ll sneak a peek over this way now and again,” Sirius offers, pushing the cutlets of celery aside and brandishing a new stalk to cut. 

“Oh, I will,” Remus assures. 

Sirius smiles sidelong at him as he places the new stalk on the cutting board. “So, what’s the plan overall, aside from these two stations,” he raises, slicing the stalk in half and starts chopping those two into pieces. 

“Well, the pot pie will take longer overall, but the blueberry one doesn’t call for a top layer, so I’ll stick the crust in the oven in a little bit so it’ll heat while we’re working on the fixings for the first pie, and we’ll handle the cream cheese filling when we have some downtime in between; I’ve a vision set for this.” 

“And I trust it,” Sirius tacks on. He looks round long enough to catch Remus transporting cups of flour from the package to the mixing bowl with a plastic measuring cup (from a set of white ones of course), and pushes out a bright trill as he puts his gaze back on the board. “You’re going a lot faster without those shrooms in you; weird.”

Remus nearly drops the measuring cup before turning from the counter in one swivel. “Shit,” he says, the measuring cup held upright in his hand. 

“I brought them, we’re good,” Sirius waves him off, eyeing the measuring cup with a breathy laugh through his nose. 

“No, we didn’t come up with a plan,” Remus reiterates. “Where am I going to go for it, the woods?” 

“No,” Sirius elongates, a waver of a laugh cutting in by the end of it. “No, it’s still early days, sonnyboy; baby steps.”

“Well, I can’t dose up right in the den, can I?” Remus raises, a reluctant smile on his face now, and that’s what they’ll need to keep going here. 

“If only,” Sirius has to put in, snorting for the image. 

“Why are you enjoying this so much?” Remus raises, a full grin on now so it can’t just be Sirius who’s enjoying this; funny how that is. 

“Well, where’d you go when you lived here and felt a hankering for a little R&R?” Sirius raises. 

“We’d pick a spot, any spot outside if they weren’t home,” Remus relays, “pick a further spot in the field and as upwind as possible if they were, but it’s a Sunday; they’ll be here, and we’re supposed to be actively around, not dodging them left and right because I’m on the moon.” 

“OK, here’s what we do,” Sirius prefaces, putting the knife down because Remus doesn’t love it when he chops while he isn’t looking. “We push it up a few hours, but after they turn in; dose up around ten, eleven, that way it’ll still technically be Sunday once it really hits. We’ll be out in the a-frame should you start laughing maniacally, which I doubt you’ll do though I can still dream, and then if you do need some air since you rather like your perch sits when you’re on them, we can take a blanket way out into the field and look for shooting stars, and then we’ll be ace for Sunday Funday: how about that, hm?” 

Remus breathes in long, the line of his shoulders eases as he exhales it, and a sheepish smile settles on his lips. “That’s a good one,” he allows. 

“Right?” Sirius raises. “Not too shabby of me.” 

Remus moves out from the corner of the counter and in toward Sirius, leaning down to leave a warm, open mouthed kiss on his lips before pressing a closed-mouthed one to Sirius’ forehead. “It’s like you get me,” he quotes. 

Sirius has enough time to lean up and sneak a kiss of his own on Remus’ lips before the sound of the front door opening has the both of them straightening up to attention like a couple of gay soldiers. Remus breathes in fast, pressing the heel of his right palm to his lips with a smile hidden behind it, but Sirius can tell it’s there anyway. 

The two of them move at the same instant, Remus scooting in between the oven and the back of Sirius’ chair while Sirius ables sideways out of it and catches up to him rather quick and prodding the small of his back enticingly with his forefingers as they head into the dining room. Remus reaches behind his back and bats at Sirius’ hands, but he grips Sirius’ right hand tight for a true beat before letting it go, and that bit of consideration is just lovely in itself. 

They get past the dining room table and out into the front hall where Hope is plainly visible from the entryway, and Sirius beams bright as he takes in her work-day attire; a black skirt suit with a white blouse under the jacket and a fun, free, chic look in itself certainly, but then Hope looks up from sticking her shoes aside and brightens like the sun itself with Remus in her sights before thundering down the hall, and the juxtaposition of how fast she’s moving in semi-formal attire is just fantastic.

“Look at you,” she puts out, arms outstretched as she heads right for him. 

“You’ve seen me rather recently,” Remus puts up, his arms going up to make way for the mum on the run. 

“Not in person,” she emphasizes, slowing down as she gets to him. “It’s not the same seeing you through a shoddy camera.” 

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” Remus allows, stooping a bit to match her height and engulfing her up; he props his chin comfortably over the top of her head, the sweet, watery smile on his face a little too much to handle, but Sirius doesn’t think he’d trade seeing it for anything; that’s love right there. 

Hope pulls out of their hug with a bright, colourful glance over Remus’ visage. “You got sun,” she beholds, appearing equally bamboozled and chuffed about it. 

Remus smirks through his nose, glancing sidelong at Sirius with a sheepish smile on. “The first thing she’ll ever note is whether I look like a ghost or not,” he passes along. “She did it at Christmas, too.” 

Sirius beams bright, loving that detail, though Hope huffs so similarly to Remus that is a little like a slap to the face, but less so than the first time Sirius heard her do it, so he’s making progress there. “Well, hon, you looked a little too peaky for my liking,” she returns, straightening out the hem of her suit jacket. 

“I was a tad spooked at the sight of you, if you recall,” Remus puts in. 

Hope looks to Sirius as she hums in affirmation, and it’s so similar to the smile she trained on him arriving at the flat where they finally got to meet who they’d only spoken to a number of times over the phone, and Sirius sways a little on the spot just being on the receiving end of that warmth. 

He doesn’t expect Hope to move in for a hug, and it’s an appropriate squeeze in that it’s warm, welcoming, and has a little extra oomph to it that may very well be owing to the fact that he’s the mate of Remus’ that just last year put her and her husband up in town for an impromptu family reunion, and all that’s well and good, it is, but Sirius cannot wait for the day she nearly breaks his back the way she squeezed Remus upon hello; it’s got to come along sometime. 

Hope pulls back from the hug with a contented sigh and a sweeping glance over him. “You got a load of sun; good grief,” she raises. 

“Every summer,” Sirius puts up. 

“It’s impossible to keep up with,” Remus tacks on. 

Hope hums a laugh for that, shaking her head plainly as she reaches up high to give Remus’ hair a good ruffle. “That’s my fault, isn’t it,” she extends. 

“Dad’s half the culprit,” Remus lets her have, his gaze moving to the left as Hope inspects the divot cutting between his left eyebrow, and wow, she is quick, Sirius will give it that, but the scar is sticking out more with the sun that Remus got over the course of the day. 

“What happened?” she asks, her gaze moving between it and Remus as a whole.

Remus lifts his left hand and raises it, bringing it to the side of his head from the side and miming a good smack. “Brained it real good a while back,” he offers, using both his hands to gesture at his mum. “Look at you, though; corporate suits you.” 

Hope gives a quick glance down at herself before bringing it right back up to put her head on a tilt “Oh yeah?” she raises, reaching up to flick the end of Remus’ nose. “Thanks, hon.” 

“No no, it’s no problem,” Remus says, a bright, lopsided smile on, and Sirius looks back and forth between the two of them, straining to absorb every last detail of this picture. 

“OK, come with me,” Hope bids, sweeping both her hands to gesture for the two of them to follow her along back down the hall, “I’ve gifts for you in the den.” 

“What a coincidence, so do we,” Remus puts up, moving up ahead of her and gliding up the hall despite her tutting behind him. 

“Oh, you didn’t need to bring me a thing,” she returns, following Remus between the dining room wall and the table while Sirius brings up the flank, absorbing. 

“Too late, we already did,” Remus chimes, cutting into the kitchen before moving right on into the den. “Ours first.” 

Hope huffs before she makes a show of stopping just inside the room by way of stamping both her feet pointedly on the floor before setting her hands on her hips while Remus goes for their bags on the couch, and Sirius hangs back by the open doorway, just loving all of this colour. 

“OK, this is from Sirius,” Remus says, tossing a quick, curious smile over his shoulder at him. 

Sirius gestures with a bright sweep of his hand for Remus to go right on ahead and display it before he meets Hope’s pointed gaze. “Thanks for having me,” he says sweetly, and Hope shuts her eyes and a set of prayer hands over her nose and mouth, quietly bracing herself, and Sirius puts out a bright laugh. “It’s the keys to a car, Hope.” 

“Well, can I ever tell with you?” she returns, her eyes still shut tight.

Remus hums there. “She’s got a point,” he sticks in, turning from the couch with the box of Bowmore in hand and clicking his tongue when he sees the state his mum is in. “Mum, would you just look; you’re setting yourself up for quite the fall.” 

Hope makes sure to huff before dropping her hands first and opening her eyes second, blinking thrice at the box held out to her. “Oh,” she puts out, right hand moving to her chest as her body language evens out enough for her to take hold of it, “well, this I like.” 

Sirius puts up a bright hum of a laugh. “Remus mentioned you’re a fan, so I thought it just wouldn’t be on to not bring a bottle along,” he forwards. 

“Sirius, you didn’t have to do that,” Hope extends, tucking the box where she last hand her hand, and Sirius waves that right off with a quick swish of his left hand. 

“Please, yes I did,” he puts down. 

“Oh, come here,” she says, moving in to give him an over-the-shoulder hug with her free arm. “Thank you.” 

Sirius nods there, swallowing as quietly as he can. “I stopped him from going for the top shelf, if that’s any help,” Remus offers, a sunshine smile on full display. 

“That does help,” Hope returns after a beat, giving Sirius a warning look before breathing in decidedly and immediately deflecting, and where has Sirius seen that before? He’ll never know. “Your turn—”

“No no, you’ve more,” Remus halts her, turning back to the couch to fish through the other bag, and Hope looks warily over at Sirius who puts on a prized grin in response. “Now, mine’s maybe a little less practical than that, but I’m sure you’ll find _some_ use for it.” 

Sirius stifles a laugh in his throat, but he can’t help it; Remus just knows how to get him going. Unfortunately his timing rather gets Hope looking alarmed yet again, only to relax when Remus takes the bottle off of her hands to hand over the white box. 

“This is cute,” she extends, looking it over in her hands. 

“Could open it?” Remus suggests, a polite but flat air about him that is no easier for Sirius to have to contend with. 

“I’m getting there,” Hope returns, balancing the box on her left arm and flicking up the two silver latches on the front with her right hand. 

Remus over at Sirius and ducking his head the moment he sees Sirius’ mirth, and the two quickly stand to attention as Hope observes the inside of said box by giving out a bright hum, inspecting the various tins inside with a careful hand before grazing her fingertips up the little spool staircase built inside of it. “Where’d you find this?” she asks, glancing up at Remus with a 

“The mall, and before you go thinking anything, it was an absolute steal ,especially when you think about all that’s in there,” Remus offers. “I know you’ve only really dabbled and I know you’ve got your favourites, but I also happen to know you’re very good at stitching if a bit out of practice, so when I saw that I thought this would be a good reintroduction to it.” 

Hope’s face does a similar thing to what Remus’ does when he gets shown thoughtfulness, which means Sirius is merely a pool of goo in the doorway while Hope mimes blowing Remus a kiss warmly before closing up the box and curling her arms around it “I am a bit rusty, but your granny had a ton of books on it,” she says, half-nodding back toward the immense bookshelf behind her. 

“Does it take eight years to comb through all those?” Sirius asks, nodding toward the vast amount of books on display. 

Hope gives a hearty laugh. “About there, yeah,” she returns, sniffing before shaking out. “OK, enough,” she insists, moving to put the box on the coffee table. 

She makes a beeline for the armchair to the right of the couch and kneels down between the two furniture pieces to sift through a wicker basket. She turns away from the chair to smile up at Remus right as he’s putting her bottle on the coffee table alongside her sewing kit and waits until he’s looking at her again before she lifts a tablet that’s still in its packaging up to him. 

Sirius puffs up grand, looking brightly over at Remus, who to no surprise to him has completely lost all sense of understanding. “Mum,” he puts out, lifting his hands to his temples. "You — no, mum."

“Honey,” she says kindly, keeping the box held up and out toward him, “your computer is four years old; it’s time.” 

“It works just fine,” Remus insists of his veritable toaster of a laptop. 

Sirius snorts. “I mean, for now,” he puts in, grinning from ear to ear. 

Remus tries to send him a pronounced shush, but Hope rather likes that addition it seems. “Thank you,” she accepts, gesturing her free hand toward him before refocusing on her son. “I wanted to get you something you could use; it’s practical, you could put all your files on it, you bring it to class with you much easier, do your work on the go even — I could maybe see you better onscreen; the possibilities are endless.”

“She’s a visionary,” Sirius whispers over at him. 

Remus merely lifts the two finger salute to him while keeping his gaze on Hope. “Mum, that’s — that’s all true,” he lets her have, “but you should have it; I’m sure you could use it—” 

“They’ve already given me one for work,” Hope references. “That’s where I got the idea from; they’re just so handy.” 

Remus deflates, staving off his mum’s tablet waggling for all of five or so seconds before he steps in to take hold of it. “Thank you,” he says, tucking it very close to his chest. Hope nods for him, glowing down by the side of the chair, and Remus almost lets the nagging question on his mind slide. Almost. “Was it at least fairly priced?” 

Sirius sends out a righteous snort. “It was, and I’m not just saying that to get you to quit,” Hope maintains. 

Remus gives a sigh, then a nod, and a half-smile before flickering his gaze toward Sirius and back to his mum right quick, and then _she_ gives him a smile quite similar to his and moves a little too suspiciously around by the right side of the armchair for Sirius to contend with. 

“Explain,” he bids, tilting his head at Remus, but all he gets is a knowing smile, and Sirius' signals go all wonky. “What did you do, hm?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Remus maintains, shrugging his shoulders easily. 

“That’s not true, he picked the colour,” Hope puts in. Sirius leans over a little to the right in hopes of getting a hint, but Hope’s back is rather opaque and isn’t giving him much help in that regard, and soon she’s lifting to her feet and turning toward him with the most vivaciously red quilt folded up in her hands and tossing a quick nod toward Remus. “Since you like his so much.” 

“Stop,” Sirius puts out, and Hope stops. 

“No no, that’s a good thing,” Remus assures, beckoning for her to continue toward him.

Sirius nods emphatically. “It is, I’m just overwhelmed,” he affirms, flickering his gaze to Remus gratefully before putting it back on Hope. 

“Oh, don’t, I was happy to,” Hope insists, holding it up and out to him. “I know it could seem daunting now what with the heat out there, but the nights can get a little nippy around here so this little guy might come in handy, too.”

Sirius reaches to grab it and has it unravelled in mere moments, wrapping it around his shoulders and looking down on his left, finding the length of it sits right at the tops of his ankles just like Remus’ quilt does whenever Sirius knicks it for a bit. He looks up at her with a bright smile, swallowing so he’ll be able to say thank you properly, but before he can manage that he feels a curious, scratchy patch on the palm of his right hand that’s unlike the rest of material coiled up in his fingers. He lifts that hand to uncurl his fingers, finding a white tag sewn into this corner that reads a carefully etched _Sirius_ in black thread. 

Sirius pushes a half-breath out, lifting the tag up to her with a plain smile on. “A bit rusty?” he quotes, turning it toward Remus to add him into the mix.

Remus snorts hard there. “What an amateur,” he echoes. 

Hope sets her hands on her hips with a pointed sigh and a half-smile on. “Well, I’ve got the basics, but I’d have liked to do a little more than just print it; maybe a little cursive, but I’m out of practice,” she reasons.

“_No_, it’s — I like it way better like this,” Sirius insists, moving in to hug her categorically tighter than is probably necessary, but even if he just thinks of it on a base level, it’s soul-crushing in the best way possible; he only mentioned liking Remus' once in passing and she remembered it. “Thank you.” 

Hope hums easily in response and gives a warm rub over his back with both her hands before pulling back, not quite sensing just how much this truly means to him, and Sirius runs his top teeth over his lower lip, unsure of what he should do next other than exit this room immediately so he won’t keep staring at her like he is. 

“I’m just going to put it in the cabin so nothing gets on it and it’ll be there when I need it,” he says, forcing his voice to stay even keeled. “Is that alright?”

“Of course, it’s yours,” Hope returns, gesturing easily, and Sirius nods quietly for that’s one boulder of a sentiment. “Well, while you’re doing that, I’m going to run up and change.” 

“Alright, and when you’re back down here, you’re to sit at the table and do nothing,” Remus mentions. 

“Mh_hm_,” Hope sends him, moving past Sirius for the kitchen.

Sirius looks to Remus at once, locks in on his heavy gaze first and his finger picking next, and reaches out to Remus with a quilt-covered hand, halting him until the stairs stop creaking and shuffling over to him the moment she’s officially upstairs.

“I’m OK; I just needed her to not be in front of me,” Sirius says, reaching to pull Remus in and getting wrapped up by him in an instant. “I mean, I’m going to have to go put this in there now that I said I would, but I was starting to stare at her, and badly.” 

“You really weren’t,” Remus assures, speaking close by Sirius’ right ear. “That was OK, right?” 

“More than,” Sirius implores, shutting his eyes against the sea welling up in real time. “It’s just like when Mrs. Potter gave me the apron, only this is even better because it’s _her_.”

Remus gives a weighted noise at the back of his throat before two distinct, plush presses are felt against Sirius’ eyelids in turn and Sirius chokes on a sob before forcing it back down, not interested in Hope hearing blubbers from below. “This is a good cry, then?” he checks, bringing his arms in from around Sirius to wipe at a rogue tear on his right cheek. 

Sirius sniffs hard, nods profusely, and leans out of Remus’ grip, reopening his eyes. “How long have you known about this?” he accuses, squinting up at him through the film over his eyes. 

“Well, I could sort of hear it in her voice over Skype, but I wasn’t fully sure, then she asked me if you’d like one of your own a day or two later, and then after I told her you like red she held up three different shades of red yarn for me to pick the one you’d like best,” Remus relays, leaving a kiss on the tip of Sirius’ nose. 

And he picked well, but that’s a good few weeks of intel. “From its very conception, then,” Sirius raises slyly. “Thanks for the heads up, sweets.” 

Remus huffs a flat laugh. “You have no right to talk to me about surprises,” he returns, eyeing him plainly. 

Sirius huffs hard at him, breaks into a watery, begrudging smile, and looks up and over his shoulder as the stairs alert them of Hope incoming. He looks back at Remus quickly, finds him tossing his head toward the back door, and the two of them come together for the quickest kiss before separating, Remus moving for the kitchen while Sirius heads out the back door. 

He bats it shut behind him, breathes in fresh air as he rounds the bend in the porch, and breathes a bit easier as he descends the steps into the garden, wiping at his cheeks. 

This has to be a good sign. A platonic gift or not, big Lupin-sized heart or not, Sirius wouldn’t be Sirius if he didn’t traipse out of the garden and across the lawn toward the a-frame with a proud glide; he’s Hope’s favourite of Remus’ pack of Londonders after all, it’s practically official. He’s already got one foot in the door whether Hope can quite see whom the foot walks for, he’s just got to get the other one in along with it. 

He heads up the a-frame steps and inside to fold his quilt up and leave it draped over the end of his bed; a nice splash of colour in the otherwise beige themed room. He almost heads back, but stops off at the bathroom and forces himself to face the mirror, and it’s good that he did for his eyes are about as red as his quilt and his face is blotchy all over, and something has to be done about that. 

He runs the taps and bends inward to splash water over his face, taking care not to dribble stray droplets over the sink like a chump house guest or something, and pats his face dry with the hand towel hanging on a bar by the sink. He straightens up tall, sniffs, and exhales, looking over himself again. His eyes are still a bit puffy but they’re no longer rouge tinted, and Sirius is biased in the fact that he was the one boohooing in the den, but it’s likely only he and Remus will be able to know he was moved to tears.

He looks himself in the eye and is unable to avoid the unfortunate thought that intrudes on him; he’s likely never looked more like Reg than he does now. He bashes his right fist down hard on the sink, looks away from the mirror before he can break it, and strides out of the cabin and shuts that thought right out; this will not be happening here. 

Shania lets him know he’s received a text from James about halfway back up the cobblestone path, and Sirius digs his phone out to pull it up, putting out a bright hum as he finds a photo of Mestophales and Tango curled up together on his bed, and somehow it's precisely the sort of reminder he needs to hold onto the fact that there are vast areas of his life far beyond what his family can touch. 

Sirius types a short, one handed reply: _reward them_

He doesn’t bother putting his phone away as he pops up the porch steps, figuring he’ll get a reply in no time at all and figuring right about that one. _Already have. How’d it go, Casanova?_

Sirius makes the bend in the porch as he types back. _ we haven’t even sat down to dinner yet, you freak._

The reply is back in mere beats. _ How am I to know that!!!! _

Sirius types his reply out rather daintily. _ it’s a wave, not a race, Jimbo _

He does stick his phone away there, knowing he’s about to get one fuck of a heckling for rehashing that one, and there he thinks turning his phone on silent might do the lot of them well. He heads inside the back door, smiling bright as the sound of Remus huffing is the first thing he hears upon his reappearance.

“Would you sit, please?” Remus implores. “He’ll be right back.”

“I’m back, I’m back,” Sirius says, shutting the door behind him and scooting right into the kitchen. 

“See?” Remus puts up, sprinkling a bit of flour over a flattened oval of dough at the counter. “He’s got it, mum.” 

Hope waves the white flag, moves around the table, and pulls back the chair to the left of Sirius’ own post, and lulls her head to the side to look over at Sirius, who perks as he finds she’s kept the silk blouse she had on before but paired it up with a pair of blue jeans. 

“Jean party,” he chimes, padding up to the table and sliding back into his own seat. 

“Well, I thought I’d dress in theme,” Hope offers, having a seat. “Would you mind telling him I’m perfectly capable of lending a hand?” 

Sirius lifts his knife and starts right back where he left off, slicing the celery stalk in half. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he imparts, smiling sweetly as he speedily dices the two halves into bitty pieces. 

“Oh,” Hope puts out, watching him go. “Nevermind, then; you’ve found your calling.” 

Remus hums there. “When I said he had it, I wasn’t kidding around,” he mentions, giving the rolling pin a good spin over the dough in Sirius’ right peripheral. 

“Well,” Hope puts up, pausing to sigh, “can I at least get you two anything to drink?” 

“How about you just sit there?” Sirius raises cheerfully. 

Hope doesn’t, at least not until she’s clicked her tongue, walked off into the den, and returned with her new sewing kit before taking up her seat again. She opens up the box, starts fiddling around with the tins again, only this time she’s got the time to investigate what the various containers have to offer, and Sirius trades glances between slicing up the last celery stalk and her, finding her focus to be quite like Remus’ tends to be when he’s schooling. 

Hope runs her right forefinger around in the little tin of safety pins, having a gander at the number of them sitting in there, and flickers her gaze up to Sirius’ before he can pretend he’s been solely chopping away and not sneaking peeks at her. 

“Careful there,” she says, pointing toward the knife. 

“He’s not looking at it, is he,” Remus puts up, extra sweetly.

“I’ve a sixth sense, and it’s chopping, Remus,” Sirius insists, scooting the pieces of celery toward the heaping pile in the corner of the board. 

“You’ll lose a finger one day,” Remus warns. 

“Not with you around, clearly,” Sirius returns. 

Hope stays out of it, amusedly going back to her sewing kit, Remus keeps on rolling out the dough, and Sirius pulls the onion out of its bag and starts in on that, half focused on that, half-bobbing to _Waterloo_ playing in the background. He thinks he hears the front door open from beyond the kitchen and hopes he’s right on that one, ready for more Lyall always and forever.

His suspicions prove true in that Lyall a few moments announces his presence by way of calling out from what sounds as close as the dining room. “I saw the most curious bumper sticker ahead of me on the way,” he puts up. 

“You’d better share,” Hope sends back, and already Sirius is straining his ears past _ABBA_ while he chops up a ring of union. 

“I managed to snap a picture before he turned off,” Lyall sends back, turning into the kitchen from the dining room with his blue jumper still on and thumbing through the phone in his right hand. 

Lyall clears his throat when he seems to have found it. “‘_You hear it, but we live it,_” he begins loftily, one eye shut beyond his glasses as he reads off of his screen. “_To watch us dance is like hear our hearts speak. We are on._’” 

Sirius ducks his head through a laugh, straining to see his knife-work without much of a neck to speak of, Hope puts up one bright trill, and Remus gives a charmed hum. “Well, shit, Dad,” he raises brightly, “it’s not every day you get behind a road scholar.”

Sirius puts his knife down there so any one of the fingers on his left hand will have a hope in surviving this, lifting his hands to clap them over his eyes to ride out his stitches. In the time it takes Sirius to settle down and drop his hands from his vision Lyall apparently moved out of the doorway for he’s now kneeling by Hope’s chair, leaving a quick ‘hello again’ kiss on Hope’s left cheek that has Sirius feeling all kinds of ways as he pretends to be very into cutting this onion in front of him.

Lyall has a gander over her new treasure, humming a note born of convenience. “I’ve been looking for a stress ball,” he raises, reaching for the tomato-shaped pin cushion inside the box.

Hope moves quicker than he, blocking it with her left hand before he can swipe it. “You’d break a carpal doing that,” she returns. 

Lyall takes his hand back easily.“This is impressive,” he offers, gesturing toward the staircase of spools of all sorts of coloured threat.“Where’d you get it?”

“That one brought it back from the mall,” Hope extends, nodding over toward Remus. 

“I should have figured that myself,” Lyall considers, at least until Lyall rather throws his voice toward his son. “Nothing there for me, hm?”

Sirius turns his head a smidge, finding Remus standing there at the counter with his right fist held up in mid-pound. “Nothing jumped out today, but you never know,” he raises. “We’ll be going back to comb for more souvenirs and I’m determined to find you something that’s just right — like, a really tacky rear-view mirror accessory.”

“Cow print dice?” Lyall puts up. 

“I’ll see what’s around,” Remus assures, amusement behind his tone as he folds up the dough to roll the pin over it some more, get it pliable. 

“How’d you like the tablet, then?” Lyall asks, beckoning with his hands. 

“What tablet?” Remus asks bemusedly, and for a moment Sirius pauses, genuinely thinking he hallucinated Remus even getting one while Lyall clamps his mouth shut, looking sidelong at Hope with a half-grimace. 

“He was given it already,” Hope extends, a half-smile on. 

Lyall gives out a quick sigh of relief. “I thought I’d given it away.”

“I thought I’d hallucinated the whole thing,” Sirius puts up through a laugh, looking round at Remus . “Go to drama school.” 

Remus reworks his mouth around a smile. “It’s incredible, thank you both,” he reiterates. 

“Hey, it was her idea, I just fanned the flames,” Lyall puts it, using the edge of the table to pull himself up to his feet and sighing as he gives an observational glance around the kitchen. “What are we making?” 

“Two pies,” Hope puts up, a new, rather merry smile on her face. 

Sirius smirks as Lyall reels with the information. “We share an incredibly strong passion for pie,” he extends, looking up and over his right shoulder at Remus, who sends a sidelong smile and nod combo toward the lot of them. 

“One’s a pot pie, one’s a blueberry,” he forwards.

“Come visit more often, would you?” Lyall tacks on. 

“Oh, that I could,” Remus returns, turning back to the counter to pull two pie sheets out of a pack and set them beside the dough station. “The pot pie we’ve made enough times that we almost don’t have to think about it anymore, but the dessert one is a new recipe we’re trying out, so please be kind to the cooks because they’re doing their best.” 

“There will be no heckling,” Hope assures. 

“Should I help in some way?” Lyall checks.

An elongated _no_ comes out of both Remus and Hope at a near identical tones, sending Sirius into a world where he mustn't bark out a laugh at his future father-in-law’s expense, but fuck, is that a task. 

“Not sure I love that undercurrent of fear I just heard,” Lyall mentions, zoning right in on Sirius’ attempts to stifle his laughter. “Keep it up, pal; see how that goes for you.” 

Sirius turns his head away from him immediately, his eyes and mouth shut tight through his mirth. “Really, dad, we’ve got it,” Remus laughs, waving him off with a shake of the rolling pin toward him. “Prep is going to take a while yet, and it’ll be a good half hour more from when it goes in the oven so you’ve time to relax—” Lyall cuts in with a voluminous grunt, “—no; get mum to teach you how to knit, I bet she could get the basics taught before we’re ready to serve.” 

Lyall snorts for that one. “I haven’t the dexterity for that kind of thing,” he denies. 

“Well, that’ll explain why I haven’t much of it either,” Remus allows, and Sirius turns his head and coughs loudly against his upper right arm for that incredibly false claim, smiling sweetly at Remus’ quick but indeed pointed glance his way.

“Didn’t want to cough on the onion now,” Sirius passes along politely. 

“How kind of you,” Remus returns just as politely, going back to fitting one of his circular cutouts of dough onto the first pie sheet. 

Lyall heads over to the doorway to the den, seems to stare off calculatingly in the middle distance, but upon further inspection Sirius finds he’s staring out the window over the couch that displays a hell of a lot of their land. “Have you been out back yet?” he puts up. 

“Yeah, we went out on the trail and down to the waterfront for a bit, too,” Remus extends, moving to preheat the oven. 

“Oh, did you like it?” Hope asks, smiling bright at Sirius, who gets one hell of a nod going, turning his head so Lyall can see his assurance as well. 

“Oh yeah?” Lyall raises, putting on a half-grimace. “How was getting through the grass? I put that one off a little long.” 

“It was fine,” Remus waves him off. “Lots of skeeters, but that’s nothing new.” 

“For you,” Sirius puts in. 

Remus smirks over behind Sirius. “He did get a bit swarmed,” he amends. 

“There’s tons of bug spray if you need it,” Hope lets him know. 

“Oh, I brought some with, but thanks,” Sirius chimes. “I was a fool and hadn’t put it on yet, is all.” 

Sirius looks over his left shoulder a few seconds from there, finding Lyall lingering in the doorway with a pondering expression on before ultimately clicking his tongue and sighing out. “Well, I’d do it now, but there’s hardly any point in that when by the time I lug her out of there and get ‘er up and running the pie will be coming out,” he reasons, and Sirius raises his gaze to the fridge in the middle of peeling a carrot, deciding it’ll have to be his James’ replacement for now since he’s not here to appreciate the direction that sentence went in, and goes right back to peeling.

“I can do it later on, dad,” Remus offers, and Sirius clears his throat as he shaves the carrot in his left hand pointedly considering this constitutes stealing his thunder. 

Lyall snorts, taking Sirius’ grunt in a slightly different way than he intended. “And what’s he going to do, ride around on the back of it?” he raises.

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” Remus offers plainly. “In fact, he’d kick me off and make _me_ ride around on the back of it.” 

Sirius looks over his shoulder for a moment to find him preheating the oven to get the oven preheated, and nods diligently for Remus’ claim, turning back to his board to chop along the ridge of his newly peeled carrot. “I’ve never ridden a mower before, so you bet I’d be taking over,” he asserts. 

“Leave it to me, alright?” Lyall says, waving them off.“You just relax; it’s called vacation.” 

“I don’t know what you’ve said to me,” Remus returns in a true deadpan, and Sirius looks to Hope sitting easy in her seat. 

“How do you deal with this?” he asks, lifting his free hand to gesture it back and above his head at those two. 

Hope gives an easy hum, lifting her shoulders. “Happily,” she answers, and that’s simply the best answer Sirius could have hoped for.

“Just once while you’re here, I’d like to physically see you put your feet up,” Lyall sends Remus, heading off into the dining room. 

“I will if you do,” Remus sends back, and Lyall grumbles as he wanders through the dining room to ascend the stairs by the sound of it. 

In his wake, the two master chefs fall into a focused silence as they work. only for the silence to be cut through by a bright hum from Remus a few minutes later. “Ooh-kay,” he puts out, championed and cheerful at one go, “crusts are set.” 

Sirius pauses on the last carrot of the bunch, looks round, and sees Remus has both carefully and officially sealed two circular cutouts of dough onto the two pie sheets on the counter. “A wizard at large,” he champions before zoning in on just one circular cutout of dough set aside on the counter. “Just one top crust?” 

“This blueberry one doesn’t call for one,” Remus offers, lifting one of the pie sheets and bringing it over to the stove. “It’ll be an adventure, but one I’m rather excited about.” 

“Same here,” Sirius echoes candidly. 

Remus trills pleasantly as he moves over to pull the oven door open, and even though he insisted there’d be plenty of room Sirius still scoots his chair in a bit just to make the task that much easier for Remus to maneuver. “Alright,” he puts up, sticking the pie shell in to heat and shutting the oven door, and Sirius glances over his shoulder with a smile on as Remus thumbs through his phone to set an alarm for it, “that’s for the blueberry one, it’s got to go in for a good while so while that’s is heating I’ll get the chicken cut up, and if you’re alright with tackling the potatoes once you’re done there, Sirius, we’ll be right on course.” 

“Potato king,” Sirius deems himself, sweeping a pile of diced carrot toward the ever rising mountain of cut-up veggies in the corner of his cutting board.

“Oh, well this is just silly,” Hope puts in, lifting her hands. “I’m right here; just hand me the peeler.” 

Sirius straightens up in his seat, looks back at Remus for instruction, who pushes an elongated puff of breath out of his cheeks. “Alright,” he grants, sweeping his right hand toward Sirius as he moves toward the fridge, “give her the peeler, you take the chicken, and I’ll start getting the pots and pans ready to go; it’ll be faster in the long run.” 

Sirius nods once, taking the boss’ instruction as law, and lifts his left forefinger toward Hope. “I’ll just get this ready to go,” he says, gesturing to the cutting board filled with veggies already before leaving his chair in hopes of fetching a bowl to put all the veggies in. 

Hope nods with a new smile on, slipping out of her seat sideways and taking her sewing kit back to the coffee table in the den. “Where are the bowls?” Sirius sings, putting a little vibrato into it. 

“Above the dough station,” Remus sends back, automatically harmonizing along with Sirius’ melody as he pulls the package of chicken breasts out of the fridge for him. 

Sirius heads over there, casting a glance over the dough station as he reaches for the cupboards and finding Remus has set aside the top crust of the pot pie to stick on when need be, and then looks toward the door to the den as Hope heads through it with an intrigued blink and keen smile combo aimed at the two of them, and only then does Sirius realize they did just croon to each other about where the bowls are located and perhaps forgot where they were for a few beats. 

“He’s rubbed off on me,” Remus offers, pushing the package of chicken toward Sirius’ spot on the table. 

Sirius smiles as he snags a small plate off of a stack of them for the onions before walking that and the soup bowl back over to the table, feeling quite warm from his head to his toes.“I was going to say,” Hope forwards, moving to take up her seat once again, “those harmonies are on point.” 

Sirius hums bright chime in thanks while he stands over the table and scoops bits of onion onto the tiny plate reserved for them before sweeping the rest of the pile of chopped veggies into the bowl with his knife. Remus moves in behind Sirius to get to the drawer to get at the drawer beneath the stove for the pots and pans, and Sirius carries the knife, peeler, and cutting board over to the sink to give them a good rinse. 

Remus sticks a saucer on the top left burner that Sirius has to assume is for the gravy when they get around to that, and Sirius brings the cutting board and peeler back to the table, leaning over it to push them toward Hope before handing her the knife’s handle to take. “I’ll grab another,” he says. 

Hope smiles as she takes hold of it, pointing behind Sirius. “They’re in the drawer just behind you,” she passes along, reaching to tug the bag of potatoes on the other end of the table more her way. “How do you want these done once they’re peeled?” 

“They’re to be mashed, so by all means you may cut them any way you like,” Sirius relays, pulling a new knife out of the drawer and glancing to Remus. “Is there another cutting board I could use?” 

“There’s a mini one,” Remus forwards, lifting to his feet to set a frying pan on the bottom right burner on the stove before stooping down again to pull a large pot out of the drawer. “I think I saw it underneath the shelf with the microwave on it.” 

Sirius moves for the cupboard he remembers the microwave being in and goes one shelf down, finding a small white one that’ll be just perfect for the job. He brings it back to the table, waits just by his chair for Remus to finish up with the drawer under the stove, and takes his seat back once Remus has knocked the drawer shut with a foot and moves to bring the pot over toward the sink, and Hope digs a large potato out of the bag of many and starts peeling from the top of it before going round and around the perimeter of the rotund potato, shaving off one long peel an diligent hand, and Sirius may or may not be halfway studying her technique as he absently cuts the plastic cover over the package of chicken breasts in front of him. 

Remus leaves the pot on the counter just to the right of the sink for the time being, turns back toward the table, and clicks his tongue pondringly, patting a beat into the front of his thighs. “Now I’m out of a job,” he states, patting once more for effect. 

“Why don’t you sit and do nothing?” Hope suggests, leaving the peel of the first potato aside. 

Sirius gives Remus a bright smirk as he works one of the chicken breasts out of the pack, and Remus makes sure to push a pointed breath through his nose before taking the open spot in front of him, situating himself across from Hope and diagonal to Sirius. “Lily says hello,” Remus imparts, crossing his right leg over his left knee as he settles in, “as I’m sure James does too.” 

Sirius nods for that, feeling like that would be the truth if James didn’t have a specific, vested interest to keep asking about. “He definitely says hello,” he tacks on.

Hope hums pleasantly for that, but Lyall’s voice sounds from the dining room as the verbal reply to that piece of information. “How are Red and the Loud One?” 

Sirius puts out a celebratory laugh, filing that one away as one to absolutely tell James about at a better time, and genuinely reels as Lyall turns into the kitchen with a tan jumper and a pair of black slacks on for it’s like Remus went and shapeshifted to twenty-ish years into the future while still being very much twenty-three in the spot just diagonal from Sirius. 

“They’re doing great,” Young Remus offers. “James officially got the ring this week, so there’s been some real progress in that department.” 

“Good show,” Lyall returns, taking the open spot across the length of the table from Sirius. 

Hope brightens there, leaning into the table a little with intrigued eyes set on Remus. “Good for him,” she offers, slicing the first potato in half before cutting those into quarters. “Does he feel better now?” 

“Elated,” Sirius passes along, separating the bones from the first breast. “It was a bit of a journey.” 

Hope laughs there, nodding her head toward Remus as she pushes the pieces of potato aside. “He said as much,”she passes along. 

“Did he also happen to mention that he’s got a future in espionage should he choose it?” Sirius asks, his head on a right hanging tilt as he sticks the bones aside. 

Hope blinks over the table at Remus. “No, he did not,” she mentions, wrangling a new potato out of the bag. 

“Well, I wasn’t going to blow my own whistle about it,” Remus defends, lifting his hands for a sprinkle of understanding.

“You ought to blow it from the rooftops,” Sirius returns, bidding up chunks of chicken as he turns his attention onto Hope and Lyall. “Now, our Remus was entrusted with the task of forking Lily’s ring size out of her in a non-intrusive, innocuous way a few weeks ago.” 

Hope nods there, starting to peel the next one. “Yes, he did say that part.”

“Complained about would probably be the best way to describe it,” Remus amends.

“He was nervous,” Hope offers, frowning, but there’s a bit of a smile there, too. 

Sirius nods to allow it. “He was somewhat strong-armed into it,” he lets land, starting a pile of chicken pieces on the cutting board, “but in fairness to James, he and I both knew in our bones we had the right lad for the job and we weren’t wrong about that—” he garners a heavy, but amused sigh out of Remus, who sits back in his chair with a wry smile on and his arms crossed over his chest, “—so, picture the lot of us at brunch about a fortnight ago: the task Remus has been given has been looming over him for a couple weeks by this point, and Dorcas suddenly takes off a ring of hers and sets it on the table while she gives that finger a rub-down, and man of the hour over here manages to grab it and coax Lily into putting it on.” 

“How did you manage that for one, and without tipping her off for another?” Lyall raises, squinting over at Remus, who genuinely hasn’t got an answer for that for Hope leans in there and asks how Dorcas is doing underneath the preceding topic of conversation, a glimmer to her gaze. 

“She’s doing good,” Remus answers, giving her a pointed blink. 

Sirius keeps right on with it in hopes that it’ll crush that left turn while keeping his own spirits up about it; Dorcas hasn’t got a quilt fashioned together by one Hope Lupin, so what good would it do holding himself a tier under Dorcas when it’s evident from Hope’s actions that she holds him to a higher regard despite that twinkle in her eye.

“It was all in how it was done,” he tells Lyall, automatically extending a hand out as if he’s using it as a speaking aid when really he’s hoping it’ll physically put himself between Hope and Remus. “It’s the doe eyes, the unprovoked, curious tone he used, the innocuous but unbreakable poker face he had on; he put the thing on for funsies which rather made the situation rather innocent and goofy, and then he pointed out how he’d never seen Lily wearing one, curious as can be, and that sparked her to discuss that it was a it was a mixture of things: she’s not opposed to them, but she can’t really wear them at work which she’s at a good three-quarters of the time, and even before she started there she wasn’t really a jewellry kind of gal aside from the bracelet her mum got her for graduation, and then Genius Remus here mentioned that Dorcas’ ring matched Lily’s bracelet, and that got her all interested in trying it on, and Dorcas told her to keep it because it really did match it at a spooky sort of level, and that was really that; she didn’t think anything of it and it the ring fit like a glove so suddenly James had a size to go on.” 

Remus may or may not link his left ankle around Sirius’ right one for a whole four seconds or so, while from his torso up he merely comes off as a bit sheepish over all this praise. “In theory, of course; we somehow managed to have two unique ladies without a clue what their respective ring sizes are,” he puts in, a laugh escaping there. “Lily doesn’t normally wear them and Dorcas apparently tried hers on at the store a while back and went with the one that fit best, so the mission wasn’t quite yet over with that brunch.” 

Sirius nods there, working the second breast out of the package. “Yes, her and Pete went off a couple days later to match her ring finger to a load of rings,” he takes it from there, slicing pieces off of the second breast, “and then, James went off with the intel gathered for him and found one hell of a specimen for Lilith, I’ve got to give him that.”

“What did he get?” Hope asks him, back to being intrigued for the right reasons, as far as Sirius is concerned. 

Sirius smacks his lips there. “Now, I am no jeweller, so I’m not going to have the jargon down by any means,” he prefaces, working the bone off of the second chicken breast, “but I do know that I saw a raised diamond which is probably for the best when Lily’s constantly working with her hands, and the diamond was a sensible size in that it wasn’t a huge, honking one, which really is more Lily’s style, so good on James for sensing that.”

“I saw some white and rose gold around that diamond, mum,” Remus inserts, smiling wryly over in his chair. 

Hope hums pleasantly there. “Oh, I do like a white and rose gold theme,” she allows. 

“I saw that with your bike,” Sirius gives her, bidding up pieces of the second breast. “What a find.” 

“Thank you,” Hope accepts. “I was lucky to nab it.” 

“See, you might think he’s just being nice with that,” Remus puts in there, a pointed smile on his lips, “but he’s definitely planning on obtaining a rose gold bicycle with a white basket on the front at his earliest convenience.”

“She’s a style icon, Remus,” Sirius returns, garnering one startled noise out of Hope for it. 

Remus nods evenly there. “You really are mum, just go with it,” he says for it. 

“What happened to the other one?” Lyall interjects, looking down the table at Sirius quizzically. “Patricia, was it?” 

Sirius smirks there, happy for the misremembering certainly, but he sure does love that Remus must have told him about the name Sirius had given her, and it must have been ages ago. “Priscilla, but you can call her whatever you like,” he tells him, “and she’s still serving me very well, but I think she would understand if a rose gold bicycle got worked into my rotation; the ride into town on his had me feeling rather nostalgic for a traditional bike ride.”

“Not sure what about that ride into town was traditional,” Remus puts in wryly, “but I can see you going along on a rose gold bike myself.”

“Approval of the highest regard,” Sirius deems it, fluttering his hands to display them in front of his cutlets of chicken breast. “C’est finit.” 

“OK,” Remus responds, a particular Parisian lilt to it, pushing out of his seat and visibly pleased to have a task once again. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Lyall says. “I bet you’re practicing the language a ton.” 

“I mean, here and there,” Remus replies, leaning into the table to pluck up both the bowl of veggies and the mini cutting board with a whole heap of chicken on it and bring them to the counter. He plucks the bones up from there, brings them over to the cupboard under the sink, and tosses them in the bin. “I can speak the language, papa.” 

“I wasn’t all that sure anymore, you don’t transition into fluent French very often,” Lyall puts up. 

“Well, you hardly speak it, do you,” Remus raises, moving around the table to get into the fridge behind Lyall’s chair and pulling the bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and the butter from the fridge. “My speaking may still leave a little something to be desired when I can’t shed my accent to save my life and I’ve learned that it’s _noticeable_, but my comprehension’s just fine.” 

“I can vouch for that,” Sirius puts in. “Hardly ever asks for me to repeat a thing on account of not quite getting it.” 

Remus quickly zooms back to the counter, busying himself there, and Sirius rather shines with the knowledge that he got him quite flustered with that addition. “_Ah_, tu parles Francais?” Hope asks Sirius, speaking very, very carefully.

“Mais oui,” Sirius returns, finding her attempt just the cutest thing out there, and launches into a full phrase to showcase that mother-tongue that just never quite leaves his brain. 

“Back up, she didn’t catch that,” Remus insists, garnering a snort out of Lyall. 

“They’re right,” Hope concedes. “I got ‘yes,’ out of that.”

“I just said it’s in my veins,” Sirius waves her off. “Pardon my flair.” 

“That’s not an easy task for anyone, I don’t think,” Remus says, reaching to turn the right burner on and tossing a bit of butter onto the frying pan. 

Sirius makes sure to back his chair against Remus’ arse as he gets out of it, hip-checks the chair into the table once he’s standing, and brings his greased up hands to the sink to give them a wash. From there, he presents himself as chef numero deux, which really just means he moves up by the stove and leans against the counter just beside it, waiting dutifully for instruction while Remus scrapes the pieces of chicken into the pan in front of him before picking up the bowl of veggies and tossing those in as well. 

Sirius goes ahead and opens up the bag of frozen peas, eyeballing a cup-full of them as he shakes some out of the bag over the pan. “Thank you,” Remus extends, giving the whole mixture a good stir with a wooden spoon.

He stoops below the stove again, pulls a lid out of the drawer, and pops it on top of the pan to let the mixture cook, and from there they’ve about ten minutes to spare until the broth and milk have to be added in. 

Remus looks Sirius’ way as he lifts the mini cutting board and bowl and heads for the sink with them. “Would you like to start on the blueberry fixings?” he asks, smiling on his way there. 

“Yeah, I would,” Sirius returns. 

“The crust still needs some time, but it wouldn’t hurt to have it all ready to go when it comes out of the oven,” Remus offers, setting the cutting board and bowl in the sink. “I think we’ll do the cream cheese filling first since it’ll be the bottom layer, and then we’ll get the puree going.” 

Sirius nods diligently, heading for the fridge to get the cream cheese out of it, and Remus moves back toward the counter, to grab the mixer bowl and brings it to the sink to wash and start it fresh for Sirius to use. “What else do I need for this part?” Sirius asks, standing by the fridge with the cream cheese in hand. 

“Just that and sugar for the bottom layer, and I’ll grab you what you’ll need for the second layer,” Remus passes along, bringing the mixer bowl back to the counter and pointing to the package of sugar at the dough station for Sirius to go ahead and use. 

Sirius shuts the fridge door and pads back over to the counter to take up his post as cream cheese filling operator, and Remus pulls out his phone again, thumbing through it quickly before he sets it down on the counter with the recipe lit up on screen for Sirius to read off of as he goes along, and heads off from there to fetch more ingredients for him, the top notch lad he is. 

Sirius combines 4oz of cream cheese and a half-cup of sugar to the mixer bowl as per instruction, picks up the whisk, and goes ham on mixing the two up to create a collectively smooth consistency. He thwacks the whisk against the edge of the mixer bowl, knocking extra bits of cream cheese filling into it, and looks round as Remus’ alarm tone pops up over his screen and blares out, finding Remus quite in the fridge and not so easily able to get to the stove. 

“I’ve got it,” Sirius alerts him, putting the whisk down and pressing to silence the alarm. 

“Thanks,” Remus returns, hands buried in the fridge. “There are mitts in the drawer just to your right.” 

Sirius looks to said drawer, tugs it open, and finds many knitted items inside. He pulls out a white potholder to set on the counter for the heated pie shell to go on, pulls out a pair of yellow mitts, and smiles over at Hope as he tugs them on. “Tell me you made these,” he coaxes. 

“I sure did,” Hope affirms, middle of chopping a potato in quarters. “Those are a few years old, though.” 

“You really are very good,” Sirius extends, moving to pull the oven door down to remove the pie crust from inside. 

“It’s unreal,” Remus puts in, bringing over a squeezer of lemon juice and the packets of blueberries over to set them nearby Sirius’ post while Sirius transfers the pie crust to the potholder on the counter. “She doesn’t even have to look at what she’s doing anymore; she can carry whole conversations with eye contact while knitting up a storm.” 

Hope hums a laugh from the table. “Well, I’ve just had plenty of practice,” she offers fairly, keeping in with the Lupin way of downplaying talent wherever possible. 

“No no, that’s something you should own, Hope,” Sirius insists, going back to shut the oven door and leaving the oven switched on when Remus is going to need it fairly soon for the pot pie.

Lyall gives a flat laugh there. “Good luck with that.” 

Hope gives a vague hum of denial behind Sirius. “We’ll have to own it for her, I think,” Remus says between them, pulling a package of cornstarch down from one of the cupboards above to set nearby Sirius’ post. 

“That, we can do,” Sirius affirms, picking up a wooden spork hanging out nearby his work area and waggling it in question. 

“I put it out exactly for that,” Remus answers, pointing between the bowl of cream cheese filling and the pie crust it’s made for. 

“The smartest lad,” Sirius deems him, tilting the mixing bowl over to push the cream cheese filling into the pie shell below and spreading it around the confection with the spork. 

“Or I read the recipe and knew what would be needed,” Remus offers. 

“It can be both, you shit,” Sirius returns. 

“Yeah, tell ‘em both,” Lyall goads from the table. 

Sirius smirks as he evens out the bottom layer with the spork, sets it down, and reads along the recipe some more, checking off various ingredients Remus has already brought over to him for the next step in the process, but one particular ingredient brings him a stark pause. “Remus,” he pipes up, turning to him with a half grimace, “did we get confectioners’ sugar?” 

Remus, who’d just paused short from Sirius’ careful utterance of his name, huffs out a sigh with a new smile on with the part two of Sirius’ question. “We already had some here,” he forwards, setting the glass of water down by Sirius’ station before bringing said pack of confectioners’ sugar down from a cupboard. “OK, you’re all set up unless I’ve missed something?” 

“No, you did great,” Sirius affords him, stepping toward the sink with the mixer bowl in hand to give it a wash.

Remus takes in a righteous breath. “No, I did not,” he returns, moving for the drawer underneath the stove, “you need a saucepan for the next step.” 

Sirius smirks, drying off the mixer bowl with the tea towel by the sink. “Where does this go?” he asks, presenting the bowl. 

Remus looks up from down below the stove, and points toward the one it goes in, and Sirius heads there. “Second shelf,” he tacks on, and Sirius does as bid. Remus stands tall again, knocks the drawer shut, and sets the saucepan on the front left burner for Sirius before heading back to the fridge. “You’re officially set.” 

“Merci,” Sirius chimes, heading back to get going on what will be the top layer, but he’s officially back in familiar territory. 

He looks left, seeing two measuring cups within reaching distance, the one he used for the cream cheese filling and the other Remus must have used for the dough for both pies, and takes the both of them to the sink for a rinse-out before bringing them back to leave one free for Remus to use and the other for him. 

“Well, that’s the last one,” Hope puts up, setting her knife down beside a whopping pile of potatoes on the cutting board, “but I’ll assume we’ll be waiting a little on these?” 

Remus hums to affirm, bringing the milk and carton of chicken broth over to leave them on the table where Sirius once sat, but that makes sense when he’ll have easy access to both while he’s at the stove. “Yeah, we’ll do them once I get this in the oven,” he says, gesturing to his chicken and veggie mix on the right burner before removing the lid covering it. 

Lyall gives out a massive yawn and stretch combo from behind them. “Any leads on a flat yet?” he puts up. 

Sirius blinks for a long moment as he reaches to turn the burner under his saucepan on, looking sidelong at Remus as he cracks open the cap on the chicken broth. He pours out a full cup, tosses that into the pan, and measures out a ¾ cup more to pour in before turning to leave the broth on the table. “Some, but nothing concrete yet,” he says finally. 

Sirius discreetly measures out a ¼ cup of cornstarch into his own measuring cup before upending it over the saucepan while he keeps his gaze on Remus, who turns back to the stove with the milk in hand. “You’re going to want to get on that or else you’ll be kipping on the tube,” Lyall sends along. 

“I,” Remus elongates, adding the ¾ cup of milk needed for his concoction in front of him, “know that.” 

Sirius moves over to the sink to stick the measuring cup underneath the faucet and pour out a ½ cup of water. “Do you remember Andromeda?” he asks, looking over at the two at the table as he carries it back to the saucepan. 

Lyall smirks from his seat. “Hard to forget.” 

“I’ll let her know,” Sirius returns, squeezing a ¼ cup of lemon juice into the measuring cup before adding that to the mix in his pan. “She’s helping him out with a place.” 

“Oh?” Hope asks, putting her head on a tilt. “That’s very nice?”

“She loves him,” Sirius tacks on, pointing toward Remus as he’s stirring pot pie filling at a robotic speed, gaze set on the wall above the stove, “would put him up herself if she had a place there, but she does have a network there, so she’s on it as much as he is.” 

“I’ve got a few leads in my price range, but they’re not near where I’ll be working or my faculty building, so I’d be spending more on travelling back and forth, so since I have a month and a half still left to find something a little closer and I’ve got someone else keeping an ear out for me, I’d rather not jump the gun yet,” Remus elaborates from there, and Sirius nods in his peripheral as he tosses a ½ cup of confectioners’ sugar into his own pan. “I really just need a room, so I’m willing to rent one off of someone closer to the school, and I’m not particularly picky so long as I have heat and running water.” 

“Maybe a bed, too,” Sirius puts in kindly, pulling open the first packet of blueberries. The recipe calls for three full cups of them, and Sirius could measure those out, yes, but he could also shake the whole packet out over the pan for eyeballing’s sake, and does. 

“I’d take a couch,” Remus returns.

“I know you would, and that’s unacceptable,” Sirius sends him, pulling open the second back and sprinkling in some more until he finds what’s in the pan looks a lot like three full cups.

“Oh, listen to him, please,” Hope bids, and Sirius tosses a blueberry in his mouth while he gives a light shoulder-shimmy. 

“I’m going to,” Remus insists. “It was a joke, mum; I’ll have a bed.” 

“That’s a good idea,” Lyall comes in. 

“Which is?” Remus asks, laughing thinly there. 

“No, the renting a room,” Lyall clarifies. “There’ll be plenty of folks who’d be looking for a little extra per month; that’s a good option to keep in mind.” 

Sirius watches Remus’ expression drop and guilt start to form in its place over his snippage, and that Sirius feels a lot like a hunk of shit over knowing he’s the reason Remus won’t look at him just now, and of all the times to kick himself for showing ‘tude, getting slugged for something twice in one day that he’s already trying so hard not to worry about calls for a little snippage. In this case, Remus can have a little snippage, as a treat. 

Remus won’t look at Sirius though, so he can’t see how hard Sirius is trying to send him a look that’ll speak it for him, and so Remus aims a weak smile over his shoulder at the two of them. “She’s really gung-ho about it which I really appreciate and I don’t want to be prodding her for quicker results just because we all might like to have a better plan set this very moment,” he says, gentler than before, but the sentiment is loud and clear. “There’s still time.” 

“Plenty,” Hope allows. “Have you found someone to take over yours yet?” 

“Yeah, what happened with that?” Lyall echoes. 

For a moment, while Sirius mashes at the blueberries in the pan with his spork, he’s wildly surprised that a wondrous relief that came upon Remus back in mid-May never got relayed to the parents, but then it makes all the more sense when Remus speaks. 

“Yeah, Dorcas is going to sublet it from me,” he says directly, turning to point his stir spoon toward his rather gleeful mum, “and before you even get going, it makes the most sense, she’s sick of her roommate and needs an escape, and I don’t have to let a stranger live in my flat for four months, or pay two rents while I’m gone, so it’s a win/win for convenience and that is it.” 

Sirius presses his lips into a line, his eyebrows all the way up, and finds the output of Erasure’s colourfully chipper _A Little Respect_ coming from the radio’s speakers to be a little too peppy for the conversation at hand, while in the same breath finding it almost too funny to contend with; this is all so much, but what a valuable scene to be on the sidelines for. 

“OK,” Hope says, lifting her hands to block it, only she does smile behind them, “but I was going to say if she’s over there a lot, it would make sense if she simply stayed there to look after it while you’re away.” 

Remus hums a tight note of denial, switching his burner off and lifting the pan off of it. “We’ve really only seen each other a handful of times since she’s been back,” he says, moving around Sirius to get at the other pie shell at the meeting of the L shaped counter. “Not by choice, mind; always nice to see a friend, but this summer’s been busy for the both of us.” 

“You know,” Sirius puts in, on to stirring the concoction in his pan around and around to get a puree going, “this could help out with her and Pete; give them a place to go to nurse their burgeoning love affair.” 

“Well, that too,” Remus allows, tipping the pan and spooning out the mixture into the pie shell; it looks a whole lot like slop at the moment, but it’s going to be delicious. “When you think about it, what I’m really doing here is setting them up for success by letting her stay at mine and not have a loud roommate there to ruin the mood.” 

“Well, you’re a selfless paragon that way,” Sirius delivers, tapping his spork against the side of his saucepan as Remus finishes evening out the spread of his own pie fixings with his stir spoon. “‘Course, this is contingent on whether or not they’ve already sealed the deal by now.” 

“You’re right,” Remus allows, heading to the sink to pour a bit of water from the faucet into the frying pan and leaving it to soak. “And if that’s the case, they’ll be over there plenty as is; even better.” 

Sirius gives a glance over his shoulder to Ma and Pa Lupin as he turns his own burner off, catching quite the inaudible exchange happening over at the table, the former’s expression is one of bamboozlement whereas the latter’s expression is more on the amused side of things. 

“What’d I tell you?” he raises. “Mystery solved.” 

“There was never a mystery,” Remus chimes in, moving back to the counter to fit the top layer of dough onto the pie as Sirius pours out the top layer of his relegated pie with a gleeful smile hidden away from the two at the table; if Remus won’t look at him right now, at the very least he can take full appreciation in his rebuttals. 

“Oh, stop; yes, there was,” Hope returns. 

“There was never anything happening there, mum,” Remus keeps on, working to pinch around the rim of the pie with his fingertips. “No, you know what, if you really need more, she snogged me once, way back in November, but I put a stop to it because I really like her as a friend.” 

“Oho,” Lyall puts in, directly echoing what Sirius would love to have voiced, but Lyall has it taken care of. 

“What?” Hope returns. 

“Yeah, you know, friends?” Remus puts up, using the prongs of a fork that was set nearby to press six vent holes into the center of the pie crust. “You’ve a few of those yourself.” 

Lyall puts out a boisterous hoot, evidently enjoying every moment of this. “Oh, stop it, you,” Hope sends him. 

“You’re the one who’s been humming about them for ages now, and for what?” Lyall raises. 

“Oh, I don’t know, what could it have been,” Hope pretends to ponder. 

“I’m just saying I was right,” Lyall trills. “The boy doesn’t date.” 

Sirius breathes in long, pressing his mouth together tightly so not to bark out a powerful one as he sets down his saucepan. “OK, here’s what’s going to happen,” Remus asserts, turning from his picture-perfect pie to clap once in their direction, “when I find a place to stay, you’ll find out, and when I find someone worth introducing to you, I’ll do just that, so until either of those happen, keep the commentary to yourselves, you Muppets.” 

And being on the sidelines of one colourful family debate has never felt this good before; Sirius brings the both of his hands up to press them over his mouth, shuts his eyes, and beams behind his hands, finally finding the punchy beat of _A Little Respect_ completely apt for the energy coursing through his veins. 

“Alright,” Hope returns, an actual surrender this time, Sirius hopes.

“Marley and Marley are done here,” Lyall finishes. 

“Good,” Remus snips back, lifting the pot pie and carrying it around the back of Sirius to get it to the stove, but Sirius slides to the right, pulling the oven door open for him. 

Remus reaches the pie in and Sirius reaches his free hand underneath Remus’ wrists to block them from hitting the oven door. “Don’t want you to burn, now,” he says with it, and he doesn’t, but he’s also looking for any excuse to touch him. 

Remus straightens up, heads back to the counter for his phone, and thumbs around on the screen, likely setting the alarm for the pot pie, and Sirius shuts the oven door, links his forefingers behind his back, and sidles back to the counter, bumping Remus’ right arm with his left one even when it’s a risky move, but he’s got a good reason aside from wanting to be in his orbit. 

“She’s ready,” he imparts, smiling there. 

Remus looks up at the counter, blinks twice, and flickers his gaze toward the fridge. “Sorry, it just needs to go in there until we’re ready for it,” he extends. 

“No sorries,” Sirius replies, picking up the pie and scooting it toward the fridge. 

Lyall puts up a grand huff. “Sirius, if you could get him to stop saying that so much, I’ll buy you that rose gold bicycle,” he tosses out. 

“Well, not that I’m letting you do that,” Sirius prefaces, moving in behind his chair to get at the fridge, “but I’ve been working on him, trust.”

“It’s true, I say it far less than I used to,” Remus puts in pointedly. 

It takes Sirius a moment or three to sift a few things around on the top shelf in order to create enough space to fit the pie onto it, glances up as he moves back from the doorway to shut the fridge door, and watches Remus stare pointedly out the window above the sink as he lets the pot for potatoes fill up with water. 

Sirius fishes his phone out of his back right pocket, thumbs through it as he heads up by Remus’ left, and pulls up the photo James sent along to him, tilting the screen toward him. Remus blinks back into the room, looks over at Sirius’ screen as he switches off the tap, and pushes a verklempt breath through his nose. “No, that’s too cute,” he returns, shutting his eyes. 

“Nope, I want you to look directly at it,” Sirius instructs, smiling throughout. 

Remus dips out, too overcome to heed Sirius’ request, and carries the pot of water over to the bottom right burner before switching that up to the highest heat. 

“Who are?” Hope pipes up. 

Sirius smiles over at her, walks his phone up to the table, and reaches it toward her while putting it on an angle so Lyall can have a decent glimpse of it at the same go. “Is this him?” she trills, her eyes bright as she looks up from his screen.

“The one and only,” Sirius puts up proudly, sticking his phone back into his pocket.

“James is looking after her, then?” she asks. 

“The loud one? Yes,” Sirius assures, grinning. “He was more than happy to take her in.” 

“How is that breed?” Lyall puts in. 

Sirius puffs up like a proud papa might. “ “I mean, I can only speak to mine, I suppose, but he’s a dream.” 

“The absolute sweetest,” Remus echoes, stopping off at the dough station to pluck up Sirius’ saucepan to take to the sink. “So docile, but every now and again he gets all riled up, and it’s such a treat to watch.” 

“He does quite the spin cycle if he gets pumped up, true,” Sirius tacks on, “but in general he’s very calm; he’ll just come lay out over your lap despite his size which I’m over the moon about because that’s exactly what I wanted the second I set eyes on him.” 

“He’s fast, too, I’d wager,” Lyall raises. 

“Like the wind,” Sirius assures. 

Remus smirks there. “One time, we were walking him in the square near mine,” he raises, moving back start a pile of mixing utensils in the mixer bowl to carry back to the sink, “and these two miniature collies came up the path we were near and Tango took right off toward them and ended up dragging Sirius all the way over there.” 

“That stuff builds character,” Sirius puts in loftily. 

“And a sprained wrist,” Hope mentions, making a half-grimace. 

“It survived the turmoil,” Sirius passes along. “He’s just so friendly; loves little dogs, and cats evidently, and thank C— God that’s the case, right? They’ll be spending quite a bit of time together.” 

Remus makes a wan noise as he digs in the cupboard below the sink to procure a dish rack that he sets down just to the right of the sink, giving the stark impression he did not miss Sirius’ little near-flub, but thankfully the other two hardly blink when that would be one incredibly difficult inside joke to have to try to explain. 

“I’m so relieved they get on,” Hope says, nodding over at Remus plugging up the sink. “He was worried about it.” 

“Just a tad,” Remus echoes, running the taps before squeezing a glob of yellow dish soap into the sink, and there’s a lovely sense of normalcy to it that Sirius is happy to see when Remus’ typical clean-as-he-goes pattern is officially on full blast. “For naught, thankfully.”

“She runs the show really,” Sirius tacks on. 

Lyall snorts there. “Sounds like her.” 

Sirius nods emphatically. “He rather understood that from the moment they met, and these days they’re two peas.”

“Remember how loud Tom would sneeze every time she came near him?” Lyall raises. 

“Well, it was less about her personally and more the general feline allergy, but yes,” Remus grants. 

“That could never me,” Sirius puts it plainly. 

Remus gives a plain laugh there. “I’ve a sense you’d suffer through it even if you did have an allergy.” 

“Too right I would,” Sirius returns, turning and wandering over to his area to outwardly lean back against the counter and inwardly be right in Remus’ space. 

“You’re taking her while he’s away, aren’t you?” Hope verifies. 

“I certainly am,” Sirius returns brightly. “I love that cat; his departure at all even was contingent on my getting to look after her.” 

Remus breathes a laugh, looking over his left shoulder toward his mum and dad. “She likes him the most out of all of us, including me.” 

“Good, maybe without that one around to spoil her, she might trim down a little,” Lyall puts in. 

“I don’t know what you’ve got against voluptuous women, Lyall,” Sirius starts, but Hope’s heavy snort gets him laughing enough to not even bother finishing the thought. 

“I’ve tried, dad,” Remus defends. “I’ve weaned her down to a small cup twice a day and have dialed it back on the treats, but every time I turn my back, this one gives her three.” 

Sirius holds his head high, undeterred by blame. “She deserves them all,” he states, hanging his head on a tilt toward Remus. “Want me to dry?” 

“No no, I’ve got this,” Remus waves him off. “You can have your title back as potato king when they’re ready to go in if you’d like?” 

“That alright with you, Hope?” Sirius checks, looking over at her. 

“Oh, sure, I did my part,” Hope allows from the table. 

Sirius heads over to his prior spot at the table so he’ll be right by the stove for when the taters have to go in the pot, and by the sounds of it, it’ll be a few minutes, tops. “How are you liking your new position?” he asks, setting his arms on the table and facing Hope at an angle.

Hope visibly reels. “I—” she starts, blinking there. 

“I was over at his when you rang about it,” Remus offers from the sink. 

Sirius nods. “I was very excited to hear the news,” he slides in. 

Hope does an eerily similar raise of her shoulder line the way Remus does when he’s rather touched. “I’m really liking it,” she offers. “I’ve a team of six to look after now, and that was daunting at first when I used to be one of the team, but I’m settling in pretty well, I think.” 

Lyall gives a wan noise from the other end of the table. “She’s underselling,” he translates. 

“Mhm,” Sirius hums there, tossing his right thumb toward Remus’ back. “That one likes to do that himself, so I’ve had some practice with it.”

Remus turns his head back toward them to showcase a royal smile. “Got me.” 

Sirius hums three melodic notes, looking back to Lyall. “How was work?” he asks. “Did you fix up that wagon?” 

Lyall gives a frank laugh. “That’ll be in the shop all weekend, the way it’s looking,” he says for it before he pitches his voice louder so Remus will be sure to hear it over the dishes. “That new kid’s a real thorn.” 

“Tell Sirius all about him,” Remus advises, a clear smile audible on his face. 

Sirius leans further into the table to suggest peak intrigue, garnering an amused note out of Hope between the two of them, and Lyall hums a thoughtful note, giving an idle scratch at the right side of his jaw. “How am I to put it?” he raises, giving a sigh. “He’s fresh out of school, read one manual on car parts so of course he thinks he’s one fuck of an expert.”

“Oh, I know just the type,” Sirius returns, a wry smile on. 

“He was never hired to get anywhere near a vehicle,” Lyall puts down. “Bubba was trying to do a mate of his a favour and gave his son a job, but he’s more there to pass a wrench over, answer the phone, book appointments, that sort of thing, he wasn’t meant to stand by you while you work at the engine and give you pointers on how you can tighten your wrench game better — what does that mean? I don’t fucking know, but I’ve got a tight fist right here.” 

Lyall ends it by brandishing his right one stiffly like he’s giving a solid undercut, and that topping off an eloquent soliloquy like that one sends Sirius right into stitches. “I’d lose my shit,” he puts down. 

“I’m close,” Lyall assures. “I sent him off to run the car wash to get him out of my ear for a while.” 

“Hey, we saw him,” Sirius sends to Remus. 

“He didn’t look like he’s particularly enthused, so he might not be around too long,” Remus offers. “There’s that, at least.” 

“Good,” Lyall returns. “I’m sick of his bullshit, all that manual totting, and his voice: ’the safest way to get something done is inherently the best way—’”

“Oh, that’s just horrible,” Remus tosses up sardonically.

“—It’s is,” Lyall repurposes Remus' claim. “Who needs a fucking manual when they get updated so frequently that you can’t keep up with what’s an acceptable procedure before the next edition comes out, and then all we get are manual obsessed drones too afraid to pick up a tool without a pair of gloves on.” 

“Yes, yes, yes,” Sirius chants, loving this. 

“You should really be wearing gloves, Dad,” Remus says, turning from the sink to send a wildly bamboozled look toward Hope. “Are you hearing this?” 

“I’ve reminded him that many a time, but do you think he listens to me?” she returns. 

“I’m with you, Lyall,” Sirius sends him. “Sometimes you’ve just got to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.”

Lyall lifts his right forefinger to draw a line between the two of them. “You and me, and them,” he tacks on, excluding the other two from their club with a wave-off. 

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Sirius sends him. “I had the same sort of problem at my shop.” 

“OK, I will just take care of these, then,” Remus comes in quietly, coming for the cutting board on the table. 

“Oh, I can do it, hon,” Hope offers, lifting her chin from her hand. 

“You sit,” Remus instructs, carrying the pile of quarter-cut taters over to the stove to steer them into the pot. 

Hope sets her chin back in her hand again with a sigh. “Same sort of problem?” she prompts Sirius, getting a vehement agreement out of Lyall. 

“Bloke transfers in from another shop full of sticklers in May,” Sirius details, “bursts right onto the scene, no respect for seniority, no respect for titles, no respect for his coworkers, nitpicks his way around the place, and had a smart mouth to boot.” 

“Wasn’t particularly bright either, constantly picking fights with this one,” Remus puts in, tapping a finger at the line of Sirius’ left shoulder before taking the cutting board to the sink to wash up. 

“Not bright in the slightest,” Sirius echoes, feeling warm and vouched for. “Unnecessarily neat too, and I’m not talking out on the floor or behind the counter, I’m talking the backroom; he would go back there, see something out on the table, and toss whatever it was, half-finished drinks that were still being consumed, tried to toss a pair of my coworker’s shoes because he thought ‘they looked too old to be still warn around,’ and he chucked one of Remus’ pairs of sunglasses in the bin .”

“What?” Remus asks, winding around to look at him from the sink. 

“This was early June,” Sirius extends. “I knicked your red ones.” 

“Oh, those were five pounds, Sirius,” Remus forwards, reaching to put the cutting board into the drying rack. “Still chaotic of him to do that obviously, but they were not expensive at least.” 

“So?” Sirius raises. “They weren’t his; I left them on the table in back and went for them later on, saw no sunglasses on the table, found them in the bin by the desk, and when I went and confronted him about it, he said, and I quote, ‘your things are always in my way.’” 

“What’d you chuck out of his?” Lyall asks, the right man for the right questions. 

“His car keys.” Sirius smiles. 

Hope shifts her right hand over her mouth, smirking behind it while Remus sends out a long and lengthy _pfft._ “Five pound sunglasses versus a pair of car keys just doesn’t seem equal somehow,” he says, sticking the cutting board away in a cupboard below the counter.

“Those could have been free for all I care,” Sirius instills. “He’s lucky I didn’t have his shitbucket Cobalt compacted while he wasn’t looking—”

Lyall sends out a boomer of a laugh, leaning half out of his seat through his mirth, and Sirius is a hundred pound note all over again. “Twat would have deserved as much,” he says, settling back in his seat. 

“A twat is all he’ll ever be if you ask me,” Sirius accepts. “I’m glad I’m well shot of him; it was not a good time.” 

“Oh, what?” Hope raises. “It really seemed like you got on so well.” 

Sirius turns in his chair to stare at Remus accusingly. “You got that from her, didn’t you?” 

Remus lifts his hands rather evenly. “Bit of this, bit of that,” he says, weighing his hands as he heads back to the stove. 

He turns off the last burner and removes the boiling pot of potatoes over to the sink, leaving the pot inside of it while he goes on a hunt, procuring a strainer in due time from the second cupboard he tries. “I’m not saying I didn’t appreciate all of the ample counter space we’ve had for this venture, mum,” he prefaces, lifting the pot out of the sink to put the strainer in its place, “but you’ve moved quite a bit around here and I’m all turned around.” 

“Well, I’m sorry for that, but I got sick of the microwave being right out there on the counter and had to make room for it in one of the cupboards and then everything sort of had to get moved around,” Hope explains, rubbing the heel of her left palm over her left eye. 

“Watch; right as I get used to where everything is again, next time I visit there’ll be a new fixture in here that’s pushed everything around again,” Remus puts up, pouring the pot over the strainer. “Sirius, do you want to mash or get the gravy going?” 

“You know what I want,” Sirius returns. 

“Where’s the masher gone to, mum?” Remus puts up. 

“I think it’s in that one,” Lyall puts in, pointing to his best guess. 

Remus heads to it, has a gander inside, and chimes as he pulls it out, and Sirius gets up out of his seat, reaching to take the masher brandished in his honour. He grabs the milk off of the table and makes to grab the butter he remembers from the dough station, but Remus reaches for it on his way past and plunks it down by the sink for him. 

Sirius grins at him for the retrieval, sees the measuring cup Remus is reaching for near to the sink on the counter, and passes it over to him before grabbing the strainer out of the sink and scooting aside to let Remus get at the taps. He upends the strainer, letting the many chunks of potatoes cascade into the pot before setting the netted bowl aside. 

“Hey, mum, you want a job?” Remus asks, holding the measuring cup underneath the pouring spout. 

“Only if you’ll let me,” she chimes sweetly. 

“Table duty has an opening,” Remus returns, switching the tap off and heading back to the stove with the measuring cup while Hope scoots her chair back and leaves it by the sound of it. “Everything but the plates; I figure I’ll serve them from here and bring them in.” 

“OK, I can do that,” Hope agrees, passing behind Remus at the stove to get to the cupboards.

She sets four plates down on the counter by the stove before heading to the other side of the sink from Sirius to dig out the cutlery, bringing those to the table. Sirius eyeballs the amount of milk and butter to get the ball rolling before he begins The Mashing, meanwhile Remus whisks up a storm at the stove getting the gravy all mixed up before leaving it to heat while he sets about putting every last pie ingredient away save for the milk and butter Sirius is still likely going to add to the pot here and there. 

Hope comes back into the room after setting the cutlery on the table, heading for the cupboards once again. “I really can do a thing,” Lyall addresses from the table. 

“Fetch me my scotch, would you?” Hope asks haughtily, bringing down a glass from above. 

“Oho,” Lyall trills. “Where’s it?” 

“Table in the den,” Hope relays, cradling two glasses between her left arm and side as she reaches for a third, looking over at Sirius with a new smile on. “Would you like a glass?” 

“Of your gift?” he returns, smiling bright as he adds a splash more milk into the potatoes.

“Oh, stop that; of course,” Hope waves him off. Remus passes on the way to the fridge with the leftover blueberries and lifts a single finger as he goes by, and Sirius nods dutifully for it. “What about you, hon?” 

“No, none for me, thanks,” Remus declines. 

“Really?” Lyall raises, coming back into the kitchen. “I may have a glass; this is good stuff.” 

“Well, I’ve heard, but I’d get a migraine in no time and there goes dinner,” Remus extends, his head inside the fridge as he finds a spot to sit the package of blueberries. 

Sirius half looks at the increasingly mashing potatoes in front of him, half stares at Hope’s thoughtful expression in his right peripheral. “I thought that was just with red wine?” she raises. 

“It was at first,” Remus allows, straightening out and backing up to closing the fridge door, “but more recently spirits have been able to do it too, and I’d just rather not chance it.”

“No, no point in doing that,” Hope says, grabbing the fourth glass down from the cupboard and shifting her armload of glasses around. “There’s juice, milk obviously, and let me think, what else.”

“I’ve a pack of stouts in there, if you want one of those,” Lyall raises, carrying the box of Bowmore into the dining room with Hope following him in with the glasses in tow.

“Nah, keep it,” Remus forwards. “I saw the juice, so I’m already sold on that.”

Sirius looks over his left shoulder, giving Remus a thumbs up to suggest that went swimmingly, and Remus stops by while the parents are otherwise out of the room to give Sirius’ left forearm a quick trace with the fingertips of his own left hand. 

“Cool it, hotstuff,” Sirius sends him under his breath. Remus ducks his head through a smirk and reaches to silence the alarm tone blaring out of his trouser pocket, heading back to the stove while Sirius quickens the pace of his mashing hand. “Just a few more mashes.” 

Remus waves him off. “No rush,” he insists, putting the yellow mitts on and pulling the door open. “It’s still got to cool down as is.” 

Sirius mashes a few more times in a circular rotation as Hope comes back into the kitchen, going for the freezer to pull out a bag of ice and bring that to the table to plunk cubes in their glasses, and comes back into the kitchen again to stick the ice away again and bring out the carton of juice to bring back to the table for Remus. “I’ve got the juice.” 

“Thanks, mum,” Remus offers, leaving the pie on the potholder by the stove. 

Hope heads back to the dining room, and Sirius peeks over his shoulder as Hope takes the spot on the left end of the table and the only spot at the table that’s visible from the kitchen before she cracks the Bowmore open and pours out three glasses. Sirius smiles to himself, sticks the masher in the sink, and pauses, wondering if he ought to wash that and the strainer when Remus has been periodically washing dishes that have just been used this whole time. 

“Want me to do these real quick?” he asks, pointing between the two instruments in question. 

“Bring that pot over here and go sit,” Remus instructs, smiling over his shoulder with a single blink. 

“Excuse I?” Sirius returns, walking the pot over to the counter by the stove. “I’m here to serve—” 

“Sirius?” Lyall calls out from the other room. 

“Lyall?” Sirius echoes, looking over that way despite the fact that Lyall is hidden from view. 

“How’s the pub coming along?” he asks. 

“It’s more of an immersive experience,” Sirius raises, doing his best _David Rose_ and pulling a snort out of Remus. 

“Hneh?” Lyall sends him, evidently lost. 

Remus smirks even harder, nodding toward the dining room for Sirius to get in there, and well, and Sirius moves to hang out in the doorway between the two rooms should Remus soften on his stance in time. “It’s a three-in-one sort of deal,” he reiterates, looking down the table at Lyall on the other end of it from Hope, “it’s a music venue, a standardized pub, and as well as a more highbrow lounge situation, so it’s a bit of a blend of settings.” 

“Well, that’s exciting,” Hope puts up, looking up and over at him with the same sort of natural glee that he’s already seen on Remus so many times, and now he knows where he got it. 

“I’m really excited,” Sirius offers to that, smiling at her from the doorway. “Funny, though: if you’d asked if I’d be striking up a business venture even a year ago I’d have scoffed you out of the room, and now look.”

“It helps who you’re teaming up with, I’m sure,” Remus offers from the stove. 

“It does, definitely,” Sirius lets land, feeling understood from his head to his toes. “Once we knew we wanted to go in together on a place, I sort of lifted the initial idea of off this pub I wandered into once, and it’s got a club setting on the top floor, your standard dive bar on the ground floor, and then there was a sneaky hallway that led to a library with tables built into the shelves; it was the strangest thing, but the place was bursting with people, and I think the mix of settings was so much of the draw of that place, and I wanted a blend similar to that but with a focus on live performance, and thankfully Andromeda loves that idea as much as I do.” 

“You could take or leave the lounge, though,” Remus quips. 

“Mhm, but that’s her section,” Sirius returns. “I’m more excited to be manning the bar meant for the venue side of things.” 

“Dad, you’d love what they’ve been doing,” Remus raises, sounding closer to Sirius than he did. 

“I already do,” Lyall tosses him. 

Remus puts out a wan laugh, scooting past Sirius’ left to leave the first plate on Hope’s placemat. “More than you already do,” he amends. “See, Ted’s got a ton of connections in radio, and so they’ve been able to partner up with one of the radio stations out there that was looking to pair up with a venue so that artists on their catalogue would be able to perform in an intimate setting so that there’s a novelty to calling in and winning tickets to these intimate shows that they’re advertising for, and some are going to be up and coming artists and some will be well-established acts in the city that have a built in audience already, so not only are they already booking shows for early fall, these two are getting free promo for their venue/pub/lounge hybrid out of this before they’re even slated to open, and that’s on top of the sort of novelty that the place would already have because it’s such a mixed bag.” 

Sirius sways in the doorway, warm in his cheeks over seeing Remus’ dinner plate eyes paired with this. “Oh, I do love that,” Lyall sends Sirius. “Get them to do half the work.” 

Sirius puts out a bright laugh. “I won’t pretend that same thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” he says, flickering his gaze to Remus as he passes him for the kitchen again and pressing his mouth in a firm line so he cannot lean in for the passing smooch he sorrily wants to plant on him, “but really I’m quite impressed by how that’s gone over so far, they’re booking shows left and right, so between the shows sponsored by the station and the local talent that we’re looking to book ourselves, we’re going to have our hands full in the fall, but in the way I want them to be.” 

“You know you can sit, yeah?” Remus checks. 

“I was staying standing in case you changed your mind about letting me help,” Sirius counters. 

“I’m not going to,” Remus doubles down, a smile audible as he heads for the stove again. 

“Here, hon,” Hope raises, placing Sirius’ scotch glass on by the place mat to the right of her seat and on the side of the table he’s already on. “When are you slated to open?” 

Sirius moves to take the seat, folding his arms over the table. “Well, we’ve still got a few big improvements to make that seem to constantly pop up the second we finish another,” he starts, smirking with the flat, amused noise that comes from Lyall’s end of the table, “but we’re projecting late August, and we’re on the trajectory for it barring any unforeseen circumstances—” Hope and Lyall both knock pointedly on the dining room table there, “—yes, fair enough, and our first booked show by the station is slated for the second week of September, so that’s the absolute that’s looming over us all, but we’ll have it done by then, I’m certain.” 

“How are you handling all of that and the shop?” Hope asks. 

Sirius beams bright. “Well, I had my last day Wednesday, so I’m free as a bird, as they say,” he offers. “Well, after this trip; I expressly asked Andromeda not to bring me any shop talk while I’m away unless the building is literally burning down.” 

Hope and Lyall both thunder another series of knocks into the table as Remus comes into the room again. “Thank you; my hands are full,” he sighs, moving to leave it in front of Sirius. “You know what, I should just put one in myself.” 

Sirius huffs a laugh as Remus raps the knuckles of his left hand on the table. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he insists. 

“Not now, it won’t,” Remus returns, looking around at the lot of them. “Don’t wait for me.” 

Lyall picks up his fork and cuts off the point of his pie slice with it while Hope and Sirius remain quite set on waiting for Remus to get back. “What were you doing before Wednesday?” Lyall asks, a crease between his brow. 

“He’s a wizard,” Remus answers for him from the kitchen. 

“I mean, yes,” Sirius allows, “but also, it wasn’t too bad; my manager was kind enough to let me drop some hours, so I only had to do Friday/Saturday there, which opened up more time for me to be around the venue.” 

Finally, Remus comes into the room with a plate for himself, going around back of Hope’s chair and taking the spot across from Sirius. “I see only one of you listened to me,” he observes lightly, scooting his chair in more toward the table, and there Hope and Sirius reach for their forks. 

“Good pie,” Lyall tosses him. 

Remus spares him a tip of the head with a more genuine smile there as he twists the cap off of the juice carton. “He taught me how to make it,” he says, nodding to Sirius as he pours himself a glass. 

“Then I take it back from you and I give it to him,” Lyall returns, putting another bite in his mouth, and Remus nods for permission to do just that, setting the carton of juice aside and tucking in. 

“Were you sad to go?” Hope asks, her gaze set on Sirius. 

Remus laughs around a bite of pie, shaking his head for him. “He’s right, I wasn’t too beat up about it to be honest,” Sirius extends. “I put my time in, it was a good era, but now I move on to tending a different sort of bar than I was, only I can’t keep the tips anymore.”

”Shucks,” Remus sounds out, and Sirius resists the urge to start a game of footsie underneath the table. 

“Well, if you’re going to be working the bar, then you should know ahead of time that you’re going to be in for a lot of impromptu counselling sessions,” Lyall puts down knowingly. “I tended when I was your age and you just wouldn’t believe the things I heard just because I was the man pouring the sauce.” 

Sirius snorts as he’s in the middle of going for a bite of mashed taters and gravy, ducking his head through a breathy laugh; how the fuck is he supposed to eat with all three Lupins at a table with him? He didn’t think this through enough. “I will say, I’m quite used to that after so many years there,” he offers. “My name tag may as well have read _your therapist_ for how many things I heard from basic strangers that I did not ask for.” 

“It’s quite a sight to see,” Remus puts in, smiling there. “He’s got this pleasant smile from the cheeks down, but if you look closely at his eyes—”

“No life,” Sirius comes in, passing his left hand in front of his face. “He’s way better at getting through a piece of unfortunate information to have to contend with than I am, but it’s a double-edged sword, you see, because so often they find him.” 

Remus smirks around a sip off his juice, nodding heavily, and there Sirius goes for a bite of pie and ultimately regrets that decision. “I don’t know what it is about this,” he says, circling his free hand around his visage, “but it says to people: ‘hi there, tell me all about your recurring problem with goiters, please; I’d love to hear it.’” 

Sirius coughs around his bite, pulling up the collar on his Henley and hiding half his face beneath it as he realigns with breathing patterns again. “Is that a real example?” Hope asks tentatively. 

“Mhm, it is,” Remus hums brightly to affirm, and Sirius shuts his eyes tight. 

“Wow,” Lyall puts in, pointing to Remus with his fork, “moving right past that horrid thought, I think we’re losing him.”

Sirius shakes his head no as he works to swallow his mouthful down the right tube. “He finds us very funny,” Remus extends. 

“We’re not even putting on the ritz,” Lyall raises. 

“Doesn’t matter, I’ve learned,” Remus returns. “We all might have to stop talking at all in order for him to successfully eat.” 

Sirius comes out from his hiding, resolved to push through. Hope goes for a bite, chews, chews, swallows, and makes a contented noise. “This really is great pie,” she tells the room. 

“Does it taste better knowing you didn’t have to lift a finger to get it?” Sirius raises, lifting his glass for a sip off his scotch.

“I’ve mixed feelings about it,” Hope returns him, and Sirius smirks around his drink before Hope looks over at Remus with a newly intrigued hum. “Did you get to the Farmer’s Market today?” 

“No, we didn’t go down that way yet,” Remus forwards, and this does seem like a topic Sirius is safe to resurface for and maybe even eat through, how about that. 

“Your jam’s back, that’s why I asked,” Hope extends airily. 

“Your what?” Sirius asks before he sticks a new bite in his mouth. 

“They sell this strawberry rhubarb jam that’s unfathomably good,” Remus details. “I’d eat that on death row.” 

Sirius smirks around his bite, able to swallow this one down. “Just spoon it from the jar?” he raises. 

Remus hums a laugh. “I was more thinking I’d put it on toast, but sure,” he returns. “It’s that good.” 

“Do you want to go tomorrow?” Sirius asks. 

Remus piques, getting a good two-thirds of the way through a nod before looking between his mum and dad. “Is it OK if we take off for a bit during the afternoon?” he checks. 

“Why are you asking?” Lyall whispers.

Remus huffs a laugh. “Well, we did just get here,” he puts up. 

“Well, you’re going to have to go tomorrow or Sunday, aren’t you?” Hope raises. 

Remus nods for that. “It’s true, they’re only open Friday/Saturday/Sunday,” he lets Sirius know. 

“Then tomorrow it is,” Sirius deems it, thunking his scotch glass on the table as if it’s a gavel. “Afternoon-ish?”

“Yeah, you can sleep right in,” Remus assures with a smirk before looking between his mum and dad. “Could we snag a vehicle for it? My legs are sore from riding to town.” 

Sirius is grateful he didn’t have a single thing in his mouth just then when Remus absolutely chose that wording solely to fuck with him. “You can take mine,” Hope offers. “Just make sure you set the rearview mirror back the way I like it, please.” 

“Hold me to it,” Remus instructs, pointing at Sirius with the prongs of his fork.

“You’ll remember,” Sirius insists, but he files that away in the small, off-chance Remus doesn’t, taking a solid bite of his potatoes while he can.

“Have you decided on Porthgain?” Hope asks, looking between the two of them. Sirius nods emphatically around his bite while Remus simply lets a breathy laugh and nod combo speak for them. “Oh, good; I checked the weather would be there for you and it’s supposed to be gorgeous this weekend.” 

Remus puts out a laugh there, looking between Hope and Lyall. “Just the weekend?” he checks. “Only we thought we’d stick around here for it and start out Monday, stay there overnight, come back Tuesday evening-ish.” 

“Oh, no, the weather out there really takes a dive on Tuesday,” Hope supplies. “You’ll be wet and chilled to the bone.”

“Well, I don’t want that for me,” Remus puts down plainly. “I just thought it’d be a bit rude to show up and then drive right off into the distance without much else.” 

“Hon, I was able to get the full week off,” Hope extends, nodding across the table at Lyall. “He even got it. too.” 

“You did?” Remus asks, looking quite charmed by it. “I was hoping you’d be able to, but I didn’t want to expect anything ahead of time.” 

Lyall nods from his end of the table, sitting easy in his seat with his scotch glass raised in his right hand. “Bubba owed me a favour,” he delivers.

“King,” Sirius calls him. 

Lyall blinks over his way. “It’s a compliment,” Remus forwards him. 

“Well, I didn’t think he was insulting me somehow,” Lyall offers. 

“Good, ‘cause I’d never,” Sirius extends him. 

“Really, hon,” Hope comes in. “There’s plenty of days ahead.”

Remus nods to let her point land, looking back toward his mum. “OK,” he surrenders, though he puts in one more quick point. “I just don’t want you feeling like a stop at a motel along the way.” 

“That’s a new one,” Lyall mentions. “Will you be paying us for your stay?” 

“I will not,” Remus lets him know, lifting a forkful of potatoes toward his mouth. 

“Good, keep saving,” Lyall instructs. 

Remus nods dutifully around his chewing, swallows, and looks over the table at Sirius. “Did you want to go Sunday?” he asks, a curious gaze set on Sirius and still trying to work out a plan. 

“I’m open to anything, boss,” Sirius sends him, swirling the ice at the bottom of his glass. “Let’s not have you frozen.” 

Remus looked over toward his dad. “Is the truck offer on the table?” 

“If you don’t crash it,” Lyall puts forth. 

“Shit, there goes the other plan,” Remus muses. “Well, OK; it takes about two hours to get out there, so if we left mid-morning, we’d have the whole day ahead.” 

Sirius nods there, Saturday night’s plan still lit up in his head. “Will you be good to drive that early?” he checks, putting his head on a tilt. 

“Yeah, so long as I get a good sleep,” Remus extends. 

“Well, then, I’ll make sure you turn in at a reasonable time, then,” Sirius gives, lifting his glass for a gesture of cheers. 

With that rework of their schedule, Sirius focuses on the task of getting his meal in him, but he will say one thing, his stomach is doing some Olympic level flips the closer the others get to finishing their plates and the closer they get to the main event, but then, if he lags behind, then he’ll be the sole reason for drawing it out, and no thank you. 

He finishes his plate last for certain but not by a large margin, just about when Remus has gotten up to clear his parent’s plates and forgoed taking Sirius along for the first trip back to the kitchen. Sirius tackles his last bite of potatoes, lifts his plate with a tremendously bright smile when Remus comes back for it, and Remus specifically meant to brush hands as he takes Sirius’ plate off his hands before heading back to the kitchen. 

“Has everyone got room for dessert?” Remus checks from the kitchen, and there Sirius’ stomach wilts, having not even contended with the idea that either parent may be too full to bother, but thankfully both Hope and Lyall confirm they’re still quite interested. “Would anyone like a cup with theirs?” 

“I’d love one,” Hope takes him up. 

“If you’re making a pot, I’ll take one,” Lyall sends him. 

“I’ll make a pot,” Remus assures. “Sirius?” 

“I mean, I’ll take one if you happen to pour a fourth cup,” Sirius extends. 

“I’ll bring the pot in with me, then,” Remus forwards. 

Sirius shifts a bit in his seat as he hears Remus fill up the kettle at the sink, his body thrumming with all this brimming anticipation with nowhere for it to go until Remus has dolled out the pie plates and cups of tea, and it doesn’t make all that much sense when he’s waited months on end for this moment to come, long before Remus even put the plan into motion. and by that account he should easily be able to coast along just a little longer for a kettle to heat up, and yet he finds himself folding his hands in his lap underneath the table, thinking he might have found a window into how Remus feels about quite a few areas of his life. 

Remus comes back into the room with two small plates in either hand, leaving one in front of his mum and walking the other over to set it in front of Lyall, who goes ahead and starts in on it. Remus stops there, poised to speak, but he did tell everyone not to wait for him for the first round of pie, and the quick but pointed smile he sends to Sirius suggests he rather got there himself with it, and thanks be to Remus’ deep well of patience even at this most delicate time. 

Sirius gives him a quick, eager smile in return, thinking Remus could likely use even just a little more reassurance, and looks brightly over to Lyall as he puts out a grandiose noise. “You make a damn good pie,” he tosses Sirius, who grins over at him in thanks. 

“Wow, thanks, Dad,” Remus returns, heading into the kitchen. 

“I already told you yours was good,” Lyall sends him. 

“No no, I see how it is,” Remus keeps on, but the smile audible on his face rather takes away from any possible offense taken. 

He returns with the last two plates in due time, leaving the first in front of Sirius, who has to reign it in when he feels the immediate urge to plant a kiss on Remus’ arm, but that’s rote memory for you. Remus heads around to his side of the table to leave his plate on his placemat, and then the rotary phone in the hall, the other in the kitchen, and a digital ring from what Sirius has to assume is the den all ring out at once, garnering Lyall to scoff big time. 

“Tell ‘em to fuck off,” he tosses out. 

Now, Hope hardly blinks at the outburst as she gets up out of her chair and moves through the kitchen to get to the den, but Sirius and Remus find each other’s gaze at once across the table, duck their heads, and lose it simultaneously, and leave it to Lyall to cut through some of the the increasing tension coursing through both their veins. 

Sirius lifts his head again, taking in his best attempt at a full, uninterrupted breath, but Remus is actively snickering back there in the kitchen as he answers the call of the kettle, and that’s making it difficult for Sirius to not get pulled back into it, but he does attempt to stifle it so not to make various honking noises while Hope’s officially taken the call. 

“Who’s it?” Lyall puts up, apparently not fussed over cutting in, but he’s a legend that way. 

“It’s Do; do you still want me to send that along to her for you?” Hope checks, holding the cordless phone in the doorway of the den. 

“Oh,” Lyall puts out, ducking his own head through a tight snort. “No, you just tell her hello for me.” 

“Mhm,” Hope returns, pressing to answer the call. “Hey, hon; how are you holding up?” 

Sirius looks round to glance toward the den right as Remus moves into the dining room with a rotund teapot covered in another chaotically colourful knitted tea cosy in one hand and four mugs all hanging from a different finger on his other one, and Sirius would’ve found it just the funniest sight if Remus’ brow if he didn’t give a frown back at his mum. 

“What’s happened?” he asks, sending a deeply concerned gaze over to Lyall as he moves to set the pot and mugs at the center of the table. 

“The papers came in yesterday,” Lyall forwards, his mouth all twisted up in a grimace.

Remus gives him a similar grimace, looking toward his mum again, only he doesn’t have to glance very far this time, and Sirius looks over his shoulder to find Hope standing in the dining room doorway, an absolutely torn-up expression that he knows he’s seen on Remus when he’s been put between a rock and a hard place. 

“Hold on, OK?” she says into the receiver, dropping it away from her mouth there and covering it with her other hand, “Hon, can I—”

Hope cuts off, letting a grimace similar to both Remus and Lyall’s speak for it, and Remus nods, gesturing with a gentle hand. “We’ll wait for you,” he contends, and that’s Remus right there, putting his own stuff on hold. 

“No, don’t,” Hope insists, “have your pie.”

“No no, we’ll wait,” Sirius comes in. 

“Tell her I’m sorry,” Remus extends, moving to take his seat.

Hope nods, blowing them a quick kiss before she gestures back toward the den where she heads to take the call. “Have you spoken to Phil at all?” Remus asks, standing by the table as he fiddles with a button midway down his new cardigan. 

“Yeah, I did last night,” Lyall affirms, gesturing for the teapot that Remus then hands over to him along with one of the mugs. “It’s a rough spot to be in — well, no, of course they've got it worse in this case—” 

Remus nods, coming in there. “I knew what you meant,” he offers, folding his hands in his lap. “It’s tough when we rather like the both of them, and it would probably be easier if we didn’t.” 

“Well, exactly,” Lyall accepts. “It’d be another thing too if he were getting some sick joy out of the whole thing, right, but he’s not having a party over there; he just can’t keep it up anymore, but on her end, it’s like she's back at square one with it the second the papers came in.” 

“I’m sure,” Remus allows, giving a wounded expression. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter how much time they had to prepare when the papers must feel so final.” 

“Mhm,” Lyall returns round a new piece of pie. “She’s having a tough go.” 

“Where’s he been staying?” Remus asks. 

“He’s still in London,” Lyall passes along, “and Do’s been at her mum’s for a couple weeks now, taking a bit of time away.” 

Remus nods there, but Sirius would like a bit more help along. “Where’s Do’s mum’s place?” he puts in. 

“In Cardiff,” Remus offers him. 

Lyall looks over at Sirius there, swallowing his bite with a frown on. “Sorry, Sirius,” he offers. “I’m sure this is a bit of a drag, but they’re old friends.” 

“No, I know,” Sirius insists. “I’m quite invested in this tale.” 

Remus makes a sheepish little face across the table from him. “He came over after we got off the phone and got quite an earful about it,” he extends rather bashfully, “but it was just so strange thinking that could happen to them, and it still is in a lot of ways.” 

Lyall gives a heavy sigh/nod combo before lifting a new bite of pie up to his mouth, but he pauses with it held in the air. “Seriously, you two,” he says, looking between them. “You’re missing out on this pie.”

“Mum,” Remus raises, gesturing his right hand toward the den. 

“She really wouldn’t want you two holding out for her,” Lyall puts in there. “If anything, I’m sure it’ll fuss her more knowing you’re waiting.” 

Sirius and Remus look to each other there, pick up their forks, and cut off the smallest piece on both their pies, and Sirius smiles a bit around his bite as he finds Remus chewing as slowly as he is. 

Lyall, on the other hand, is loving this fucking pie which is a massive compliment that Sirius will take right to the heart, but that also means he’s finished his slice before either of them even get through their third, incredibly sped-down bites. 

He has the lasts of his tea, sticks his fork over his pie plate, and glances down the table towards Hope’s very lonely pie slice, and huffs a sigh. “This is silly,” he says, lifting out of his seat and taking his plate along with him as he rounds the table to pick up Hope’s plate. 

“That’s mum’s slice,” Remus quips, and Lyall sure takes it as the joke it sounds like, but offers an explanation for what he’s doing which is really what Remus was trying to get out of him with that plain observation. 

“Well, she might as well be eating while she’s playing therapist, no?” Lyall counters, walking his plate to the sink before taking hers out to the den for her. 

Sirius isn’t going to say it’s not inherently sweet just how evident it is that Lyall fusses quite a bit over his wife, but Jesus Cunt, there goes dessert. He laughs tightly there because he’s got no other ideas for the moment, looking to Remus for some exchange of support. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus mouths to him. 

Sirius gestures like he’s lobbing that right back at him before looking round as Lyall speaks again. “Well, listen,” he says, turning up in the doorway again. “That call’s not ending anytime soon, I’m sensing, so as far as permission goes, you boys are free have at it and I’m going to get started on the lawn.” 

Remus’ ability to not completely self-destruct just there is fucking admirable. ”Dad, I’ll do it in a bit,” he says, controlled. 

“Right, or I could just go do it now,” Lyall returns. 

“It’s not that bad, dad,” Remus insists. 

“It really isn't,” Sirius echoes. 

“Well, that’s appreciated,” Lyall extends, holding his right hand out to him for it, “but our lawn looks like a bucket of shit and we’ve a guest; I put it off long enough” 

Sirius lifts his hands as Lyall heads for the den. “Believe me, I don’t find it does,” he offers, but he gets nadda in reply for it. 

Sirius looks to Remus as Remus looks to him, and the moment the back door shuts behind Lyall, it’s on; the two of them lift out of their seats at once, head down their respective sides of the table, and take the same fast right out of the dining room, heading for the bathroom off of the to regroup. 

“It’s like herding cats,” Remus hisses to him, shutting the door quietly behind them. 

“What do we even do?” Sirius hisses back, turning to face him. “_I_ didn’t even plan for this.” 

“Well, we can’t tie them up and force them to stay in the same room as us though I’d fucking love to right about now,” Remus returns in a harsh whisper, flapping his hands around in front of Sirius. “I can’t control any of this.” 

Sirius reaches up to hold them at the sides of Remus’ face, wanting to do away with that horribly sick look on his face. “You literally tried everything you could,” he puts down. “I’d be a real fucking prat not to have noticed it, don’t you think?” 

Remus shuts his eyes through the nod he forces himself to give him. “I really did,” he gives him, and that’s good enough, Sirius can mend this. 

“That wasn’t you not doing enough, that wasn’t you leaving me in a sinking ship, and that definitely wasn’t them not giving a shit about you being home,” Sirius keeps on. “That right there is the biggest point I want you to keep in mind, OK? You know that you’re dying to get this out, I know you’re not getting cold feet, so that’s us completely on board with each other, but the fact is, they can’t know that they’re trampling over a plan they know about, right?”

“Right,” Remus lets land through a sigh, reopening his eyes. 

“Exactly,” Sirius says, dropping his right hand to the lapel of Remus’ cardigan and smoothing it out between his middle and forefinger. “To them, we all caught up, we had dinner, and dessert was a bit of a bust, yes, but your mum was clearly torn between, and your dad clearly just -”

“That’s just my fucking dad for you,” Remus raises tightly. “He just decides he’s doing something, and you can try to take it off his hands for him but good luck with that, and I love that about most of the time even if it makes me huff up a storm, but not right now; I don’t appreciate it right now.”

“I know you don’t, and yet here you are still making room for the fact that he’s a wildcard, so you’ve successfully isolated both issues here,” Sirius accepts, “he’s allowed to be ignorant of the fact that we’ve some important news to share, but you’re also allowed to find it fucking annoying right now, OK? So with that said, we’ve got to focus on what we’re going to do next.” 

“Plunge off a steep hill,” Remus offers plainly.

“Well, we’re not going to be doing that,” Sirius puts down, tugging once on Remus’ lapel. “So here’s _my_ proposal: we let her finish up with her unconsolable friend and hope that her kindness and understanding for said friend extends to her son and his beau, we let him do the fucking lawn so he stops thinking about how he still has to do it because clearly it’s bugging him, and we just need to reconfigure the plan, not get rid of it. So what if it’s not around a table with pie as the commonality between us all? We don’t have to change any of what we’re going to say just because the walls in the room might look different, we can still sit them down in any room we can get them in for even ten fucking minutes and tell them exactly what this is, and that part doesn’t have to change, OK?” 

Remus gives out a heavy, audible breath as he nods for him, and then goes the extra mile, reaching to tug Sirius in closer by the belt loops of his jeans, and Sirius leans up for the kiss he’s more than ready to seal all of that with, but Remus simply stuffs the lower half of his face against the line of Sirius’ left shoulder, giving him a tight squeeze. “You’re right,” he says, to Sirius and himself. “We don’t need fanfare, we don’t need pie or a table to hold hands around; we need us and we need them, and maybe that’s the point.” 

Sirius squeezes him just as tightly and puts a bit of a sway into the hug, thinking that made him feel that much better when Remus did that with him and wanting to return the favour best he can. “I love you,” he whispers, turning his head to leave a kiss at Remus’ left temple. “You know that?” 

Remus makes a slight, overcome noise as he nods best he can. “I love you too,” he whispers back, swaying along with him. “Do you want to go help him with the lawn?”

Sirius’ galaxy-brain is activated at once. “That’ll make the job go quicker, but do you think he’d let me?” he raises, lips pressed to the shell of Remus left ear. 

“If you go for the standard mower and start from the opposite end that he’s going from, I’m not sure he’ll be able to do much to stop you,” Remus raises. “Be a nice taste of his own medicine, I’ll say that.” 

“I love your petty side,” Sirius extends, pressing a kiss just below Remus’ ear. “I’d better get going, then.” 

Remus nods, pulls back to shake himself out, and looks to Sirius. “I’ll get those dishes done while you’re doing that. 

Sirius winces. “No, that’s not fair,” he implores. “Leave them for me.”

“I did a ton of them already, so there’s not that much left anymore,” Remus says, looking over his shoulder as he leaves the bathroom and reaches back to brush his left hand over Sirius’. “Plus, knowing my mum, she’ll wander in there and start doing them and we’ll have a hell of a time pulling her away from them.” 

“Well, when you put it that way, you’d better get out there before she gets any ideas,” Sirius returns, and Remus smirks, turning to open the bathroom door and reaching behind him for Sirius’ hand as he moves into the hall. 

The two of them squeeze each other’s hand back and forth as they move along the left side of the dining room table and split apart at the other end of it, Remus going for the dishes still still left on the table while Sirius moves to go through the kitchen, but pauses in the doorway, turning round to point at Remus, making him go still. 

“You save me that slice,” he instructs. 

Remus’ face lights up with a smile. “I’ll wrap it up for you.” 

“Good man,” Sirius calls him, heading into the den from there. 

He scoots in toward the back door, offering a smile at Hope sitting in the armchair with the cordless pressed to her right ear and half a pie slice on the plate in her lap, and the moment she sees him she offers a thumbs-up-point-down toward the pie, and Sirius puts his hand over his heart to showcase where he’s just put that. 

Hope hums quietly along to the voice on the other end of the line that’s really only phonetics to Sirius’ ears, and he heads for the door, pausing at the mat and thinking Remus would have a literal cow and a half if he tried mowing the lawn in his bare feet. He looks to the right, tugs open the wood panelled door there, and peeks inside what he assumed would be a closet, finding he’s quite right about that. 

Below a row of hanging jackets and woolly jumpers are a fair few pairs of shoes, some very evidently Hope’s and he passes on those, studies the massive shoes that could belong to either Remus or Lyall, but he studies a pair of frayed loafers and decides they have a Remus vibe to them, but he ought to check to be sure. 

He reaches into the closet to pull them out by the heels, steps back from the closet, and holds them up in Hope’s direction, pointing to the kitchen with his free hand, and gets a quick nod from her for the unspoken question. 

He flashes her a winning smile, sets them down to foot them on, and slides the closet door shut, slipping out the back door. 

******

It would be one massive understatement to suggest that Remus never had an easy time with having to give bad news. Understatement of the century even, but as Remus cleared the rest of the dishes on the table and brought them back to sink to get them going, he felt it something impossible to avoid thinking of, and in particular, the elation he had always felt about giving good news in contrast. 

It'd always been that way, throughout the eras of his life. Early on and as a tyke, he'd happily show his mum and dad the sticker on whatever project he did well on, particularly because they lit up with the news and that elation was infectious, spread out over him as well, and their reactions pulls the feeling they gave him likely reinforced him to continue doing just that. In secondary, he happily shone his Prefect's badge toward each of them after it'd come in the mail and celebrated how chuffed his mum was about it and took the heckling his dad gave him in stride when it was nearly impossible not to recognize the pride his dad felt for Remus' accomplishment. Years on, when he got his acceptance letter to uni and the possibility of taking his schooling to London became an actual, living possibility, he'd went and found the both of them in the den and bounced on the balls of his feet with the elation he felt over being able to make them proud of themselves for the work they did along with being proud of him. The most recent time Remus felt that elation was the time he rang the house straight after getting off the phone with Sirius, got his mum on the line, and had her get his dad on another line in the house so he could tell the both of them together that studying in Paris was no longer just a pipe dream of his anymore, and the response he got for it made his heart soar. 

Remus found himself smirking there, thought it rather funny for someone so terrible at receiving buckets of praise would find such elation in giving news that would generate buckets of praise, and while that's comedic in itself, it was always less about that. In part, he knew some of that intrinsic need to bring good news to them was to offset the years where bad news just kept coming, but if he went even deeper than that, it's inarguable: making them proud of him, and of themselves for raising him, was and continues to be so much a part of his identity. 

In contrast to that elation he felt sharing good news with them, having to give them bad news brought on anguish for him, made him dread having to deliver it, and often made him shy away from having to. As a tyke, it was receiving a lower grade than he expected to and dreading that they'd find out during parent/teacher interviews once report cards would go out, scraping, cutting, or spraining something of his out on the trail and knowing he'd have to confess to hurting himself, knocking into and subsequently breaking something of sentimental value in the house and knowing he would have to fess up to it soon enough and would likely make his mum sad over it. As a teenager, it was receiving a lower grade than he expected to, developing his ulcer and feeling that he must take care of it himself, his unfortunate entanglement with mono and knowing he best keep that one to himself to avoid prying from his mum and heckling from his dad, his affinity for boys. As an adult away at uni, it was receiving a lower grade than he expected, a dismal medical history that just kept getting worse and worse with time, his relative poverty in his first year away and a little beyond that, his continuously confusing sexuality. Washing up then, Remus would have to say that as the years piled on, the dread was a constant cycling feeling inside of him for there was always some bad news circulating him in some form, the possibility of putting more on their plates made him feel sick, made him want to search for bright spots, drove him to continue creating good news to share instead. 

He would have loved to have gotten a better handle on that much earlier on, and he was well-aware that isolating the issues he's got doesn't mean he won't be fighting this for many years to come, it was immensely significant for him to note, while standing in the kitchen at the precipice of the biggest news he'd had in a long time, that dread he always associated with bad news was nowhere to be found inside of him. 

He could practically hear Sirius' would-be response to that particular realization: _That's because I'm great news, sweets,_ and practically-Sirius wouldn't be wrong about that one either. 

Remus quelled the smirk he fell into hearing that rattle around in his skull for his mum turned up just on his left with her empty plate to set just by the sink, an incredibly sheepish look about her while she still carried the cordless. Remus made to give her a pardon via a facial expression alone, but his mum shouldered the cordless, hummed into the receiver, and reached for the tea towel beside Remus' station, lifting it to suggest she was ready to finally be of some help. 

That was kind, of course, but Remus tugged the towel out of her grasp with his and nodded off to the right with his head, his right hand holding a dripping plate over the sink. His mum dropped the phone away from her mouth so her huff wouldn't get picked up, stalked off and into the dining room instead of the den, and Remus glanced over his right shoulder to be sure she wasn't storming off, finding her pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot on the table. His mum sipped pointedly off of her tea as she came out of the dining room and went straight into the den from there, and Remus couldn't help but smirk when her eyes were kind throughout her pointed sipping. He missed her so much. 

He turned back to the sink only to end up looking over the same shoulder yet again, but the sound of the back door opening and closing wasn't really what he'd expected. He leaned over to the right a bit, getting a decent shot of the armchair he remembered her sitting in a mere minute ago, and the only differences to the original image were that his mum was no longer in said chair and her knitting basket was no longer down by the side of the chair. 

Well, good for her then; she might as well knit while being someone's ear to lean on, and in truth, the image conjured up in Remus head of his mum holding a cup of tea in one hand, and a shouldered cordless, and the knitting basket hanging from the curve of an elbow so she could get the door open without asking for a shred of help with it was absolutely perfect and so very his mum. 

He turned back to the sink once and for all, determined to get this done. Thankfully, the glasses are already done, the plates would be with the finishing of the one he was currently on, the cutlery would soon follow, and all he'd have left to do would be pack up the leftovers and tackle the lasts of the pots and pans on the stove. All said and done, ten minutes of uninterrupted concentration was what it took to reset the kitchen to it's prior state, and Remus moved for the dining room and poured himself the cup he never did pour himself earlier, gave a trial sip, and found joy in it still being quite warm, but he had a sense the tea cosy helped out with that. 

He headed out of the dining room and into the den, liking the idea of being outside if everyone else was going to be, and leaves through the back door, blinking twice when he didn't hear the sound of the mower. He booked it down to the bend in the porch, tremendously hopeful that Sirius somehow managed to talk his dad out of bothering with the lawn, but when he rounded the bend at a purposefully relaxed clip he only saw his mum down at the other end of the porch, sitting in one of the deck chairs. 

He studied the scene around her, the cordless sitting on the table between the two chairs along with his mum's tea, his mum's knitting bag sitting in the chair on her right, and a new piece currently being woven together via her knitting needles. He started a stroll over toward her, casting a glance out at the yard for Sirius or his dad, but he wasn't having any luck with it. 

"The tinker twins are over there," his mum relayed, nodding her head northwest of her. 

Remus curiously strolled up to the railing to the left of his mum's chair, looked out in the direction she pointed him in, and smiled as he found Sirius and his dad sitting on the grass a little ways out from the edge of the garden, the mower sat between the two of them being gutted in real time. 

"What's happened?" he raised, sitting his tea atop the railing in front of him. 

"A hunk of wood got caught up in her and has definitely caused some damage, but they've decided tearing the whole thing apart to assess the extent of the damage was the only possible option," his mum returned, halfway amused, half-way tired over it. 

"I really think it might be time to let her go," Remus offered. "She served us well, but she's caused so much trouble as of late." 

"Honestly, it's a toss-up whether she'll run," his mum offered. "He gave her a shot yesterday to try to get the grass done, but she wasn't cooperating, and then today she did for very little time before the wood got in her path, so it seems she's had a string of bad luck." 

Remus hummed a vague laugh. "Me." 

"What?" his mum asked. "What's wrong?" 

"Nothing, mum; joke," Remus extended. "Sirius would have loved it." 

"Well, shout it out for him, if you'd like," his mum permitted him. 

"I think I'm alright," Remus assured, watching the Tinker Twins work. "Did you see the big moment?" 

"Just missed it, they said," his mum relayed. "They've been in and out of the shed for tools, so I got the mission status that way." 

Remus nodded, hummed for that absently, and watched from a distance as Sirius stuck his right arm all the way inside the mower's bulky body and felt around in there. "I can't tell if he's wearing gloves from here, but he had better be," he asserts, his right eye giving a twitch. 

"I had them both swear to gloves before the operation began, worry not," his mum confirmed. 

"Good on you," Remus extended, looking over at her. "Can I sit?" 

"Oh, of course," his mum said, pausing her knitting to reach for her bag and leave it down on the porch in front of her feet. 

Remus moved to take the seat, lifting his tea for a sip off of it. "How's she?" he asked, looking sideways at his mum. 

His mum took in a tentative breath. "It's not been a good day for her," she said, frowning as she loops her right needle around to begin a new stitch. 

"I feel awful for her," Remus offered, but then he got piqued by the cordless hanging out on the table between the two of them. "How'd you get off the phone so quickly? You seemed right in the middle of it." 

His mum took another breath in, only this one is littered with amusement. "Well, I almost dropped my mug all over the porch and figured it was best I stop trying to be a circus clown," she relayed, and Remus smirked through a new sip of tea, nodding fairly for it. "She's driving up for a late lunch tomorrow and we're going to pick up where we left off, but I'll be back well before the Market closes and you two can take my keys, is that OK?" 

Remus nodded easily. "Sure, that's fine," he replied, going for another sip off his tea. 

"Or, if you don't want to wait around," his mum tacked on, making Remus laugh through his sip, "you can see if your dad would let you take the truck in?" 

Remus shook his head, swallowing there. "We'll be fine with going a little later on," he assured. "He's more an afternoon/evening sort anyway, I'm the morning lad of the two of us." 

"How'd he do this morning?" his mum asked, glancing over at him amusedly. "That was one early start." 

"He did better than I thought he would," Remus answered candidly. "Especially once we got going and he got a coffee in him." 

Remus' mum gave a chime of a laugh. "Well, that'd do it," she tacked on. Remus smiled over at her, but blinked a bit as she lifted her gaze to the top of his head. "Have I told you I like the cut?" 

Remus looked up and around before he settled with understanding, reaching to pass a hand through his fringe. "I'm sure you did." 

"Well, I really like it," his mum reiterated. "It's different than your usual." 

Remus smirks a laugh. "Yeah, I'm not allowed to cut the fringe or the top really, but I hate it when I can feel curls on my neck, so this is the compromise I've come up with," he offered. "Short sides, long fringe." 

"Who's not letting you cut it?" his mum laughed. 

"Well, Sirius for one, and now that I've started keeping the sides short but the top still quite a Flooftown, Lily is a champion of this look," he forwards, laughing there, too. 

"Oh, well, they know good hair," she offered knowingly. 

"That's extremely true and fair," Remus deemed it. 

His mum eyed Remus' cardigan there. "I love that, by the way," she let him know. 

"Thanks," Remus said, looking down at it. "Sirius found it for me." 

"Good eye," she returned. 

"Great eye," Remus raised it. 

His mum breathed in there, looked out at the yard and namely toward the two of them out there still performing emergency surgery on the mower, and Remus looked sidelong at her knitting speed, lost again in how well she can do it without looking; he could never. "So, what do you think?" she asked, looking over at him again with a new smile on. "Did he like it or did he like it?"

"Oh, mum; he's in love with it," Remus raised that, too. "And you for making him one, so you know." 

His mum gave a delighted hum beside him. "I thought it was the sweetest thing that he would toss it over him right there," she added. 

"Oh, that's just a taste of it," Remus raised. "He's going to constantly have that draped over him."

"Well, I do hope he uses it," his mum raised, then tossed a look out to the Tinker Twins before looking back at Remus again. "I have to say it: I forgot how powerful that laugh of his is." 

Remus put out a jovial laugh. "Which one?" he asked. 

"Hm?" his mum hummed. 

"Well, he's got a few that are rather powerful," Remus raised. "He's got the one that sounds like a bark, he's got the slow-starter that tends to turn into the bark quite suddenly but that's usually when something he found funny comes back to hit him with a new angle that's even funnier, and then he's got this rolling laugh that just goes on and on until he's settled down." 

His mum blinked wondrously. "It does sound like a bark," she returned, like it'd finally clocked for her, laughing there. "Well, it was that one, then; it happened just a few minutes ago and I nearly dropped my needles." 

Remus felt a grin come on as he looked out over the yard toward Sirius. "That one scares the shit out of me at least once a week," he offered fondly, running the pad of his right thumb back and forth over the back of his mug as he watches Sirius and his dad go back and forth chitter-chatting as the two of them worked to put the mower back together, and Remus breathed in contentedly. "We're dating." 

Remus could personally confirm that crickets do, in fact, suddenly come out to chirp when a tense silence is thrust upon an otherwise easy conversation. It felt like a lifetime, just getting the courage to look over at her, but once he did, the ten seconds that followed felt the longest ten seconds of his life seeing her hands frozen in mid-stitch and her gaze set fixedly out across the field where Remus had just been looking, and that is yet another image burned into his brain that likely wouldn't be leaving it for some time. 

"I'm so sorr— I didn't — it wasn't supposed to come out like that," he put out quickly, clutching rightly at his mug with his right hand while he drags his left palm over his face to mask the vivid grimace he fell into for stringing together that choice of phrase. He heaved a horribly tight sigh out, chanced a look back at his mum, but she's not looking at him. "There was a plan, he was supposed to be here for it, I don't know what I was thinking — I wasn't; I wasn't thinking." 

He bit down on his lower lip hard to stop himself from word-vomiting any more than he'd already done, and bites down harder when his mum blinked over at him quite a few times. "I'm going to need a minute," she said. 

Remus let go of his lip. "That's — right, that's fair," he nodded, going for a large gulp of tea, practically draining the cup in one go while his left foot tapped erratically on the wood below it. 

His mum needed another half-minute or so in the grand scheme of things, but it could have been hours for how torturous the wait felt. "When?" she asked. 

"When did we start?" Remus clarified, and his mum nodded once. "A while back—" the tight knit of her eyebrows while no other knitting of any kind was happening made him feel like shit for giving such an unhelpful answer, "—Christmas." 

His mum reeled a bit there, and that was lovely to have to watch. "Was it news to you?" she asked slowly. 

Remus crossed his right leg over his left one to keep it from jittering, seeking Sirius out, and the mere sight of him out there at work soothed him enough to get the words out. "Landing him was news," he allowed, "but it wasn't shocking in any other sense." 

"How long?" she asked after a good few beats, her tone sounding further away than it did.

"I would say," Remus started, running left thumbnail over the side of his forefinger, "I was all sorts of confused before I hit fourteen, and that's when it became quite blatant." 

He would have loved it if his mum could simply continue knitting for at least then he could have an easier time pretending that the air around the two of them hadn't constricted, she wouldn't go back to it despite his begging the universe to coerce her into starting again. "Nearly a decade," she stated, her gaze trained to her lap. 

Remus breathed in fast. "It never felt like the right time, mum," he told her, but he faltered when his mum finally looked up at him with wider eyes than before, and then he wasn't sure even if the truth would even do her any good, but then, not explaining any part of it wouldn't fix the look on her face either. "That first love was with someone who didn't want it getting out, and I was so happy to have him that I felt happy to keep it between us, but I watched him struggle so hard with himself for years after the initial lovey feelings started to fade, and telling anyone then wasn't an option either, and I look back at myself and want to kick him for not going to anyone about it because I look back now I know I could have used so much more guidance, but I couldn't find the words." 

"Tom?" his mum asked, and there we go; she finally guessed right. 

Remus nodded once. "We saw each other on and off until we officially stopped before I moved out there, and telling you then wasn't an option either," he said, trying to keep his tone gentle when he knew that would sound much more harsh otherwise. "I was heartbroken for that first year out there, and really closed off about it going into my second, and I didn't have it in me to talk about it when he was entwined with all of it, and for a long time after that, I worried I didn't have an identity without him attached to it because I couldn't separate any of it from him, and I told myself I'd need something tangible if I was going to tell you because it had been so long and I thought that'd help somewhat, and that's Sirius; he saw me at my most closed-off and he didn't quit. He's so important to me, he's been so patient with all that I've got following me around, and he's so good for me: he's the opposite of me, and yet he's not, and he makes me take myself less seriously, and breathe, and stop worrying about this or that and just be present with him and remember what colour is, and I haven't liked me more than I have after him; he loves me, he's my best friend, and you two deserve to know what he is to me." 

Remus gave a listless shrug and a shake of his head when his mum didn't offer him anything in wake of that, but the movement seemed to jar his mum into action, so thanks be to frustration, then. "He's very sweet," she said. 

"Incredibly sweet," Remus doubled down. "I have so many stories about it — uhm, well, I didn't have a ton of mad money this past term because I can only work so much, but I did get him little gag gifts when I could, usually some odd or trashy record, double points if it's odd _and_ trashy, and he just loved it, lit up every single time, so I kept it going, and I'm working so much now that I'm in a position where I don't have to necessarily shop bargain bins, but if I still keep a look out for a doozy of a record because he just gets such a kick out of it, or today even, when we were at the mall, I found this corkscrew with a ceramic mustache for the handle, and mum, his face burst open when he saw it, and I didn't even mind that much that he dug it out of my hand and ruined the surprise because he just glowed over it, and you saw that even; that smile he gave you when he put that quilt on — he was so moved by that gesture, and he's so moved when he's shown someone's thoughtfulness like that, and I know that's because he didn't have any of that growing up, not even close." 

His mum's brow knitted together severely, and Remus got a stark reminder that his mum's heartstrings tend to be readily available to tug on, and there, he was afraid to elaborate, and afraid to not. "I know this is out of left field and it may take some time to adjust to, but if you're going to be upset or uncomfortable with either of us, then you take that out on me, not him," he put down earnestly. "His family didn't react well years ago to this and the last thing that I want is for him to feel anything like that while he's here, and I don't think for a second that you'd treat him anything close to the way they did over it, but he's having a tough time right now and he's still done the best he can to show up for me throughout this process so I've got to show up for him, and the best case scenario would be that he feels just as welcomed as my boyfriend as he was when you thought he was just a mate, and if that's too difficult to do at first, and I understand that it might very well be, but I still need you to smile and try with him because he loves you both so much already and it would break his heart if he got the cold shoulder now, and that would break mine." 

Remus held his mum's gaze with resolve, but a fair amount of dragging and shuffling broke their staring contest; the two looked left, found Sirius and Remus' dad had effectively pushed the mower back toward the house and were now just about to get past the porch. 

"That can't be a good sign," his mum raised. 

"She's gone," his dad returned, pushing the mower past the porch railing alongside Sirius. "I'll have to go get a fucking new one tomorrow." 

"Hey hey, but just imagine how much quicker you'll be zipping around out here with a brand, spanking new one," Sirius raised, and oh, that's him doing what he does best, but it physically hurt in Remus' chest to hear him sound so lively and unaware of how badly Remus just bungled their plan. 

"That is a good image," his dad let Sirius have. "Leave her here, I'll have to figure out what to do with her." 

It wasn't long before the two of them came out from between the house and the shed, though they disappeared from view as they made it to the garden, and then quite suddenly Sirius could be seen making a beeline for the a-frame, and that has Remus quite piqued. He was back out of it in genuine seconds with his guitar case in tow; a curious decision, and one Remus wouldn't mind learning more about why it'd been made. 

Sirius caught Remus' gaze and smiled grand, held up his right forefinger excitedly. "Watch this," he prompts, heading around the outskirts of the garden and disappearing yet again, only to hop up and down with his hands waving around to showcase where he is, "there's a second entrance to it!" 

Remus had no control over the stitches he fell into. "The secret's never end," he sent back.

His dad comes up the cobblestone path and propped himself up against the right banister on the porch steps. "You OK?" his mum asked. 

"We just pushed that all the way back here," his dad put up, snorting there. "Did you miss that part?" 

His mum huffs beside Remus. "I'm just checking on you." 

"I'm fine," his dad assured. "Just a little tired."

"Sorry you couldn't get the lawn done, dad," Remus extended. 

His dad gave a grunt, but waved the whole thing off. "C'est la you know," he extended, looking over his left shoulder as Sirius barks a laugh, heading up the path toward the steps. "This one's going to let me show him a thing or two on the guitar, and I bet I'll feel better about that shit-looking after that." 

"OK, uhm," Remus came in there, nodding toward Sirius, who was grinning ear to ear with that one, "he's exceptional at it, so I think he'll be showing you a thing or two." 

"Yeah, I think you know — mm, three songs, is it?" his mum tacked on. 

"The songs I bet I don't know, Hope," Sirius chimed, and Remus looked sidelong at her, feeling the utmost relief course through him as she smiles brightly back at Sirius. 

Remus' dad sure puffed up nice and good with that addition, took the steps up to the porch, and turned to head around the bend. Sirius moved up the stairs there, flashed Remus a grin to end all grins, and flickered his gaze once up at the house before strolling off after Remus' dad, and there Remus realized the impromptu jam session was likely a ruse put up by himself to get the family all together in one room, and he felt a new wave of revulsion wash over him. 

He looked over at his mum, found the bright smile she had on had receded by an unsettling margin while her gaze remained trained on the spot Sirius had just stood, and even when he told her to fake it until she made it, seeing how much work she had to put in to be kind to Sirius had the breeze that chose to go by just there going straight to Remus' bones. 

Remus shivered, pushed to stand, and turned to head down the porch. "Remus," his mum called, sounding as listless as he felt. 

"Please don't tell dad," Remus put down, retreating for the house. 

He didn't want to look back when not even a moment passed before he felt selfish for requesting that. "It's yours to tell," his mum sent him, quite in agreement with how Remus felt about his assertion, and Remus could have tried to ignore it, to understand it, to give her a break, but he'd fucking done that plenty already today; he was fresh out of patience. 

He made it into the den and stood still after shutting the door behind him, finding it absolutely unforgivable and ridiculous that he could have harboured a secret for nine fucking years only to blurt it out without prompt and toss everything they'd held onto for weeks and weeks because what? He got Sirius in his eye and that's like getting the sun shinning right at them? Absolutely ridiculous. He stared at him constantly throughout dinner, the making of, his mum and dad's combined heckling and didn't feel the need to drop the bomb there for one hell of a last word. Why? Why now? Why did he have such a strong desire to stick his foot in his mouth? Why couldn't he shut the fuck up for ten more minutes? 

Moving into the kitchen at a warped speed, he felt a horrid feeling creep up his spine as he realized waiting until ten minutes from them might have staved off some of the initial shock of his untimely bomb drop, his dad might have pulled a joke or two to cut the tension, but she’d have still had the same questions for him, she’d still have still spoken in clipped sentences, and she’d have still looked at Sirius the way she did, and then he didn’t know if he’d done them a favour or not when it would have just crushed Sirius to have to watch that happen in real time. 

He looked around wildly, spotted the teapot on the dining room table, and went for it immediately, taking it with him toward the stairs. He could practically hear Sirius’ bark over such a strange impulse, would have found it the funniest thing he’d seen all day easily, but strange as it was, if Remus wasn’t going to be able to control anything else that evening and evermore then he was going to have the rest of the fucking pot of he made, and fuck it if it’s on the colder side of things by now, he's not fancy. 

He turned right at the stairs and headed straight up them, hearing the chords playing from the sitting room as he goes, and half of him is pulled to go right back down and be present in the light and warmth emanating from there, but the other half of him was louder, felt he was unworthy of joining that light, and kept him pushing up the stairs and further and further away from it.


	24. 24.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> numbero deux (!!!)

Sirius heads inside the house, stops at the mat to foot Remus’ loafers off, and pulls the sliding closet door aside to shut the shoes away. He straightens up tall, heads on through the den and the kitchen when Lyall isn’t to be seen in either room, and pads through the dining room, past Hope’s workstation, and turns into an empty sitting room. For a brief moment he wonders if he’d been duped, but then that makes little to no sense when Lyall showed keen interest in mucking about of the guitar, went as far as to tell the other two about it before Sirius even had to, it’s just as likely he’s fetching his guitar. 

“L-L-Lyall,” he calls out, smirking at himself, then hears an unintelligible murmur float back his way. 

Sirius heads further into the sitting room with that, figuring it best to situate them in one room for Remus to lug Hope along into, and heads for the bay window. He pulls the straps of his case off of his shoulders, props it up against the wall to the left of the windowsill, and unzips it, tugging his guitar out of it by the neck. He plants himself down on the carpet ahead of the windowsill, giving him a prime view of the whole sitting room, and places his guitar over his lap, giving an experimental strum over the strings to suss out how out of tune it’ll be after bustling it about amongst their travels, and woof, does it need a-tunin'.

He’s only got started on the first string when Lyall turns into the room holding an incredibly dusty guitar, and Sirius' mouth splits into an amused grin as he keeps tuning. “Alright, so clearly I can’t keep pretending it hasn’t been an age since I’ve played,” Lyall cops to it, amused himself now. “This thing’s been tucked away for a while, as you can see.” 

“Hey, we’re just messing around,” Sirius raises, pausing his tuning to wave him off. “I’m not here to scoff.” 

“Well, I’d appreciate no scoffing, but if you are as good as advertised then you’ll likely come out of this feeling rather fond of your own playing,” Lyall raises, moving for the couch. 

“_Bah,_ Sirius returns, putting a little James Potter into it and going right on back to tuning. 

Lyall takes the left corner of the couch and props his guitar face up on his lap to give the body a good dusting with his hands, and once he finds he’s satisfied with his dusting job he puts it on its side and gives Sirius a better view of it. It’s certainly rather old, but it gives Sirius some whopping retro vibes with it’s burnt tan colouring on the body, the intricate, circular design going around the soundhole, the colourful, eye-catching guitar strap that Lyall shrugs on. 

“I really like that,” Sirius tells him.

“You lie,” Lyall replies circumstantially, smiling all the while.

“No no,” Sirius denies. “I don’t say a lot of things that I don’t actually think; you’ll see that soon enough.” 

“Would you insult a man’s guitar in his own home, though?” Lyall raises, giving the fingers of his right hand a wiggle-stretch. 

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” Sirius lets him have. 

Lyall gives the fingers on his right hand a stretch and reintroduces his fingers to the fretboard, but upon the first strum both he and Sirius wince horrifically. “Well, that won’t do,” he says plainly, reaching to twist the first of what will be many twists of the pegs on the head of the guitar. 

Sirius tries not to smile too widely, keeps half an eye on his tuning and half an eye on Lyall’s turning, and finds the man can tune by ear just fine, but that’s a Lupin through and through, pretending he’s a beginner. “Yours looks quite loved,” Lyall puts up, nodding toward him. 

Sirius smiles down at his sticker-covered baby as he works to get her sounding beautiful. “Extremely,” he answers, looking back up at him. 

“How long have you had it?” Lyall asks. 

“James got it for me on my sixteenth, so we’ve been together quite some time,” Sirius offers, giving another experimental strum before thinking his D-string needs just a little more tweaking before his baby will sing out perfectly. 

“That’s a solid mate right there,” Lyall puts up. 

“One of the greats,” Sirius allows, a budding smile on his lips as he eyes his tweaking of the last peg. “I hear he’s loud, though.” 

“Don’t know what you mean,” Lyall returns. 

Sirius smiles up at Lyall brightly, pauses to wait for Lyall to catch up, and jolts as Lyall’s D-string splits and wires out fantastically. “Well, fuck me,” Lyall tosses up, falling into a patch of snickers. “Is this a sign, or is it a sign?”

“I can change it out for you,” Sirius offers, showing his hands open and ready to help out, “I’ve got it down to a fairly quick science, if I may say so myself.” 

“You may, only I haven’t any spare strings at the moment,” Lyall puts up circumstantially, lifting the guitar enough to shrug out of the strap and reaching it over the arm of the couch, propping it between the couch and the end table on his left. 

“Well, here then; mine’s all done,” Sirius says, lifting off of the carpet and walking it over toward Lyall. 

“You don’t want it?” Lyall raises. 

“No no, you show me what you’ve got,” Sirius insists, jutting the guitar back and forth in front of Lyall’s reach until Lyall snorts and just gives in, clever man. Sirius casts a glance toward the hall once his hands are free before turning back for his prior spot, looking over at Lyall’s setup in the corner. “While you’re doing that, I may scope out your record collection, if that’s alright with you?” 

He glances over his shoulder and catches Lyall’s distracted nod as he noodles around on Sirius’ guitar. “Go right ahead,” he permits, pausing his noodling. “That’s only a snippet of it, mind, just the important, easy-access picks while the rest are down in the basement.” 

Sirius trills out a note of intrigue, going around the back of Lyall’s chair to lift the first crate. “Now I have to see what the top picks are,” he extends, carrying the crate over to his prior spot on the carpet in front of the window while Lyall goes back to his noodling, and somehow that is rather perfect considering his company, though Lyall wouldn’t know it anyway. 

He sets the crate down in front of him, crosses his legs underneath him, and scoots in close. He flips the first few records back, passing _Boston, The Police, Clapton, Springsteen_, and just as Sirius thinks this is already an entirely Lyall-esque collection of classics, he flips forward one unrecognizable record before coming upon the perfect _Tears for Fears_ album to have put right up at the top of the easy-access list, smirking jovially down at it. 

“What are you laughing at?” Lyall pipes up, pausing his playing. 

Sirius grins ear to ear and flashes the face toward him, showcasing _Tears Roll Down_. “Played this one a lot over the years, didn’t cha,” he raises wryly. 

“Certainly did, but I’ve a sense you already knew it,” Lyall mentions. 

Sirius breathes a laugh, nodding emphatically. “Back in January, we all took Remus out to one of our favourite spots for one last hurrah before he’d be starting back at school and _Sowing the Seeds_ came on in the place, and Remus had already put back quite a few pints by then so he went and lost it over it coming on,” he details, remembering Remus’ jovial expression as the intro swelled throughout Gallagher’s, “and I mean, I knew he could let loose depending on who he’s with and how many pints he’s had, but I still didn’t expect him to go ahead and perform the whole thing for us at the table, and it was just wonderful to watch.” 

“How good a performance?” Lyall asks, smiling wryly himself. 

“Stellar,” Sirius forwards. “He knows every single part to it; every lyric, every note, every fluctuation between the notes, every timbre.” 

“That’s on me,” Lyall puts up. “We played it the truck a lot when he was tyke, among others of course, but he really liked me to put that album on and let it play, so I always made sure the cassette was in the glovebox for rides.” 

“You did him and every one of us a favour,” Sirius extends. “Up until then, I knew that he could let loose in the relative privacy of a car with the right sort of people, and I knew he could get goofy from a few solid pints, but this was beyond and I’ve been working on him, tugging on that side of him more because it’s not a thing he ought to stifle or save for very specific occasions because watching that kid go absolutely feral over a tune he likes is a gift for the masses more that it’s disruptive.” 

“Well, good on you for taking that on,” Lyall returns. “That kid winds himself up so tightly, he’d do well with letting loose a little more.” 

“I’m working on it, Lyall,” Sirius insists, slipping the record back into the crate before pointing down at it. “I’d have loved to see these two in their hay day; I feel like it’d have been such an experience.” 

“They were quite something,” Lyall lets land. “I’m showing my age here, but I managed to get over to Glasgow in ‘82 to catch them before they closed out their _Big Chair_ tour.” 

Sirius lifts his gaze to the ceiling as he does the math backwards in his head. “A youthful sixteen,” he raises. “Remus has alluded to your trips back in the day, but I didn’t realize they went back that far.” 

“Mhm,” Lyall puts up in frank assurance. “‘Course, times were different then.” 

“Uh huh,” Sirius interjects, a wry grin on. 

“Well, they were,” Lyall returns, a similar expression on now. “Back then I could pack a knapsack and set off, hitch rides to wherever I was planning to end up, make my way back home eventually, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to do what I did.” 

“But you got to see so much,” Sirius raises, and it’s impossible not to compare Lyall’s life to that of his parents’; those two had more money than they could ever spend fully, had status that would never matter in long run when they’re in ground just like everybody else has and will go eventually, had more homes than they didn’t know what to do with, travelled all around for business and for leisure, but they couldn’t rub experience between two fingers if they tried. 

“Well, yeah; I learned a lot, saw a ton, met a load of folks I wouldn’t have otherwise if I stuck to the train lines only, but the method I used to go about it leaves a bit to be desired now,” Lyall offers, and he may very think he’s lived his forty-eight years on the planet with a modest life to show for it, but Sirius would take that, this house, this family, and this feeling he gets just being permitted to peek in at them of those over townhouses and galas and status any day.

“I still think you were the coolest,” Sirius raises. 

Lyall snorts there. “Well, you’re far past the point where I’d need to deter you from any of it, so I suppose I’ll take it,” he offers, “but right about when Remus hit fourteen I woke up in a cold sweat over the idea of him setting off on his own with little to no warning like I did, so the tales began with a preface of ‘don’t do what I did — plan your trips out and you’d better fucking call your mother at every stop you make.’” 

Sirius puts out a laugh there. “Well, if it helps, he spoke of your travels in a ‘those were nutty, nutty times’ way, but he did rep your wanderlust well, and simply put it as a curious lad out roaming around,” he offers. “He’s quite fair about it, I’ve got to say.” 

“Well, I suppose I’ve got to be grateful for that,” Lyall accepts. 

“How was the show, then?” Sirius asks. 

Lyall breathes there. “The first half was a riot and I don’t much remember how the second half went though I have to assume it went well,” he puts it. “‘Course, I didn’t much remember that half of the show the very next morning, so it has less to do with the passage of time taking my memories and jumbling them up.” 

Sirius puts a bright trill of a laugh in there. “Lyall,” he huffs good-naturedly. 

“Well, I don’t know how shows are like now, but back then if somebody handed you something, you did the respectful thing, had yourself a few puffs, and passed it along to the next person,” Lyall tacks on. 

Sirius puts out a snort. “There’s still a ton of consumption happening at shows, usually when the lights go down, but I think the communal aspect you experienced there only really happens at specific shows where that sort of sharing is considered etiquette,” he offers. 

Lyall nods to accept that. “Another thing I warned that one against,” he raises. “It really is a miracle when I think about all the gutters I could have ended up face-down in along the way and somehow didn’t, but that was another living nightmare to have to think of Remus doing the same.” 

“Well, you did well with him because he’s very pragmatic in that regard,” Sirius offers. 

Lyall nods to accept that. “In any case, despite the fog over the second half of the show, I still remember the feeling I had during the first half, and it’s a vague memory now, but it brings an almost palpable feeling along with it, so it’s up there on the list of high energy shows I got to see, though you already know what’s up at the top,” he raises, giving Sirius a wry smile there. 

“And on that note, tell me about Live Aid again,” Sirius goads, doing a shoulder-shimmy, “with a particular emphasis on my Lord and Saviour, if you please.” 

Lyall rests his arms over the frame of the guitar, a fond smile on. “Well, as you know, I consider myself lucky to have been in the same berth of space as he was,” he readdresses, “but I can offer that I’d already done the blacking out mid-way through thing already and knew going into the stadium that I couldn’t do that for this one, and you really didn’t need any uppers for the show, I don’t feel; he was an upper in his own right and made the whole place shine for relatively short time they were on stage, it was impossible to take your eyes off of him.” 

Sirius puts out a tremendous noise, clutching at his chest like he’s been struck. “I’ve watched that set so many times that I know it by heart and I still can’t take my eyes off the screen,” he raises. “I want your eyes so I can bask in what it’d be like to be there.” 

“I’d lend them to you if I could,” Lyall offers.

“It’s appreciated,” Sirius lets him have, flipping on through the crate and locating _the Beatles_ supply: _the White Album,_ _Abbey Road,_ _Let it Be_ — the classics in their own right, but Sirius does find himself wondering if there’s an obscure record of theirs tucked away in here somewhere, and lo and behold, he finds it sandwiched between _Sgt. Pepper_ and _Magical Mystery Tour_, and that’s company Sirius rather approves of. 

“Ooh-la-la,” Sirius trills, popping it out of the crate to flutter it’s face toward Lyall. “Wonder where this came from?” 

Lyall snorts from the couch. “I’m still furious about how easily you managed to find that one,” he returns. “I could go into any one shop and find a thousand copies of _Revolver_ but if I wanted anything more out there than that, I was shit out of luck.” 

Sirius smiles sweetly there. “Well, have you tried using the internet to scour for finds?” he raises. “It can yield some pretty good results.” 

Lyall takes in a weighty breath, smiling a little there. “Remus keeps goading me to, but I haven’t done much in the way of that yet,” he extends. “If I’m honest, I’m still wrapping my head around how I’m able to see and hear Remus on-screen when he’s all the way over there; it’s magic — and before you start laughing, realize that I grew up in the age of _Pong_ and the one super computer, so trust me when I say all that we have now is blinding to me; hell, dial up was magic to me too despite all the shit that gets now.” 

“No no, I get it,” Sirius insists. “My father’s study was the only room in the house that had a hook-up, so I wasn’t surfing the net at my place, so whenever I went to James’ place I went buckwild with it, even with dial-up I didn’t care that you’d get booted right offline someone picked up the phone; I think I was too busy being floored that James had access to it.”

Lyall comes in there with quite the snort. “Sometimes, when the house is quiet, I can still hear echoes of Remus coming down the stairs to ask who, precisely, picked up the phone and booted him offline,” he raises loftily. “‘Course, he was using it for his school work predominantly, so I suppose he had the right to be peeved.” 

“Right, if it’d been porn, then that’s a whole other thing,” Sirius puts in. 

Straight after it leaves his mouth he wonders if escaping through the bay window and taking off running to the train station would be a fair way to start anew or if it’d be a touch dramatic, and then Lyall cuts off Sirius’ thoughts on the matter with a boomer of a laugh. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t have come downstairs at all in that case,” he returns. 

Sirius puts out a bright bark, settling into the carpet that much easier. “Well, if you want, sometime while I’m here I could show you a few sites I use if shop’s aren’t giving me the results I want,” he offers. 

“Sure,” Lyall returns. “Maybe leave a very detailed list of instructions along with it, if you don't mind.” 

“Done,” Sirius calls it. “It’s funny because Remus actually has some great luck coming across absolute gems in-store, I don’t know how he does it, but he’s got a third eye opened for it.” 

“Does he?” Lyall raises, lifting his right hand to scratch at his nose underneath the bridge of his glasses. 

“Oh, he’s a tacky album magnet, I swear to it,” Sirius insists. “A couple weeks back he brought me an album full of _Conway Twitty_ hits and the cover alone makes it worth owning even though I will never play it, and then a few weeks earlier than that he brought me one called the _the Bagpipe Blues,_ which sent me to heaven and back, and I don’t know how he stumbles upon these but I’m grateful.” 

Lyall gives a laugh there, but it’s definitely got a puzzled note to it. “I helped raise that strange lad.” 

“Well, it’s a bit of game we have going wherein he knows that I love a tacky record so he’ll find these absolute gems to my growing collection, and that bagpipe one was quite topical when a neighbour of mine moved in this spring and not only place the bagpipes but chooses to practice at all hours of the day and night like that’s acceptable at all, so Remus was nodding to that,” Sirius forwards. “And really, what you did was raise a lad who sees the strangeness in other people and rather than stifle it, he finds ways to cultivate that instead, so you did well there.”

Lyall nods there, smiling as he looks down at the guitar set over his lap, and shifts his arms over the side of it to cross them, setting his chin down on his arms and giving a strangely morose frown. “Everything good, Lyall?” Sirius asks. 

Lyall lifts his head, nodding. “Everything’s fine with me,” he extends, moving his gaze over to the mantel, though Sirius has a feeling the spot Lyall’s gaze ended up has a lot more to do with the fact that he’s going back and forth debating himself. “If I speak out of turn, shut me up, yeah?” 

Lyall gestures vaguely toward Sirius, who nods in what’s Lyall’s peripheral at this point. “I doubt you will,” he pardons. 

Lyall gives a tentative noise down in his throat as if to say _well, hold on,_ moving his gaze to the ceiling now while his forehead creases with thought. “When I met Hope she was unavailable, and she remained that way for some time until she wasn’t anymore,” he supplies, pausing.

“And then you took your shot,” Sirius interjects, shoulder-shimmying a little there. 

“Well, that’d be way to put it,” Lyall lets land, looking a little more amused now, which Sirius can’t help but feel grateful for when Lyall’s looking just about everywhere else but toward him. “Sticking it out and waiting for her to realize there was a lot more cooking between us was one of my best decisions, and I can say that because twenty-five years strong isn’t half bad.” 

“Sure isn’t,” Sirius lets him have. 

Lyall tilts his head back and forth evenly, but there’s a smile starting up, too. “Forgive me if addressing this would count as crude,” he prefaces, finally looking over at him again, “but I was where you were once and I can see it written all over you; you’re one smitten lad.” 

Sirius’ shoulders intrinsically go rigid, but that’s body memory for you. It makes sense at a base level, and yet it doesn’t when Sirius focuses on the details; Lyall’s not pointing roughly at him, accusing him, he certainly doesn’t look like he wants Sirius out of his home immediately, and his nose isn’t wrinkled up at the idea of Sirius’ now blatantly addressed feelings for his only son — he’s just smiling, and thoughtfully at that. 

“Have I been obvious?” Sirius raises, and celebrates the snort it gets out of Lyall.

“Just a touch,” Lyall returns. “You’ve been staring at him like he’s the sun since you got here, brought him up — well, eight, nine times since dinner alone, and the whole time that was being made it was as if you couldn’t let him out of your gravitational pull for too long or else you’d go flying off into the solar system, so I’m just putting two and three together, and I do I know what that sort of harbouring is like, even if I might not quite _know_, so to speak.” 

“I appreciate you saying that, sir,” Sirius hears himself say. 

“Don’t call me that,” Lyall declines, making a face.

“Sorry, Lyall,” Sirius smirks. 

Lyall nods once to excuse it. “I can’t help but see a lot of similarities between our cases, only this time it might well be a different sort of unavailability,” he raises. “He’s not the easiest to sort out, is he.” 

“Certainly not,” Sirius allows, and he knows he shouldn’t let this continue when they’re dancing right around it, but he’s just so intrigued. 

“I don’t know what the best advice would be to give you when I know that I’d want to tell you to stick it out like I did in any other case, but would that be fair of me in this one?” Lyall raises, seemingly thinking out loud and definitely not pausing long enough for Sirius to interject. “If he isn’t inclined that way then there’s nothing to be done about it, and me telling you to wait around for something that can’t be reciprocated would be horrid advice on my part and an awful time for you, but on the other hand, I don’t know that I want to discourage you either because you two do work so well with each other, and yeah, that might be cause you did work together, but what if it's that he’s just shy of coming online, do you know what I mean?”

Lyall goes quite silent as Sirius lifts off of the carpet in one quick move. “I’m going to be right back,” he instills, hands splayed and aimed at Lyall to stay right there while he steps sideways toward the hall. “Right back.” 

He pads out of the room and up the hall, booking it through the dining room and trying to remain composed and not thunder through the place as he makes it to the back door. He does take to a sprint the second he’s on the porch, trips up a bit as a piece of chipped paint attacks the bottom of his right foot, and hobbles along, lifting his right foot to swipe his right hand underneath it and sweep the offending chip away. He stops long enough to glance down at the porch floor feebly, but there are tons of chipped marks particularly in the high foot traffic area down the center of the porch, so he stops feeling too bad about causing one more scuff mark to go with the others. 

He rounds the bend in the porch and stops still when he only finds Hope at the other end of it. He backs behind the corner of the bend, looking back toward the way he came and wondering he’s just missed Remus going to the loo. He could drag Hope inside and look for him from there, but no, he needs to get Remus first, he owes him that.

He books it back inside, heads through the kitchen and dining room again before he makes a swift right and peeks into the bathroom off of the stairs, but no Remus. He shuts the door and makes for the stairs just as Lyall’s getting to the foot of them and the two barely avoid a collision. 

“Shit, sorry Lyall,” Sirius says, putting his hands up to steady him though it’s rather for naught when Lyall seems quite fine on his feet. 

“That’s all right, Sirius,” Lyall says. “I didn’t mean to run you off there, hey? Tell me to shut it, don’t let me send you out of a room for cover.”

“No no, I wasn’t running off, not like that anyway,” Sirius insists, tossing a glance up the stairs in hopes that Remus’ll turn up there and he could say something along the lines of, ‘hey, tell your dad your not straight,’ but Lyall gets in front of his eye line and heads for the stairs. 

“Well, I think it best I turn in; I’ve been up and at’em a long time and I think it’s starting to show in the fact that I’ve forgotten what privacy is,” he raises, making a push up the first couple stairs, but looks back at Sirius there. “I put your guitar back in its case, so don’t you worry, it’s safe and sound—” 

“You don’t have to turn in because of me,” Sirius cuts in. “I really didn’t take offense, quite the opposite really; that was so kind of you.” 

“Well, I appreciate you saying that, Sirius, but I wonder if this is a situation I’m not qualified to meddle in,” Lyall keeps to it, but Sirius can’t say he’s in agreement with that one. 

“I disagree,” Sirius puts up. “I thought you made your qualifications quite clear.” 

“Still, I shouldn’t be making things worse,” Lyall keeps to it. “I have been up a very long time and I think it’s affecting my judgement calls.”

Sirius breathes in, sticking his hands in his back pocket, knowing there’s not much he can do further to quell the man when he’s quite convinced he stuck his foot in his mouth, and Sirius certainly can’t use most of the tactics he’d use on Remus, no sir; this is not the right Lupin even if they’re strong reflections of each other. “Well, you did have to pick a pair of numskulls bright and early,” he offers, giving him the best smile he can muster at the moment. 

“I was happy to do it, Sirius,” Lyall tacks on earnestly. 

“No, I know,” Sirius instills, and he does; he’s talking to a Lupin after all. 

Lyall nods kindly enough. “Now, just because I’m a huge bore, doesn’t mean you’ve got to be one,” he instills, bracing his right hand on the banister as he starts up the stairs. “The telly’s all yours, same for the computer, and really just about anything goes so long as I don’t wake up in a few hours to a thumping rager, sound good?” 

Sirius pushes a laugh out. “There go my plans.” 

“Uh huh,” Lyall sends him over his shoulder. “Tell the Mrs. I’ve given up the goat, could you?” 

“Sure thing,” Sirius sends after him. 

He waits at the bottom of the stairs until he hears a door close up on the second floor and books it up the stairs from there, taking the curve at the landing in stride and making a fast left into Remus’ room. He backs the door shut, looks over the right side of the room but Remus isn’t on the bed or at his desk so that side is of no use to him. He looks right instead, blinking pointedly toward Remus sitting cross-legged on his bay windowsill and looking a lot like a bloke who knows he’s in trouble. 

“Where have you been?” Sirius sends him in a fast whisper. “I really needed you down there; you’re missing every—” 

Remus opens his mouth, but all that comes out of it is a horridly tight noise, and it sounds too much like his throat’s gone and shut for Sirius not to get over to him in a flash. 

Remus starts up a harsh rub over his thighs before Sirius drops to his knees in front of him. “OK, I’m here,” Sirius whispers, bracing Remus’ wrists, “let me do it.” 

Remus’ reactions are a bit lagged, but he stops rubbing a few beats later and reaches around to wind his hands at the back of Sirius’ shirt, pitching his head forward to slot it in with the crook of Sirius’ neck, his breathing gone absolutely haywire. Sirius rocks his shoulders back and forth to soothe as he flattens his palms out and runs them steadily over Remus’ denim covered thighs; there’s nothing else to be done until he gets Remus back to feeling like he’s in a real body in a real bedroom in a real house, and then Sirius may be able to get him breathing steady enough to speak rather than convulse. 

He does a bit of quiet shushing, not to quiet him necessarily but to simply reinforce that he’s here in more ways than just touch, and he catches the moment Remus’ breathing stops hitching halfway through a breath, keeps positive that it means he’s on the mend, and then a little further out from there he feels Remus’ body go lax against his frame. Sirius keeps rubbing Remus’ thighs even then, sets himself up to wait at least ten full, uninterrupted intervals before he’ll prod Remus for details, but Remus goes ahead and speaks on only the sixth interval. 

“She knows,” he pushes out. “I let it slip on the porch, I’m so sorry.” 

“_Lupin,_” Sirius returns, gape/grinning at him as he leans back a bit to get a good look at Remus’ face, but it’s shrouded in misery, and that definitely isn’t a good sign, but he’s going to need some facts before fully joining Remus in Spooksville. “Catch me up, please? I don’t know how to help yet.” 

“I don’t know what happened,” Remus gives listlessly. “It just flew out of mouth.” 

“What did?” Sirius checks, reaching up to cart his right hand up through the curls at the top of Remus’ head. 

Remus takes a long breath in, kneading Sirius’ hand. “I was looking at you out there tinkering and I got the warm fuzzies — you do that to me, you know that?” he raises, forcibly keeping quiet. “You say I don’t yearn the way you do, but this is a perfect example of the extent of my yearning: all I had to do was look over at you out there and I started giving a whole spiel about your different laughs, and I spewed out, ‘we’re dating’ like that’s just what comes next, obviously.”

Sirius bites back a smile, tracing his right forefinger over the shell of Remus’ left ear. “Alright, well, I’m having a hard time minding this,” he whispers. 

“You should mind,” Remus returns. “I ruined the whole plan.” 

“Did you, though?” Sirius raises.

“I did, and what’s worse is I couldn’t understand how I could have done that after nine fucking years of keeping it to myself,” Remus rushes on, “but it’s you, that’s the answer; _you_ make me word vomit all over the place.” 

Sirius tries not to glow too proudly from a visible standpoint. “I really think what you did was tell the truth,” he offers carefully. “We are, in fact, dating.”

“I slapped it onto the end of a soliloquy about your laughs,” Remus emphasizes. “I spooked her out of her knitting even; she’d knit through a nuclear blast, but not through this; she froze right over, and then when she got past her silence she just started up all the questions I was daft enough to think wouldn’t come one after the other, but I didn’t think she’d have the time to if we’d done it together, I thought it would take some time.” 

Sirius feels a sharp grip in his chest, but even he’s human. It hurts, seeing Remus hurting. “What sort of questions?” he prompts. 

“How long we’ve been going, how long I’ve known in general, and that answer made her go white so I felt I had to tell her why I took so long with it and gave her the abridged version of the story, and I repeated ‘he’ quite a bit and she finally zeroed in on Tom—” Remus rattles off, but he takes a pause there, “—oh, on top of everything else, I outed him in the middle of all this, so that’s just fantastic; I cannot wait for the boomerang to come back and hit me for this one.” 

“Oh no, his little secret got spilled to the mother of the bloke he turned inside out for years,” Sirius puts up in a woeful, lofty tone. “How’s he ever going to survive this major blow that’ll have no effect on him either way?”

Remus blinks quite a few times at him. “Are you done?” 

“Not even close,” Sirius relays, but the tone he took is gone. “That was going to have to be addressed at some point, you can’t actually avoid mentioning him forever, and as far as I see it, serves him right—” 

“You don’t get to decide who deserves what, Sirius,” Remus returns. 

“I’m just as qualified as anyone else,” Sirius puts up indignantly. “More than, even; I know the situation better than anybody and it’s too complex to just expect you to never address that time in your life; what were you supposed to do? He was a direct hand in your absolute inability to speak on it.” 

“I didn’t have to affirm her guess, that’s all I’m saying,” Remus implores. 

“Boo to that,” Sirius returns ferociously. “Masking his secret is neither your job or concern when he’s got his dirty paws all over that time in your life; I say fuck his self-preservation; it has no bearing on this situation so forget about him and finish catching me up, please and thanks.” 

Remus gives out a long-suffering sigh, lifting his gaze to the top of the bay windowsill above their heads and putting back on Sirius in due time. “Other than that guess and the clipped questions I kept getting from her, she would only stare at me or you like we were fucking strangers who came onto her property without permission, and then I started on about you again because at least that got me back to us, which was the most important part,” he gives him. “I told her how you came along and got me seeing colour after not seeing it properly for so long, how good you’ve been for me and to me, and I don’t know understand how she could have stared back at me like I was speaking another language to her after I told her everything you mean to me, and I couldn’t be out there anymore with her, not with how she was acting, and I’m sorry I ran off on you, but I wasn’t prepared to face you after I’d done that; I panicked so badly I picked that up and bolted up here with it.” 

Sirius follows Remus’ right angled nod and locates the rotund, bright cosy-covered teapot chilling in the far corner of the windowsill just a little off from Remus’ right knee along with his mug from dessert time, and Sirius really cannot figure out how he didn’t see either of them until just now, but that really is such a lovely detail. 

“I love you,” Sirius laughs, sneaking a quick kiss.

“Not for this, please,” Remus implores, frowning deeply. “I’m a mess, Sirius; the actual Mad Hatter, me.” 

Sirius’ shoulders shake as he tries his best to get through his mirth. “That’s everything,” he insists, grinning like a goon. “You’re everything.” 

“How are you so calm?” Remus asks. “I blew it for the both of us.” 

Sirius breathes in through his nose and puts it out before he speaks. “Well, I don’t see it that way,” he starts carefully. “I think you held on as long as you could, if I’m honest. We already knew this was going to be news to her, and that show back in the kitchen really hammered that home for me at least for her, and I’m not saying that having her freeze up on you like that wasn’t difficult for you, but is it shocking?”

“No, but I didn’t make it any easier blurting it at her like that, did I,” Remus returns. “She turned into a statue.” 

“Well, we can’t go and put the words back now that they’re out,” Sirius raises. “Maybe it was bracing to have dropped like that, but the news would have still been news even if we’d done it in the den or at the table, and I don’t think it hurts to keep in mind that she wasn’t freezing you out just to be an ice queen, she’s just—”

Remus eyes flash. “You say you want me to let you in, but when I do and it’s got to do with family, you don’t really want to hear how I feel,” he cuts in. 

And that feels like a well-aimed sock to the gut, so at least they’re both feeling certifiably awful. “Of course I do,” Sirius gives him. 

“Do you?” Remus raises. “Sure, she looked at me like I was a stranger in her home, but hey, she didn’t toss her chair at the wall, pitch a fit, or worse so I’ve nothing to worry about to you, I’m just over-reacting as usual.” 

“That’s not what I said,” Sirius corrects. “You reacted, that’s all.” 

That doesn’t work like it’s done before. “No matter what happens, we both know I’m not going to get tossed out or have basic necessities taken away from me, so how are you even able to stomach hearing my concerns over this?” Remus raises, his tone casual but pointed. “I bet I’ve got twenty seconds before I hear how ungrateful I’m acting, so save it, please; I can’t hear it again.” 

Sirius slips his hands off of Remus and shifts out of his knelt position, moving to sit crossed-legged in front of Remus on the windowsill. “I never should have said that to you,” he says around a dry throat. “I get it; you told me at length why their over-sharing with Tom bothers you so much and it doesn’t matter if you were trying to buy yourself time by raising that instead of being honest about Tom, I still steamrolled over you. I’m sure it does feel like I’m just luring you in to get all cozy and vulnerable with me just so I can brow-beat you later for what you say, but I promise you I’m not like that, I don’t get a sick thrill out of it; that was a low point and I fucking regret saying it.” 

“It’s not just that you said it,” Remus comes in. “It’s beyond that; I’m never going to be able to be upset with either of them around you because you hold them up higher than you do me.” 

“That’s not true,” Sirius denies, not in a plain voice when that’s not particularly fair, it’s more a calm rebuttal. “I love them, but I’m in love with you, and I’m in love with seeing you stick up for yourself, so please know that I was cheering you on back in that kitchen when you went in on the both of them.”

“It’s almost like you had a vested interest that time,” Remus puts it flatly, and fuck, the truth stings when it’s pointed it’s reflected back on you.

“You know what, that’s fair,” Sirius allows. “Context is everything, and I forget that too sometimes.” 

“Oh, the context, the context,” Remus puts up dryly, and Sirius doesn’t even mind the ‘tude anymore if it means Remus is at least actively conversing rather than shutting him out.

“Absolutely, the context,” Sirius allows. “It’s important to keep in mind for you and how you don’t have to always take what they give you and shut up, but it’s also important to keep it in mind for me; I’m not excusing myself for going at you like that, but there are reasons for it, and it’s got way more to do with me than it does with you.” 

“That actually felt quite personal toward me, funnily enough,” Remus returns, blinking plainly. 

Sirius runs his top teeth over his lower lip before trying again. “Once, I think I was about fourteen, somewhere around there, it can be foggy sometimes, but I flipped my father off at the table and in response my mother got up out of her seat and whacked me so hard over the back of the head that I saw stars,” he raises, quite plainly when it’s got to be said that way for him to even articulate it, but Remus shifts roughly on the windowsill, evidently uncomfortable with that anecdote along with a striking shade of vexation Sirius has learned with time only ever shows up on Remus’ face whenever he gets another sordid detail from back then. “I’m not trying to get pity out of you or make you hate them more than I know you already do, I’m saying it because that’s my framework for discipline, and when I see you and Lyall acting the way you do, how you’re able to just fly the bird at him and he doesn’t give shit, or that you can all just toss cusses at each other and nobody bats an eye — that’s a real trip for me, and I have been trying so hard not to let envy take over because it’s not your fault I had such a shit time coming up, it’s never been your fault, and I need you to know that it wasn’t actually personal because I used to give James a world of shit for acting out on his parents, especially back then.” 

Remus turns his head minutely, reaches over to pluck up his once-forgotten tea, and nods for a prompt before he has a sip off of it, and Sirius could just kiss him for letting him make his case. “I wasn’t even through the worst that they did by then, this was a couple years before the outing even happened, but the heat was starting to brim in me, from them and the way they were treating me, but also because James could say some bitchy shit right to their faces and they’d keep their hands off of him, and it’s not that I wanted him to get the boot, it just hurt to see that he was giving just as much sass as I was to my parents and I couldn’t get away with it like he could,” he insists, and Remus just worries at his lower lip and folds his hands over his mug, his eyes softer than they were though his brow shows vestiges of his vexation. “This was the start of our teenage angst and his mood was swinging up, down, all over the place, same as mine was, same as Pete’s, but when you’re in it you don’t have the luxury of looking back and reflecting on the fact that we were all just being ripped apart by puberty the way I can now, so it got to a boiling point one night when I was over there for dinner, and James was in a foul mood that night, made a huge scene at the table that before storming off upstairs without clearing his plate from the table, and I swooped right in and helped them clean up, got some points out of it, and then I went right upstairs and shat all over shat all over him for having the audacity to behave like that while I was around, I really did; I was angelboy one moment and tyrant in the next; I was so full of rage I didn’t know what to do with that I just took it out on him.” 

A small gust of a sigh leaves Remus’ nose and that’s good, it means he’s listening closely. “The thing is, though, no matter what was happening at home for me at the time, I know that James was still allowed to be fucked off at his parents sometimes, he just was, and I couldn’t actually go around expecting utter perfection out of him because he was always going to fall short of what I saw as perfection, do you see what I mean?” he stresses, pointing back at himself. “I snapped my fingers at him telling him to shape up and quit it, and it wouldn’t be fair to James to pretend like he wasn’t patient with me and that he didn’t work so hard to meet me where I was; he never asked me to meet him anywhere, he just tweaked his behaviour, let me come over there when I needed a break from mine, and let me enjoy his parents like a pseudo-son would, and it wouldn’t be fair to pretend like he didn’t grow out of that bratty time of his life either.”

“Did he, though?” Remus puts in quizzically, having a sip off his tea, his eyebrows high up his forehead in a polite manner.

Sirius snorts grand, needing a comment out of Remus more than he even knew. “At least toward his mum and dad,” he allows, watching Remus hide his own smirk behind his mug. “I’ve got to give him that, he really turned it around and these days he calls them up just to blab about anything old thing, so kudos to him and I love him for never holding that time against me, but in the same vein as giving him a break, it wouldn’t be fair to me if I didn’t say that time and space away from that house helped me get better about snarling at the mere sign of imperfection in the way my mates interacted with their parents, but I do fuck up with that sometimes, I let envy take over, and see red and I take it out on the wrong people, but listen to me, please. What I said about James goes for you, too: you’re allowed to shade those two with me, your fucking boyfriend, when they unknowingly give your ex ammo to use against you and I shouldn’t get say anything about it, and you’re also allowed to lay down the law when they’re drilling you about two very touchy subjects back-to-back without me coming for you for being a fucking human, and I’m sorry I let you walk around all this afternoon thinking you were going to have to be bloody perfect from here on out just for the sake of me and my shit." 

Remus makes a heavy, imploring noise, holding his tea in one hand while he tugs Sirius' left wrist up to leave a firm kiss on Sirius' knuckles, he's eyes misty over Sirius' hand. "Tell me one thing, though," Sirius tacks on. "How often would you say I rip into you about this sort of thing?” 

an unfortunately timed mouthful of tea, and Sirius can’t help a smile as he watches Remus swallow it down while he's all flustered over. “Twice in three months,” he answers when he can. 

Sirius goes still, blinking twice. “That’s a better track record than I thought I had going,” he puts up earnestly. 

“You’re brave, asking questions you’re not quite sure about,” Remus mentions, smirking quietly. “Today and when I told you I lied to her about the B.” 

“Ah, the dreaded B,” Sirius allows, nodding slowly. “And forget the fact that I know so much more about you even as recently as today that rather gives a lot of colour and context to that whole B debacle, what would we say was the common denominator between those two times?” 

Remus gives him an imploring frown. “Heavy news from your family,” he answers. “I know it has to do with them. There are times you reign me in from panic-mode and it’s like you know the exact right blend of focus and humour to give me to get me to breathe and rethink things, and to be fair, I think for the B debacle you did try to do that, but you got frustrated with me and you don’t start getting genuinely frustrated with me unless you’ve got them rattling around in your skull.”

Sirius hums in careful acceptance. “So, you think I’ve done alright in between those times?” he checks, nudging Remus’ left knee with his right arm. 

Remus huffs a disparaging sigh. “Of course I do,” he says. “More than, you’ve been a superhero.” 

“Then let me keep at it,” Sirius bids kindly. “Two fuck ups in three months is still two fuck ups, I know, but with what I come from, I could be spouting off like that everyday but I’m not. I don’t want you to be policing yourself around me, it was daft of me to ask that you, and that’s especially true in this case; you being devastated by being frozen out by your mum at the worst possible time counts as something you’re just allowed to be.” 

Remus sniffs there, lifting his left hand from his mug to wipe fast at his eyes in turn. “Thank you,” he says, tightly certainly, but in earnest too. 

“I didn’t once think what you thought I did, but I know you couldn’t know that,” Sirius extends, keeping a kind, soft tone. “I want you to know that I’m nervous too; I’m not above feeling worried, but in order to keep my head up I’m going to have to keep telling myself that sometimes when you’re frazzled out of your control you shut down on me, so I’m not holding her up higher than you, what I’m doing is telling myself that she got frazzled and pulled a Remus on you — which actually might have always been a Hope, now that I think of it.”

Sirius looks off thoughtfully out of Remus’ window, blinks decidedly once he finds that sounds just about right to himself at least, and looks back at Remus just as he’s going for a kiss. “That was good,” he forwards Sirius. 

“Yeah?” he probes, brightening while his lips still feel Remus’ imprint. 

Remus nods quite plainly. “I know I mean well in those cases, even if I am actively dropping the ball,” he lets him have. 

Sirius leans in, leaving an imprint on Remus’ lips this time, and wrapping his hands around Remus’ ankles to hold him there. “What if, and hear me out,” he prefaces, bracing Remus’ ankles with it, “what if she just got a whole lot of information at one go — information she asked for, yes, but I think we’ve all asked for answers we weren’t totally prepared to hear, and maybe she needs time to process all the answers she got and can’t be expected to do it in seconds like a certain other lad I know who’s directly related to her?” 

“OK, thank you,” Remus chimes, giving him quite the face. 

Sirius snorts. “As upset you are, you would not want me having a go at your mum, you’d want me to remind you that she’s not after your pain,” he insists, and Remus’ face softens to award him a solemn nod. “I’ll go as far as to bet you a foot rub that she’s giving herself the kind of shit you give yourself when you feel you’ve mucked up, so maybe we could step off of her just a bit because chances are she’s already raking herself over the coals as we speak.” 

“Oh, that was mean,” Remus returns, staring at Sirius through a brooding squint. 

“Does it sound vaguely correct, though?” Sirius raises quizzically. 

“Uncomfortably so,” Remus lets him have, folding his hands over his mug. “I don’t know where I’m to step next. My dad can’t hang out in limbo forever, but I don’t know if I could handle it if he looked at me like that, too.” 

Sirius sits up quite straight and begins a slow shoulder-shimmy that picks up speed. “I know something,” he teases. 

Remus eyes him and shoulders quite appropriately heedfully. “What?” 

Sirius grins like a goon. “He already knows I’m hella into you, he just can’t quite figure out what’s up with you yet,” he extends.

“What?” Remus comes in directly. “What did he say?” 

Sirius nods, gearing himself up for a fair summary of the intel he’s got. “OK, so I went and brought you up like, three times easily while we were just in the sitting room, and that’s on top of the four times I brought you up while we tried to fix that mower, and after the last time I did it, I thought I saw this wry but morose sort of smile on his face, so I, curious as ever, prompted him for whatever was going on in that head of his, and he went ahead and called me out on how smitten I am, nicely, but it was out there, and he went as far as to make a comparison between you and me, and him and Hope and how he waited for her and considers it one of the best decisions he’d ever made—” 

“Stop, stop it,” Remus cuts in, eyes wide like dinner plates.

Sirius shakes his head. “I won’t,” he grins, “and _then_ it was like he started thinking out loud, getting nervous — word-vomiting, if you will, and he tried to give me wholesome advice for my predicament but couldn’t decide what would be best when he didn’t want to suggest I wait around for someone that just might not be able to return my feelings and thus prolong possible misery on my end, but then he said he didn’t want to discourage me either because he’s not sure what to make of you as is — and we know he didn’t think you and Dorcas were ever a thing, so think he was going over it in real time, you know, like he’s only just quite connecting that you maybe never really had that many gals in the past and that you might just haven’t quite come online yet — I’m paraphrasing, but that is the gist I got before I ran for you.” 

“Sirius,” Remus repeats, only now he’s purposefully hushing himself while also waving his free hand around while trying to keep his tea balanced in the other. 

“I know, but isn’t that kind of funny?” Sirius raises. “We both went off and babbled about each other to the point where you blurted the whole thing out in a hazy stupor to your mum, meanwhile I made your dad go, _wow, kiddo, do you need some advice?_"

The two of them bow forward, each pressing the heel of a palm against their respective mouths to stifle their snickering. “Why are we like this?” Remus puts up between bursts of breath.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Sirius breathes out. “But of course I can’t be upset with you about starting without me when I did the same fucking thing to you.” 

“Only you actually tried to run for me,” Remus points out, too often fair to anyone else but himself. 

“Well, I’m not upset at you, Remus,” Sirius returns. “Don’t go doing it for me, it’s not going to help any.” 

Remus nods reluctantly and breathes in long, looking around his room like he doesn’t recognize it, and it must feel different; why shouldn’t he check if it’s the right one and not a fun house mirror version of it. “I can hardly believe this,” he states.

“I’m barely ahead of you on this one,” Sirius puts up unabashedly. “He’s so close to figuring it out; he’s at noon, and we need him over at one o’clock sharp, but that’s it. And? He didn’t even mind that I’m this fucking gone over you, he just apologized if it’d come off as crude, addressed it like it like fact, and tried to relate to me on it at a base level; me, Remus — isn’t that lovely?”

Remus eyes appear overbright in the low light coming from his lap on his desk. “Sirius,” he implores, tracing his fingertips back and forth over the side of Sirius’ neck, “I’m sort of glad I didn’t go in there then; you needed a win.” 

Sirius feels his own eyes begin to sting, sniffs at once, and shakes his head out, giving a blunt note in his throat, working to control himself. “No, no crying.” he instills in himself more than Remus just then, refocusing. “He’s gone to bed now; he thought I bolted out of the room out of discomfort because I got back from trying to find you and he was already trying to retreat to bed — almost like he was putting himself there out of punishment for sticking his foot in his mouth, sound familiar?” 

Remus gives a flat laugh, nodding for that. “Just a touch.”

Sirius beams with that. “I really tried to keep him downstairs but he’s just too stubborn.” 

The corners of Remus’ mouth turn down. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at least downstairs,” he offers. 

“No, you were not in the state to be down there,” Sirius assures. “I didn’t know what’d happened yet, but now I think gathering everyone in there at that point would’ve just been yo-yoing you around.” 

Remus gives a heavy sigh. “It would have been a lot,” he says, lifting his left hand from where he’s got both curled around his mug and holding his palm flat by the top of his head to showcase he’s just about done with the slip and slide that’s been this day. 

“I know,” Sirius assures. “It’s been a Day, so you’re going to take it easy for the night, you and Hope just leave each other alone to process, and we can start back up again tomorrow knowing that Lyall's not going to freeze up on you, I’ll be right there with you for it, and I think that’ll even tug Hope along a little more if she’s still lagging behind, but I think she'll come around. You can eat my hat if I'm wrong, how about that?” 

“Please don’t be wrong,” Remus sticks in there, and Sirius gives him a smooch for continuing to let the two of them be them. 

“I really don’t think I am,” Sirius offers. “And this isn’t me holding her higher up than you, but she fashioned me a quilt in time for me to use while I’m here, Remus; she’s a sweetie, even if she forgets herself sometimes.” 

Remus nods after a long breath in, the both of his hands back to being curled around his mug while he searches Sirius openly with a meek smile on. “I’m so proud of you,” he offers. “I know how important this was to you, and you’re being so fair to all of us even with all of the hitches and our stubbornness.” 

“Boy, you have no idea how proud I am of you,” Sirius returns, popping Remus over the right knee. “And I’m fine, Remus; I adapt to my surroundings pretty well.” 

“More than pretty well,” Remus amends. 

Sirius makes sure to pause and bask, leaning up to press their foreheads together, but has a thought bubble take over from there. “Say, do you think they’ll pool their knowledge together and we’ll wake up with everyone in the know?” he raises. 

Remus hums tentatively there. “I might’ve told her not to mention it to him while I was fleeing the scene,” he confesses, putting a bit of a grimace on. 

Sirius straightens out again, nodding once. “That might not stop Lyall from talking to her, though?” he raises. “Especially if he feels he flubbed that bro-moment beyond, poor guy; he really did mean so well with it.” 

Remus puts out a twice as sheepish noise. “Why did I tell her that?” he puts up, and clearly they're pouring over separate issues. “That was so mean; I just caged her up so now she can’t talk to her fucking husband about it without feeling like she’s directly ignoring my request.” 

“OK, we are being so much right now,” Sirius decides, snickering there. “Let’s regroup: they’re both fully-fledged adults who can handle their shit, so if we wake up tomorrow and everyone’s staring at each other all funny-like then we’ll know they had a late night chat of sorts, and we won’t be mad at Hope for it because that is her best friend in there, but if Lyall passes out ahead of her and they don’t pool their combined gossip together, we’ll be giving him some great news come tomorrow and we’ll figure out the rest, OK? We always do.” 

Remus breathes in long, nodding heavily before he seals it with a kiss. “Do you want to go in on a new lawnmower for my dad?” he asks, a budding smile on his lips. “I just can’t think of anything else that he’d like more right about now.” 

“Yeah, if you let me pay in full,” Sirius answers. 

“No, Sirius, I’m helping,” Remus returns. 

“Fine, you can help, but we’re not going halfsies,” Sirius conditions. “It’s on a pay what you can basis, and that’s my only offer.”

Remus breathes in, holds it, and lets it out with a point up at Sirius. “When I start making real money, you’d better let me foot the bill more often,” he raises pointedly. 

“That’s about a year and a half on from, so thank you for the vote of confidence we’ll still be doing this by then.” Sirius tacks on, and Remus’ cheeks go wonderfully rosy with that. 

“How are you otherwise?” Remus asks, looking Sirius over. 

Sirius breathes in, thinking it over. “I've just been stuck on go for hours now," he raises. "I could really use a cigarette right about now, actually; I think my last was at the mall.” 

“Oh Cunt, go on,” Remus excuses, waving a hand in insistence before pointing at him. "Might want to go out front, though." 

Sirius smirks for that, looking over his shoulder at the clock on Remus' bedside table. “Oh fuck, it’s nine?” he puts up, looking back at him. "When did that happen?” 

Remus nods evenly there. “That feels right to me,” he offers circumstantially. “We really only got to eating around seven, and the post-dinner debacle sped up and then slowed down and sped up and slowed down, but in the way that I’m aware time is, in fact, not actually bending against my will.” 

Sirius looks back to Remus with an accepting nod. “OK, if it's that late then I’ve got to ring James, give him an update," he raises." 

“Can you tell him to just fork that update over to Lily for me for tonight,” Remus bids, smiling weakly. “I don’t think I could get into the whole thing, and she’s also waiting for one.” 

“Deal,” Sirius returns him, but then he's not sure where the night's going to go from there and his next question comes out a tad ruefully when he already knows the answer. “Are you going to stay up here tonight?” 

“Uh, no; I’m going to wait until I know she’s gone to bed and I’ll come down,” Remus returns bluntly, and certainly not the answer Sirius was prepared for. 

“_Lupin,_” he sends him, a gape/grin on. 

“I don’t want to sleep up here without you,” Remus implores. “I just don’t want to make matters worse, so I’m going to wait it out and follow you down in a little while, is that OK?” 

“Perfect,” Sirius allows, happy with just about anything now. “You’ll be OK up here?” 

“Oh, I’ve got my pot right here,” Remus forwards, waving a hand toward his teapot. 

“Different kind of pot, but do you want to smoke a bit later?” Sirius checks. 

“Oh yeah,” Remus assures plainly.

Sirius nods diligently. “You be good up here, and text me if you get a little heady, yeah?” he raises.

“I will,” Remus gives him, but he does look so much better off than he did. 

Sirius gets another thought bubble and looks curiously over his shoulder and around the room a little bit. “Is your copy of _Maurice_ up here?” he inquires, looking back at Remus with a coy expression on. 

Remus stifles a snicker, nodding to affirm before nodding over toward his desk/bookshelf hybrid. “It’s in there,” he extends. “Definitely weathered, but I think the pages are still held together.” 

“Well, you’ve that to read for a cheer-up in the meantime,” Sirius lifts up. 

“I actually might,” Remus gives him, his eyes bright, “now that you said that.” 

“Do it, I want you feeling good,” Sirius tacks on, lifting off of the floor and giving Remus a kiss on the way up. 

Remus reaches up to cup the back of Sirius’ head and holds him there as he drags the kiss out, fingers splayed over the back of his low bun, and Sirius feels the charge going through the two of them like a live wire. “See you in a bit,” he whispers afterward, smiling up at Sirius. 

Sirius can still see impressions of that smile as he descends the stairs, still feels the press of unmistakably gracious lips on his own as he gets to the foot of them, but there he’s presented with a choice. As Remus alluded, if he goes out the back way, he’s more than likely to pass Hope on the way and risk a whole bout of awkwardness for the both of them, but as Remus suggested, going out front could avoid that completely. 

Something doesn’t feel right about plain avoidance. Remus, as far as Sirius is concerned, hit already blown past his limit and has the right to tap out for the night, but tiptoeing around the premises could backfire on Sirius and the two of them, could make him some sort of boogeyman force looming on the property that’s actively avoiding getting too close to her, and that feels dehumanizing to its core. It’d cheapen what he and Remus are, give it a sinister note that just isn’t there, and it couldn’t help his own standings with Hope either. He’s no threat, not to her or Remus, and he hasn’t got substantial proof that that’s even a worry of hers, but if there is any doubt in her on that front, perhaps the mere act of putting himself in her path would be far better in the long run than staying off her radar would. 

With that, he hangs a left when he gets to the hall, heads through the dining room and into the kitchen, and finds the radio still on in there, the kitchen decor still looking fan-fucking-tastic, and it's almost like no news has shaken up half the house. Moving into the den comes with a sense of easy familiarity, as does leaving through the back door, but once he’s outside he’s got to pull on that warmth from the den to keep it wrapped around him. Twilight’s begun and lights from above cast a faint, yellowy glow over the porch as he strolls down the porch and around the bend, and he thought the porch lights had been a nice and helpful touch to the whole aesthetic of the backyard, but for now there's one perched right above the veranda area that's casting a vaguely spooky tint over Hope knitting down the way and Sirius works to crush that observation real quick for it’s not going to help if he starts letting his imagination run wild; it’s the circumstance they’re in, not the tint of the light that’s causing the spooky feeling. 

Hope looks up and over at Sirius as he makes it to the stairs, and he glances at the unfamiliar piece in her lap but can’t quite tell what it’ll be eventually. “What’s this one?” he asks, gesturing toward her work while lingering at the top of the stairs. 

“It’ll be a throw pillow eventually,” Hope offers, glancing down at it. “I've only just started tonight, so it's not got much shape to it yet.” 

“That’ll be nice, though,” Sirius extends, nodding toward the misty blue yarn chosen for the piece. “That’s a good colour.” 

“I thought so too,” Hope raises, setting her needles down on either side of her lap to free up her hands in order to lift the square she’s working on. “It doesn't look like much now, but I've an insert to go in it once I get enough rows, and after that I’m thinking of using a few of the buttons that came in the kit and sewing a few up the center of it.” 

Hope does a little tap-tap-tap on the would-be center of this future throw pillow for illustration and Sirius can’t help a smile. “Like a little cardigan,” he offers. 

Hope nods emphatically, a few gusts leaving her nose. “That was it, yeah," she gives him. 

Sirius tips his head to her, finding her unbelievably cute even with what's looming over both their heads. “Well, I won’t keep you,” he says, tipping his head to her and moving down the first step. “Just passing through really.” 

“I tried putting you up best I could in there,” Hope offers, and Sirius stops on the stairs, nodding since he already found she rather did set him for success, but Hope’s not losing steam. “There are linens in the cupboard in the hall, as well as extra sheets and blankets, and I put extra toiletries in there, too — basic stuff, but in case you find out at an inopportune time that you’ve forgotten something behind, they’re there to be used, and if there's anything else you notice that isn't there for some reason, just let me know.” 

“Thank you, but that's more than enough,” Sirius offers. "I meant to say it earlier, but I do love your taste in hand soap."

“Do you?” Hope engages him, still knitting while she’s looking over at him, and Sirius can’t help but think that’s a good sign in itself. 

“Oh yeah, trust me; it’s top notch,” Sirius returns knowingly. “I mean, I like your taste in general, but definitely the soap; the one in the downstairs bathroom is incredible, as well as the one you put in the cabin, and I’m sure one in the upstairs bathroom is going to be phenomenal and I can’t wait to find out what that one is.” 

“Well, then I won’t tell you ahead of time what it is and let you find out for yourself,” Hope extends, giving him a smile. 

“Appreciate that,” he forwards, trying not to rock back and forth on his feet too enchantedly, but he’s likely not pulling that off so well. “Oh, uhm, Lyall wanted me to pass along that he was turning in, but that must have been an hour ago now.” 

“Oh, alright,” Hope nods. “Thank you for the telegram.” 

“He didn’t want you thinking he skipped town, I suppose,” Sirius jests. 

“Oh, he wouldn’t go far,” Hope offers. 

“Go far or get far?” Sirius raises. 

“Both,” Hope comes back, and Sirius relishes in her not taking that one horribly, but that’s enough pushing his luck, he thinks.

“Alright, well,” he says, turning to head down the rest of the stairs. 

“Have you seen him?” Hope sticks in, quite abruptly at that. 

Sirius swings around on the path, looking up and over at her from there. “I have,” he offers. “He’s upstairs, he didn’t take off or anything."

Hope nods faintly there, and now she isn't knitting anymore, and Sirius wonders if Remus might be the one thing that stops her from keeping on with it. “How is he?” she asks, unblinking. 

“Better,” Sirius supplies, and he didn’t necessarily mean it to hang in the air like it does, but now he’s not sure he should leave it like that and points up at the open seat on Hope’s right. “May I sit?” 

Hope blinks over at him twice before nodding, and he wonders if she’d have waved a hand toward the seat if they weren’t rather occupied with her needles. Sirius heads back up the steps and over to settle in the chair, stretching his legs out straight ahead of him and crossing them at the ankles, and looks sidelong at Hope who isn’t bothering to knit anymore, but that's hardly a surprise. “I’m all caught up now, and I’m a pretty good soundboard, so you know,” Sirius raises. “Of course, I do have my biases but I’m a pretty good judge of when to put them aside, at least I think.”

Hope gives a minute nod, staring down at her hands in her lap, and Sirius finds there’s a familiarity to it all, but that might have something to do with the fact that he’s had quite a bit of time logged away with a pensive Remus; Sirius doesn’t really mind waiting on her to sort her words out, and sort them out she does, but it’s quite clear once the words come out that the weight of the words she was choosing was what might’ve been holding her back. 

“I let him down.” 

“Wow, alright,” Sirius puts up, half-grimacing. “We’re going there straight out the gate, then.” 

Hope looks sidelong at him. “Well, you’re all caught up, so you know I did,” she returns. “He’s never wanted to disappear faster.” 

Sirius breathes in long, nodding his head vaguely. “Well, the investigation on all matters pertaining to him and the news could have waited a little longer, I agree,” he offers, going for a sweet disposition, “but let’s see: did you ask him why he’s destroying everything you and yours built, why he’s spitting on your name, whether he’s indulging in all of this just to spite you?”

Hope finally looks at him straight on, a deep frown on. “Of course not,” she returns woundedly. “Did he say I did?” 

“No, Hope, but that’s my point; you could have levelled some of that at him,” Sirius extends. “I’m not saying it went well or that it was the time to freeze him out or start prodding him for all sorts of details. Springing it on you like that was not what we had planned and he’s so sorry about that, but it’s been a long time coming and it was going to have to leave him like that, as hard as it was for the both of you.” 

“He said as much,” she comments. 

“Which part?” Sirius checks. 

“He said he was supposed to wait for you,” Hope delivers.

“_Oh_, yeah, we had a whole plan ready to go,” Sirius offers. “Get you two good and fed, talk each other up like kings, show you we work well together, and swiftly let the news that we’re so lucky to have found each other out over dessert, but we all know how well that went.” 

“Jesus,” Hope puts out, shutting her eyes and making quite the face. “I didn’t know — I didn’t _know_.” 

“_We_ know,” Sirius insists. “Doreen was talking your ear off, and Lyall went and decided the lawn just had to be done right then and there; it wasn’t just you who derailed it, but we did have this planned out in May, and that’s a long time to have something like that loom over his head, he thought about it all the time and it was just brimming in him.”

“Alright, that accounts for May to now,” Hope tacks on. “What happened to December until May, hm? What happened there?” 

“Well, it was still shiny and new then,” Sirius extends mystically. “And Remus wasn’t about to announce it until he knew there’d be longevity to it; he’s a big proponent for not speaking too soon.” 

“Certainly is,” Hope puts up, and there’s some bite to it, definitely. “I don’t know where he got it in his head that I wouldn’t have been open to it—” 

Hope cuts off at Sirius’ vague but entirely pointed hum. “He told you why,” he puts in, smiling kindly. “I wasn’t there, I know, but I know he gave you his reasons, and he’s got a list of them.”

“I would still have been open to it,” Hope clings to it. 

“Well, you were certainly open to him dating, yes,” Sirius raises sweetly. 

Hope lifts her shoulders quickly, putting a Remus-eque huff out which has Sirius feeling a lot less like he’s about to get thrown from the porch. “He was so happy this term,” she puts it. “Visibly shining every time I was able to see him; he never tells me about who he's seeing, but I knew he was.” 

“Yeah, that was me,” Sirius chimes, smiling proudly. 

“Well, pardon me, then," Hope returns. "Sorry I went with the wrong one." 

Sirius could leave it, he could. He's going to, but he knows he could. “It’s not that you did it just this time,” he puts it as kindly as he can manage. "It’s that it’s always been the random female friend of his even though he’s been keeping far more company with a specific bloke; that’s the message he’s been getting from you for a long time.”

“I wish he hadn’t felt like he couldn’t correct me on assumptions I've made,” Hope comes back strong. “And he never did do that; he just let me think it for years.” 

“Well, he couldn’t,” Sirius puts it. “There's a certain kind of safety in playing the part, but he doesn't want to do it anymore, and I know he told you quite a few times that he wasn’t seeing her so you can’t give him shit now for what he didn’t correct you on when he was a teenager, he kicks himself for that enough for that enough; I've personally brought him back from that place." 

Hope puts out a despairing breath. “I can’t wish it hadn’t taken so long?" she raises.

“No no, it's fine,” Sirius offers, lifting his hands plainly. “It's not like coming out is something extremely personal for those who have to do it and that plenty wait years to share it with their families or anything, and it's not like finally decided he wanted you two to know him and me better and has been cycling back through worrying about it not landing well for weeks and weeks, and it’s totally not like we both heard you hum-hawing back in there about Dorcas while we were trying to get the Great Coming Out Dinner ready—" 

Hope gives a weighty sigh there. "OK, this is—"

"You wanted to know why it took so long," Sirius puts up. "And after that last one, I’m surprised he even wanted to go through with it still when that sort of thing can send him right back into thinking you’re not ready to hear it.”

Hope stammers there, and Sirius half-winces, looking down at the porch between his feet knowing he’s over the line, but he has to rep Remus where he can, that's his job. “I was excited for him,” she manages. “That’s all.” 

“Well, are you still now?” Sirius asks, softening his voice. "He's happy, he's visibly shining, and he's seeing someone; that's something to keep being excited for him about." 

“Of course I am,” Hope returns, her shoulders set rigid. 

She stews in her seat, but a disgruntled Hope is something he feels strangely at ease with. "Well, he really doesn't know that," Sirius comes back.

“I gave birth to him," she puts out. "Nothing changes now; he should know that.”

“That’s not always enough,” Sirius says candidly, and he can feel Hope’s gaze on him without having to look at her to confirm it. “Sometimes birthing someone doesn’t even enter the equation.” 

“He’s part of me,” Hope keeps to it, albeit in a smaller voice. “I could never shun him or drag him off to get him fixed; that’s insanity, and when did I ever give him the impression I’d ever do either?”

Sirius swallows dryly, working back on his envy, pulling Remus forward. “He didn’t think you’d turn your back on him or try to scare the queer out of him, but as far as he could see, you wanted him paired up with a girl and his type happens to be broody boys,” he reiterates. “Him being your kid doesn’t automatically guarantee you’ll still support him no matter who he feels attracted to, he cares about what you think of him and he hates the _notion_ of disappointing you; this isn’t as shocking as it feels, I promise it’s not.” 

Tense silence stretches out between them for a full minute, and in time Sirius wonders if he's already missed his cue to leave and gears himself up to leave her with that last sentiment, but she speaks before he gathers himself up. “I keep trying to spot the signs I didn't see,” she says distantly, and when Sirius looks over at her he finds she’s looking out over the property and likely not even really seeing it. "I don't know where they are." 

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t read him for a while there either,” he lets her have. 

“Mm?” she hums, putting her gaze back on him. 

“For about three months,” Sirius affirms. “I’d go back and forth on it all the time, especially earlier on; one moment I’d think I got the vibe off of him and the next I’d think I’d been conflating it because I really wanted him to be interested in me, but he’s a tough bloke to read, and I only found out for sure once he told me, see what I’m saying?”

Hope considers him with a hum before landing on a specific detail. “Three months of not picking up on it is a lot better than twenty-three years.”

“Well, I doubt he knew it when he was four, Hope,” Sirius replies wryly, waving her off. 

“Just fourteen,” Hope amends, and in the next beat she’s actively blinking back tears and Sirius feels like a right cunt. 

“No, don’t, Hope,” he says, shifting more toward her in his seat. “If you cry, I’ll cry.” 

“Too late,” Hope pushes out, lifting her hands to rub at her eyes, but it’s no use. “He said he was confused for years before then too, it must have been so lonely for him.” 

Sirius swallows around a hitch in his throat, unsure of the direction he ought to go in. “How honest do you want me to be?” he asks first. 

Hope sniffs, peeking at Sirius sidelong. “I don’t know,” she answers, and least she’s honest. 

“Well, I can give you a two-parter answer if you’d like; one’s a bit sad, but the other’s rather nice, I think,” Sirius raises, and Hope lifts her shoulders, nodding. “It is lonely. He and I weren’t raised the same way so there are differences between us, but we were still queer kids once and we experienced some of the same things because of that, namely the loneliness and the othering.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Hope puts in. 

“Well, you have a sense that you’re slightly off or different, but you can’t name it or articulate it well because you’re still very young and it’s all very abstract, but the othering is everywhere in small ways,” Sirius offers. “You know those pearl clutchers always say things like, ‘_my word, think of the children; they’re far too young to hear about that_,’ and alright, but no one batted an eye when they handed out colouring sheets of a bride and a groom for me to colour in back in the first grade, did they; _that_ was just fine and dandy, the natural order of things, but put two grooms or two brides in the picture and suddenly it’s unthinkable perversion. It’s real transparent now what they chose to push and what they didn’t, but when you do that, when you hold up one, ideal family and that is it, you’re effectively leaving the queer kids behind to float around in disillusionment and confusion solely because you don’t want to address the fact that some kids aren’t going to understand the language you’re speaking, but fuck ‘em right, if you support one queer kid and then they’re all going to end up fucking queer, right? That’s just how it works.” 

Sirius realizes he’s popped right off right about the ‘fuck’ line, checks sidelong at Hope readying himself to reign it in, but she’s sitting back further in her chair and watching him unblinking, so perhaps this is exactly the sort of thing she should be hearing. “OK, that one’s a big one for me, clearly,” he mentions, huffing a sheepish laugh for Hope’s diligent nod. “Sorry for the mouth on me.” 

Hope hums there. “I tend to think a well-placed 'fuck' hardly takes away from a good point,” she offers, giving a wave of her right hand. “Go on, hon.” 

Sirius breathes in, relocating where he ended off. "Right, so this is where our experiences split off because I came from an Aristocratic, high society type family with a particular emphasis on Christianity and order, so I was prepped about blasphemous behaviour, and the whole 'men do not lie with men' rhetoric started by the time I hit the end of grade school, so I was more aware of the concept and the tension surrounding it going into secondary but I'd already started poking holes in in their rhetoric for other concepts, so I did the same with that, poked holes in the argument, but Remus wasn't fed that sort of thing the way I was, and I had to learn through him that you don't need to have poison fed to you like that in order to still feel the sting you in other ways," he explains, or tries to. "It was the silence he heard about it at school, it was not knowing anyone who felt distant and not quite set up right, and it was going back to a place that was a 'live and let live,' home, so kudos to you two for that because he was able to locate that there were people out there who might've been like him, but I had to learn from him that hearing about it in the abstract sense only and then going back to a place that never discussed it really ran him down, and that was before he was told so many times and in so many ways to keep it to himself once he did awaken to it and once he did have someone who was like him, for lack of a better term, so this isn't to throw mud at you specifically, no no, it's so much bigger than one, single aspect; it's learning through constant reinforcement that you're not quite right and that's not to be discussed, and it is exceptionally lonely, but there are bright spots in between, and joy and laughter, that I can say for sure." 

Hope’s quick with the humming prompt, her face wrought with sorrow, and Sirius isn’t about to make her wait on it. “Well, there’s resources and content out there, and you have to search for them because they’re often not readily available, but there’s a subculture out there to play around with and sometimes you can find a reflection of yourself in them,” he keeps on. “Queer lit, plays, films, media, music, all sorts of things, and I’m just going to say, ask Remus about _Maurice_ at some point, alright?”

“Oh?” Hope engages him. 

Sirius nods once, smiling for it. “Mhm, and I don’t want to give it away because it was his and he’s so sweet about it when you get him going,” he mentions, starting to grin and he knows it. “And don’t stop there, ask him what his experience was like and try to relate to him on it; just because you didn’t see it then doesn’t mean you can’t try to see him now, but _Maurice_ might actually be such a good place to start.” 

Hope pushes a heavy breath out, nodding gently. “Thank you for the tip,” she says, and it sounds so earnest that Sirius can’t see a reason to think it isn’t. “Did you find something like that?” 

Sirius grins like a goon. “Oh, for sure,” he affirms. “I found Freddie in year nine, and it was life-affirming.” 

Hope’s brilliantly melodious trill of a laugh is everything Sirius could have hoped to hear. “Oh, that makes a ton of sense, hon,” she offers. 

Sirius smiles ear to ear. “I was so inspired by him,” he emphasises. “I felt, 'well, here’s this specimen of a man who didn’t care what anyone thought of him and just was who he was unapologetically, so why shouldn’t I get to do the same?'”

“I love that,” Hope gives him. “You’ve a great moxie about you, I've thought it for a long time.” 

Sirius tips his head brightly to her. “Thank you, I already had it by then, but he helped fan the flames so credit where credit’s due,” he extends. “And all of that was to say that yes, it can be lonely coming up like that, and there are times where that loneliness creeps back in even though we’re much better off than we were, and much further on with loving ourselves for it and not despite it, but here’s what I like to think about for Remus because it hurts me nearly as much as it hurts you to think that he was so afraid to speak, but it’s that he turned out to be such a lovely man that loves so strongly, and I have to hand it to him, he’s come such a long way from where he was.” 

“He’s holding himself so differently,” Hope speaks to it. “He’s taller, you know. Taller than usual.” 

“He is,” Sirius insists. “And I'll admit it, I get so wrapped up in the end result at times that I do need to stop and look at all the ways he’s been trying to embrace himself, and actively letting himself do it more, too, so the best I can suggest is to acknowledge what was holding him back for so long, but don’t only see him for the worst years he had, try to focus on the fact that he dug himself out of that spot and he’s going to keep digging however long it takes him.”

For a notion so positive, Sirius would have thought he’d get Hope smiling some more, but she’s got a morose expression on now, and more noticeably for Sirius, her brows are turned in just like Remus’ do when he’s Thinking. “I should have been more available to him then and he wouldn’t have had to do so much digging,” she says several beats later, and it’s done in such a forlorn voice that it curdles what’s left in Sirius’ stomach. “No, it’s true, in those years, I wasn’t — it was tough for those years balancing Lyall, the appointments, work, and I know Remus took the back burner and that shouldn’t have happened; I should have made more time for him.” 

“OK, thinking like that’s not going to do anyone any good,” Sirius comes in firmly. “He’s never once thought of it that way, so don’t you go doing it for him, and moreover, he’d kick my arse for not telling you to quit it right now, so I am obligated to shush you, and personally speaking, you helped raise one of my heroes, so I don’t love hearing this either, sorry, Hope.”

“But he must’ve thought he couldn’t stack up to everything else,” she counters. “That he wasn’t important enough, or that I was too busy with everything else to sit me down and just ask for help—” 

Hope trails off as Sirius clears his throat quite pointedly. “OK, well, _that’s_ .just Remus,” he puts down. “He’d rather shoot himself in the foot than be a bother, and even then he’d regret the foot shooting the second he realized that someone would likely have to help him into the ambulance.” 

Hope lets out some hybrid between a snort, a groan, and a sigh. “I don’t why that is,” she heaves out, throwing her hands up at a loss for it. 

“Well, now you’ve really hit a snag, hm; who do we know that could have passed that trait onto him,” Sirius puts up thoughtfully, and Hope makes the noise again only there’s a flat laugh in there this time, too. “That’s him, Hope; he never wants a fuss while continuously fussing and puttering and worrying about everyone else’s well being, and him trying not to make a fuss about anything to do with himself often leads to an even bigger fuss down the line. It’s frustrating, it’s frustrating to hell and back, but you know what? As frustrating as it is for us, it’s got to be scores more frustrating for him.” 

Hope looks over at him through overbright eyes, her shoulders wilted. “OK, so picture Remus standing in front a table in a science classroom,” Sirius raises, speaking through Hope’s rendered silence, “and he’s doing one one of those volcano projects, only his life is the volcano—” 

Hope breathes out a stuttered noise, blinking wildly, and Sirius lifts his left hand to halt her, “Stay with me, alright?” he bids, pointing at her, and Hope bites her lower lip, nodding for it. “Remus’ Life as a Volcano, Scene I, Act I: he’s standing there at the table with all these ingredients he’s pouring in, and these are meant to be allegories for specific sections of his life, his program, his work, his mum and dad, his boyfriend, his mates — all the things and people he cares about, and notice that he doesn’t put himself in there, but there he is, he’s trying to balance it all, sprinkling bits of each category in and taking painstaking focus to try to keep everything mixing together properly, only those things don’t mesh the way they ought to because he’s always compartmentalized them, and suddenly the universe comes barreling along, knocks his elbows around, and the whole thing blows up in his face.” 

Hope exhales once. “That was,” she pauses. “Vivid.” 

“I’ve a bit of a flair for it,” Sirius maintains, a pleasant smile poking at his lips. “I’m not here to say I’m an expert on Remus and all he’s got going on — hell, this is just what I know _today,_ who knows what tomorrow’s got for me. I’m still working him out, it’s been nearly a year now that I’ve been trying to work him out, and I still fall short of remembering how hard he tries to make sure everything he cares about balances out, and when they don’t he viscerally suffers for it.” 

Hope gives a resigned hum beside him, but she doesn’t make to speak, and if he’s honest, Sirius isn’t quite done yet as is. “When I first was getting to know him, I’d walk around like I’d figured him out and then he’d throw a curveball at me and I’d end up having to work twice as hard to figure him out from there,” he offers her. “It was frustrating in that I’d only just get to feeling like I knew what I was working with before I’d have to adjust what I thought I knew about him and look at it at a new angle, I won’t pretend it wasn’t deeply exciting to me. I found I enjoyed that he kept me guessing, kept surprising me, kept turning me on my head; it kept things fresh and new and we weren’t even close to getting together yet, but I loved the dynamic we had even when we were just mates trying to fit each other, and then I still loved it when we were more than just mates, and I still have to work to figure him out, turn the picture to the side and try to look at it from his perspective while not completely throwing mine out the window either, but it’s got to be said that he spends so much time bending over backwards to try to make me feel comfortable and seen that it’s only fair that I keep showing up and trying to meet him somewhere between us, not just where he is but try to tug him and his stubborn heels into the middle more, same he does with me.”

Sirius stops there, swallows, looks left toward Hope’s wide, misty eyes with a determination he must keep in himself, thinking he owes it to Hope, to Remus, and to their once-fortified plan. “I know I’m not what you were expecting, and it may take some time for you to wrap your head around it, and that’s alright,” Sirius says unflinchingly, “but if you leave this spot with anything tonight, then know that I’m in love with your son and I want the world for him, I’d just like to be there while he’s seeing it.” 

Hope leans forward quite slowly in her chair, rests her elbows on her soon-to-be throw pillow on her thighs, and wipes at her eyes with the heels of her palms. Sirius watches her unblinkingly, unable to decide if that’s a good or bad sign until Hope rests her chin on her right hand and turns her head toward him again, leveling him with a tear-stained smile. 

“You two are one for the books,” she tosses him. “I think now’s about the time somebody let’s me in on how this happened.” 

Sirius piques wholeheartedly. “Well, if you want to get technical, I got the ball rolling but he did the heavy lifting,” he supplies, a budding smile on his lips. “It was a long time coming on both our parts.”

“I’ll need a touch more than that,” Hope mentions. “You may start with you.” 

“Well, let’s just put it right out there, that’s a fit son you’ve got there,” Sirius says, a laugh escaping by the end of it, and his smile only widens when he hears Hope’s snort. “I mean, there’s way more to it than that, but I felt I should make that clear straight off the bat.” 

“It’s noted,” Hope assures, sitting up and back in her chair, waving her right hand for allowance. 

“He’s so funny,” Sirius puts up. “Quick as a whip with his commentary, dry as all hell, and I’ve never cried more from laughter or choked on as many drinks as I have since knowing him; he just gets me, and sometimes he need not say a thing and he just rests on a face and turns it toward me when we’re in a situation where commentary wouldn’t be on and makes me lose it, and I’m the one who looks like the eavesdropping jerk and not him.” 

“What’s the face?” Hope asks, and Sirius gives his best shot at duplicating it, “oh, that’s lethal; try being in between him and Lyall while getting a bite somewhere.” 

“I’d do anything to experience it even though I know I’ll suffer greatly while it’s happening,” Sirius maintains.

“So, he won you over with his wit, then,” Hope prompts. “I like that.” 

“Absolutely, he did,” Sirius returns. “We started off a little rocky, mind, we are an opposite pair, so it was touch and go for the first few weeks we worked at the same spot, but soon enough I was elated to come into work on our common days because he’d just make a shift that much better, he was such a laugh. And then, we had a bit of a row outside of work this one night and it was looking real bleak from there, but he turned next shift just having a Shit Day, you know, it just wouldn’t give him a break, and the storms through the place and found me and just gave me quite the rundown of said Shit Day, and I’m torn at this point because on the one hand he’s clearly riled up and just needs to let it out, but on the other hand, the way he went about it, the way he tells stories is gold to me, so I can’t keep a straight face through it, and he goes and huffs at me because I’m losing it beside him—” 

“Oh, you mustn’t laugh when he gets the huffs,” Hope puts in sagely, shaking her head knowingly. 

“Find me a harder rule to follow, Hope,” Sirius returns boisterously, pulling a startled laugh out of her. “That was the day I came online; I just sat with him out there and listened to him pop off, and then he leaned his gorgeous little sheepish face against my arm after he tuckered himself out from his rant, and that was it, I thought: I want that one.” 

Hope gives a wounded little noise beside him. “Does he know that?” she asks. 

“Oh, he sure does,” Sirius assures. “I told him all about it. And I’ll be honest, I do rather like winding him up sometimes; it just gets the sun shining brighter when he’s huffing and puffing at me _for_ winding him up, and I don’t think it hurts to get him laughing at himself now and again, just get him to take himself just a little less seriously.” 

“Oh, if you could do that for him, I’d send you a gift,” Hope offers. 

“You’ve already given me one,” Sirius mentions. 

“I’ll send a second one,” Hope amends, and Sirius nods brightly. “You wouldn’t believe the fuss he made over those tickets, but we couldn’t have had you working on him then or what sort of surprise would that be.” 

“The tickets?” Sirius raises faintly. “Don’t know what you mean, it’s not as if he found me outside my home and accosted me over them or anything.” 

Hope looks positively sheepish. “I did tell him to put off worrying about it for the night and simply enjoy himself, but in one ear and out the other,” she puts up idly. 

“I mean, he did in the end,” Sirius mentions, tap-tap-tapping his feet like a drum roll on the porch floor in happy memory. “T’was a Happy Christmas all around, and I can’t say I regret him accosting me out there that night because it’s what got him to stop dancing out just out of my reach, and after harbouring after him for the entirety of the the fall season, it felt, I got smooched right on Christmas eve, so if anything, I owe you twice over for just letting me handle it because that made finally got him to act.” 

Hope gives him a bright, wondrous smile. “Did it really?” 

Sirius nods emphatically, matching her smile easily. “I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t think he was in any way interested in me in that way by then though I was just gobsmacked by him, but getting you two over there was something I’d thought up after he showed up for me at a tough time,” he offers, looking down at his feet again. “My younger brother had just passed and Remus went far and beyond what he probably should have done, he came round to mine in the middle of a torrential downpour just to check up on me because I know a thing or two about pulling back when I’m feeling at odds and I was doing it to him and he didn’t let me do it for long, the clever lad, and then he came to the funeral, kept an eye on me when I needed it afterward, supported me more than I knew how to thank him for, and it was all such pure sweetness out of him, and that’s Remus; he doesn’t do kind things to get told he’s done good, he loves seeing someone look and feel better from a good deed, and I got to through to the end of that awful week and knew I had to do something for him and getting you there to see him felt like the best way to do it; he missed you two so much.” 

Sirius looks back up at Hope who does look awfully torn between smiling and not doing that. “I’m glad he was there for you,” she offers, but her mouth twitches downward. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother, Sirius.” 

He nods, biting the inside of his right cheek, afraid to talk and spew things she’s not going to be able to do anything with, and afraid not to in the same breath. “That one hit hard,” he says of it. “We hadn’t talked for years. He was only twenty, just barely an adult, really.” 

Hope hums solemnly. “That’s far too young,” she comments. 

Sirius nods again, his his stinging. “It comes in waves,” he puts up, and it’s like he can’t stop nodding. “My parents, I couldn’t miss them if I tried, but him? It really comes in waves.”

“Where are they?” 

“Hm?” Sirius asks, blinking himself back. 

“Your parents,” Hope clarifies, and it’s real clipped. 

“Oh, they’re gone, too,” Sirius supplies, and Hope instantly regrets asking, he can just see it. “No, that’s alright. I was dead to them by then so they wouldn’t shed a tear for me if I’d bit it first; they’d have popped a bottle in my honour, so don’t you go mourning a couple of cooks ‘cause I know I won't be.” 

“I’m just so sorry, hon,” Hope offers him. 

Sirius shakes his head and waves her off for it. “Andromeda's the best our family tree had to offer and she got out like I did, so I got a stellar trade-off there,” he offers before a pause. “OK, I shouldn’t say that, my uncle Alphard was actually a pretty stand up chap, I’ve got to say.” 

“Was,” Hope repeats, grimacing ahead of time. 

“Mhm, yeah, he passed last year,” Sirius affirms. “It’s like they’re all getting picked off one by one, and so many of them were awful people so it’s no loss to the world really, but it does hurt when the good ones go too.” 

“How was he a stand up chap, then?” Hope prompts, and she seems to be hopeful for a peppy anecdote of some sort. 

“He was a good sort,” Sirius answers. “I didn't think about it when I knew him, but I wonder if he blended in just enough to turn up at a function or dinner party, enjoy the salmon puffs, mingle a bit, and split when he was just about done with the whole charade and then do his own thing until he was expected to show back up again for the next big function. At the time, I just thought he was nicer to me the rest of them and liked that he’d laugh at all my sass.”

Hope does manage a smile there. “You’ve quite a bit of that,” she allows. “Kudos to him for indulging it.”

“Honestly,” Sirius lets land. “I wish I’d met up with him before he passed; in his will he left me enough to get through to thirty extremely comfortably, and made his children real livid about it, too, and I didn’t realize how much of an impression I must have made on him back then for him to decide that was what he’d do with his riches.”

“That was very kind of him,” Hope echoes, appearing grateful for a little light through the dark. 

“Yeah, exceptionally kind,” Sirius allows. “I don’t really know how to thank him really aside from use it well, if that makes sense? First I got someone put a whackload of it tucked away safe and out of my sight, and then I bought Priscilla because a) I wanted one for years and years, and b) Alphard would have been all over that idea, and well, now I’m investing in the venue which he’d also be proud to know, and I’m definitely trying to spoil Remus whenever he’ll let me, but that’s touch and go.” 

“I know the feeling,” Hope inserts. “Both yours and his, if I'm honest.” 

“Oh, I know,” Sirius assures, smiling cheekily at her. “In any case, I feel I’m using it to Alphard’s liking which is probably all I can do; he’s not going to hear me if I shout, ‘thanks,’ up at the sky or anything.” 

Hope pushes a smirk through her nose. “You’re very funny,” she tells him. 

“Thanks, Hope,” Sirius chimes back. 

Hope tries to return his smile, but a big ol’ sigh leaves her instead. “That’s so much loss,” she muses, leaning back in her chair like she's had her energy zapped out of her, "and you’re so young."

Sirius frowns over at her imploringly. “It’s OK, Hope,” he assures. “I’ve got Andromeda, and little Dora, who loves me like no tomorrow, and Ted’s a good sort, and I’ve got Remus, and James, and the rest of those dinguses; that’s the best family there is.”

Sirius cannot help the breathy laugh he falls into at Hope’s next expulsion of noise, but it might have something to do with the fact that she clutches her chest like she’s been shot. “You Lupin’s are so soft,” he teases, aiming a half-smile over at her. 

Hope gives a weary laugh. “We are, no doubt about it,” blinking her eyes intently. 

“Well, then, get this,” Sirius starts, “Remus and I officially started dating on Christmas day, so from here on out, guess which holiday we get to look forward to twice as much?” 

Hope lifts her right hand and tries to cover her entire visage with it, but her hand is too small for the job and it just looks funny. “Well, that’s just the sweetest thing,” she returns. 

“Isn’t it,” Sirius echoes, sitting easy beside an overcome Hope. “You’ll see, there’s more sweet where that came from with us.” 

“I’ve seen some of it already,” Hope raises him, dropping her hand to her lap. “The way he talked about you; it blew a hole through my heart.” 

“In a good way?” Sirius checks, eyeing her sidelong. 

Hope pauses, stares off toward the middle distance, and bursts into laughter, her head going right back to lean against the back of the cushion in her deck chair. “I suppose that wasn’t clear,” she tacks on. “Yes, it was good, but it was more than I was prepared to hear, and I knew: I did know I saw love in his eyes, but I didn’t think it was quite that intense.”

“Stop, your making me blush,” Sirius trills, feeling warm and cozy in his seat. 

Hope gives up this sordid groan that takes Sirius a beat or two to realize wasn’t in direct reply to him. “Why didn’t I say anything?” she tosses out, evidently reliving the moment. “Anything, Sirius.” 

“I think you just said a lot for why you didn’t,” Sirius points out. “Call a spade a spade, we’re all adults here: you didn’t see it coming, it was bracing, you wanted details, got them in droves, an—”

“Made him feel even worse for it,” Hope finishes for him. 

“I mean, I wasn’t going to put like that,” Sirius slides over to her, “but yeah, he wasn’t doing well for a while there, but I got him back, he’s already on the mend, he’s going to be OK, and I suggest we let it lie for the night, let you both catch your bearings, get some rest, and you can try again tomorrow, and listen, that boy does know deep down that you’ll love him no matter what—”

“To the moon and back,” Hope cuts in there. 

“Exactly, Hope,” Sirius champions. “He knows it, but it would go such a long way if that’s the first thing he hears from you next, so that’s your assigned homework, you hear me?” 

“Loud and clear,” Hope returns.

“Good,” Sirius catches it, lifting out of his seat and looking back at her promptly. “Are we good, then?” 

Hope readjusts her gaze as he looms over the veranda, and alright, maybe he didn’t have to stand and loom over her to ask the question, but then Hope’s putting her knitting on the table between their chairs and getting up out of her seat, too. “Come here right now,” she instructs, tugging him in for a tight squeeze, and Sirius wouldn’t be Sirius if he didn’t melt into it. “You’re a good sort, you know that?” 

“I get mixed messages on it,” Sirius offers quietly, “but I want to be.” 

“Oh, you already hare,” Hope replies, pulling back to smile quietly at him. “I need to lay down, do you need anything before I go in?” 

Sirius clicks his tongue thoughtfully for effect, but he’s rather set. “No, you all set me up quite well," he assures.

“OK,” Hope accepts. “You have a good night.” 

“You too,” he offers her. 

Hope turns turning for the table and to start a pile in her arms while Sirius makes his way down the porch stairs into the garden, and he waits for her to at least turn the bend before he strikes a stark Freddie pose in celebration and dances up the path. It’s too dark out now to see much ahead of him the further he gets from the glow of the porch lights, and then they're shut off anyway a few beats later, but it’s as if Freddie’s dancing him out of there for him when he hardly has to think about the twists and turns he’s taking as he bobs along. 

He zooms out of the garden and up into the a-frame, dropping down on the side of the bed where he remembers dropping his trousers earlier on and has a feel around on the floor in the relatively pitch black of the inside of the cabin, and locates the rectangular growth on the floorboards after a few moments, plucking his pack off of the floor. 

He tosses it on the bed for the meantime, peels his shirt off, and retrieves Remus’ billowy jumper from where he left it earlier, and pulls that on before deciding he’s not all that interested in wearing jeans anymore and shimmying out of those, too. He looks down at his bare legs, smirks as the oversized jumper goes right to his kneecaps about, and grabs starkly for the bug spray on the desk to spritz it all over his legs; not happening tonight, buggos. 

He grabs his pack, slips a cigarette out of it, and digs his phone and lighter out of their respective pockets of his jeans before he cradles his bounty in his left arm as he grabs at his clothes with his right hand and lobs them over at his suitcase to get them out of the way for now. He heads back out into the night, lights his cigarette and enjoys the first few puffs for himself before dialing for James, heading down the a-frame steps and wandering over toward the hammock. 

James picks up before the first ring is even through. “You really know how to keep a girl waiting,” he accuses. 

“Alright, relax,” Sirius bids, stretching back on the hammock. “This really is the first free moment I’ve had all evening and you should be grateful I’m sharing it with you.” 

“Who else?” James puts up.

“Well, my man’s going to be here in no time,” Sirius answers, and as the words leave his mouth, he hears a door shut and looks over at the porch from the hammock and Remus is on his way. “And literally here he comes now, so, quickly: it’s all good, Hope and Lyall are both incredible in their own ways, and I feel like a new man; how’s that for an update?” 

“Oi, you’re not going anywhere,” James declines. “Get Remus on here too, I bet he’s levitating over there.” 

“Yes and no,” Sirius extends, looking over as Remus is already descending into the garden. “Now’s not the time to be giving him hordes of attention, it really isn’t.”

“Yeah, ‘cause _you_ want to,” James returns. 

“Maybe so,” Sirius replies. “I’ll give you a full update tomorrow, OK? No skimming anything.”

“Oh, you’ll pen me in?” 

“A full hour, madame. I swear, I’ll be all yours.” 

“I’m going to make Remus hold you to it.” 

“I’d say you don’t need to do that, but you won’t hear it anyway.” 

“No, I won’t; learn to save your breath, mate.” 

Sirius huffs long, giving into a plain smile, and looks over at the garden as Remus comes out of it and makes a beeline for the a-frame. “I thought she’d never go upstairs,” he huffs, zooming up the steps and into the cabin.

“That’s my fault, sorry,” Sirius calls to him. 

“What he said,” James says incredibly loudly into the phone like Remus is just going to hear it. 

“OK thanks, cupcake,” Sirius chimes, lifting off of the hammock and following Remus inside. 

He stops inside the doorway, looking around the small room that’s Remus-less, and hears the suction pop of the freezer door echo back into the room, his heart sinking with it. It’s got to be semi-low on the scale if Remus could have even made it all the way here and talk fairly well if a bit begrudging, but still, it’s some shit timing. 

“I’ve really got to go now,” he tells James, knocking the door shut behind him and leaving his lighter on the desk. 

“Shit, what happened?” James asks, and it must have been his tone that tipped him off. 

“Mayday,” Sirius forwards.

He hears a distant but elongated _no_ echo out from his phone before he presses to end the call, leaves that on the desk beside Remus’ sunglasses that must have just been put there for they weren’t in here before now, and pads over to the hallway as the freezer door shuts again. 

He turns in for the kitchenette as Remus is pulling the mask on over his eyes and giving out a wondrous groan. “What are we dealing with?” he whispers, lingering in the hall as he slips his phone back into its preferred pocket. “Can’t be more than a five, can it? Six, maybe?” 

“I’m going with a four,” Remus returns, moving out of the kitchen and toward his voice. “Fingers crossed it stays that way.” 

Sirius nods, realizes Remus can’t see him do it, and offers his arms up for a hug as Remus gets to him. “I’m sorry, Remus,” he offers, wrapping him up. “It’s shit cap on an already wobbly day.” 

Remus hums a monotone note for it, lifting his arms to give Sirius a tight squeeze. “Yeah, well, I stressed throughout most of it, had a big ol’ fight, and went out into the sun without my sunglasses twice today, and had a panic attack,” he gives back. “It’d have been a miracle if I didn’t fucking get one after all of that, let’s be honest.”

“Good point,” Sirius gives him, squeezing him back.

Remus starts coaxing Sirius back out of the hall and toward the bed. “I just want to lay down and I want you to rub right here,” he says, letting go of Sirius’ left arm to tap hard at his left temple, and Sirius makes the mistake of blending the mask in with the rest of Remus' head. "Yes?"

Sirius bites down on his lower lip, stifling a laugh as much as he possibly can while he stares at the open, dolled up eyes on the mask not far above the mega frown on Remus’ face. “I’m all yours,” he tries to say.

“Are you laughing?” Remus huffs. 

“No,” Sirius puts out tightly, meanwhile a whole batch of breathy laughs keep leaving his nose and giving him away. Remus huffs grand, going around Sirius and feeling ahead of him for the edge of the bed. “Hold on, you; I’ll help.” 

“I’m already here,” Remus returns, and he is already climbing onto the bed, that is true. 

“Wait, let’s get you out of all that,” Sirius bids, coaxing Remus to turn around on the bed. "You've got to be cooking in those." 

Remus plants himself down on the end of the bed and Sirius gets down in front of him to work at the buttons of his cardigan, pushes it off of Remus’ shoulders when those are taken care of, and Remus helps with the last bit by lifting his arms when necessary to help get the sleeves off of his arms. Remus goes the extra mile and peels his shirt up to about halfway up his face before Sirius reaches one hand in from above to hold the mask in place while he brings the other hand from below and weighs the mask down that way. 

It works fairly well, the mask mostly stays on as Remus tugs the shirt collar over his head, though one side of it does teeter up at an angle, and Sirius stares right at it and starts stifling laughs all over again to mixed results. “Would you quit it?” Remus sends him. "They're just eyes." 

“I’m sorry, but it’s funny,” Sirius defends, working at the fly of Remus’ knicked trousers. “If it were an eight or up I wouldn’t be doing it this much, you know that.” 

Remus grumbles a bit but he doesn’t argue the point much further than that when it's frankly a lived truth for the both of them, leaning back on the heels of his palms and keeps his head down as Sirius shimmies his jeans down his legs. The moment he's is truly free from the confines of his outerwear, Remus backs up the bed at a sluggish pace and flomps back on it in the direct center of it. Sirius balls up Remus’ clothes, shoots them over toward his suitcase for now when Remus would not appreciate a folding session just now, and climbs onto the bed himself. He crawls up it on Remus' left and settles up by the pillows, and Remus shifts in close and wiggles up against him, his left temple coming in hot.

"Please," he puts out.

"I'm right here," Sirius assures, wrapping him up tight before reaching his right hand over to reach underneath the elastic of the mask to knead his fingertips at Remus’ designated spot. “Did you take a boost?” 

“Yeah,” Remus answers, still a few beats behind him. “Twenty ago, so anytime now.” 

“OK,” Sirius returns, easing some more with that. “Hey, quick thing, I just had the best conversation with your mum.”

“You did?” Remus asks, lagged for certain, but following well enough. 

“Mhm,” Sirius hums. “I won’t start now, but it was good, Remus; you’ll be so happy to hear it.” 

Remus hums faintly. “Tell me after?” he asks. 

“‘Course,” Sirius assures, leaving a kiss on Remus’ forehead. 

-

Sirius stirs quite suddenly to a tapping on his right shoulder, leans halfway up in bed, and peers around the faint glow of lamplight in his vicinity before something long, white, and definitely blurry gets placed in his direct eye line and a voice sounds from his right. 

"You want some of this?" 

"What is it?" Sirius croaks out, lifting his right hand to bat at it. 

"It's a joint, don't break it," Remus snickers. 

Sirius settles on his back again with the new knowledge he has, blinks the pinner into vision, and gives a sleepy hum, generating the energy to leave the bed. "What time is it?" he asks, giving his eyes a few more moments to adjust. 

"Half one," Remus supplies. 

"Oh, shit," Sirius returns him. "I fell asleep." 

He hears nothing but a parade of snickers beside him. "I almost didn't want to wake you, but then I thought you'd likely be more cross with me if I didn't," Remus offers. 

"Yeah," Sirius chimes back. "I would've been." 

"OK, glad I read that one right," Remus returns amusedly. "Plus, you'll go right back to sleep once this is done, I'd imagine." 

"Mm, true," Sirius allows, breathing in long before hoisting himself up enough to sit back against his pillow and reopening his eyes. His vision isn't all that much better, but Remus is starting to form into a person and not a blob of skin. Sirius looks him over, seeing he's not bothered putting a shirt on and has knicked Sirius' flannels, a fine decision when they do tend to hang low on his hips. He tosses a glance up at the mop of curls atop Remus' head that are going this and that way from sleep, but overall, he looks solid for being post-cluster. "Did you rest up?"

"I sure did," Remus returns. "I woke up a little while ago, but wide awake like I'd slept six years and I thought I'd try to make going back to sleep a little easier." 

"Good plan; don't want an unplanned kip to fuck your sleep up," Sirius returns, breaking into a yawn by the end of it and peering over at Remus again once that's done with. "Did I crap out before you?" 

"Just a little bit," Remus offers, giving Sirius' frown a quick wave-off. "The boost had already kicked in by then and you didn't get a kip in at all today so I didn't mind, and I wasn't far behind you, I don't think." 

"Did it stay at a four?" Sirius asks. 

"Went down from there, even," Remus shares. "I was surprised; with all that went on today we could have been in for a knockout, so I suppose we'll have to call it luck and not a sort of final slap to the face on already heaping day." 

"Who are you?" Sirius inquires, garnering a smirk out of Remus. "I mean, don't get me wrong; I like this Sirius energy you're giving me, but it is surprising." 

"It took a some time to get there," Remus shares. "When it first came on, I cycled back through the day to figure out what could've gone wrong and when I came up with quite a few easy answers I thought I was in for a shit time, but we were lucky with it." 

Sirius hums in agreement before his lips start twitching downward again. "Sorry I chased you out into the sun without them on," he forwards. 

"It's more like you chased after me," Remus amends. "I'm the one who went out without them." 

"I really shouldn't have taken them off you, though," Sirius raises, but then that doesn't sit well in him when he really needed to see Remus' eyes. "Or I should have just grabbed you and tugged you back inside." 

"I forgot to put them on twice today, so I'm really the one who mucked up here," Remus puts down. "Once there, once with my mum." 

"Alright, this could go on forever and ever, so why don't we both agree to do better," Sirius offers up, and Remus gives a small laugh, nodding for it. "I mean, we're usually right on the ball with it, but today was an exception." 

"Yeah, it was," Remus allows, fiddling with the pinner. "We lucked out with that four, so I think we should just call it that and resume as we were from there." 

Sirius smiles over at him, thinking he's really got to be doing some good for Remus if he's responding this well so soon after one; the difference between June and now is striking, and he loves to see it. "Mm, did you write in the book?" he asks, scooting himself toward the edge of the bed. 

"No, it's upstairs," Remus relays, leaving the bed on his side of it. "I made notes on my phone, so I'll copy them down when I go up there next." 

"So on the ball," Sirius delivers, setting his feet down on the floorboards and pushing himself off of the bed. 

"I tried to be," Remus offers, moving ahead of Sirius for the door. "I'm glad I spotted the sunnies on my way down, but I was so focused on getting the mask on that I wasn't doing much more in the way of forward thinking."

"That's alright, you've got the notes down," Sirius lets him have, following Remus out of the cabin and onto the front steps. "I'm sorry I'm no help with stats this time." 

"That's alright," Remus pardons, taking a seat on the top step and leaving enough room for Sirius to sit beside him, but they'll be nice and cozy this way so Sirius can hardly complain about Remus' placement. "I ballparked it; it came on just before half-nine, I took the boost, came downstairs twenty minutes out from there, and I got a look at the time once it tapered off and it was quarter after ten or so; about forty-five minutes all around." 

"Another quickie," Sirius puts up, giving a light shoulder-shimmy in celebration. 

"I'll make sure to jot that summation down," Remus supplies, letting the joint dangle from his mouth while he holds his left palm out for a lighter. 

"Shit, it's on the desk, hold up," Sirius bids, getting up and going inside again. 

While he's in there, he thinks Remus might be feeling a bit warm still if he thought going outside shirtless was a fine idea, but it's guaranteed he's going to be chilly in a few minutes' time. He grabs his quilt to bring back with him, holds the lighter over Remus' head, and slowly lowers it into Remus' eye line, garnering a smirk out of Remus before he swipes it from him. 

Sirius takes his spot back again, grabs the quilt from both ends, and swings it around to toss over both their shoulders. "Mm, tell me about my mum," Remus bids, flicking the lighter for punctuation before he passes it over the end of the pinner. 

"Oh, my Cunt, Remus, she's ran a fucking mile in the right direction," Sirius states, hand to heart as Remus' brows go right up his forehead as he pulls off of the joint to light it. "The moral of the tale is that it wasn't really to do with you or me or the two dicks between us, she's more embarrassed of herself in a lot of ways." 

Remus gives a wounded noise in his throat, letting his haul out in a quick gust. "Well, I don't want her to be embarrassed," he raises sullenly. 

"I don't think that's really up to you, and I mean that kindly," Sirius tacks on. "She wishes she'd seen it sooner; the time frame is her biggest issue, you were right, but she's upset she didn't spot it sooner." 

"Well, I didn't really want her to," Remus supplies evenly, going for another puff off the joint to ensure it stays lit. 

Sirius gives a strong pat-pat-pat on Remus' left knee for that. "That's what I said to her," he insists. "I mean, we went here, there, and everywhere with it, so my summary is going to be highlights, but I did my best to pick her up off the proverbial floor and do right by you at the same time, and then I went on and on in so many ways about the fucking intense love I have for her son and I did move her to tears, so you know, and she called us 'one for the books,' so just know that she's really come far, even in a couple hours." 

Remus ducks his head quickly, breathes in long, and looks back over at Sirius with overbright eyes. "Thank you for doing that," he offers. 

"Oh, I was happy to," Sirius assures. "I wasn't going to go through the back in case I would be bugging her, but at the same time, I wanted to be on her radar, maybe remind her I'm actually not a stranger in her home, and right off the bat she was being Hospitality Hope and trying to still be nice to me, but I could tell she asked about you with this deep-seeded woe, and I just couldn't leave her there." 

"Thank you," Remus says again, more intensely even than the last, and passes the joint off to Sirius like it's a reward almost. 

Sirius budges Remus' left arm with his right one, takes a pull off of the joint, and holds up his left forefinger to assure he's not done yet, and Remus turns his head to leave a kiss over Sirius' jawline, and it is just so lovely they still get to do this, even if much later than expected. "So, I tried to get her out of the mud and over toward teary acceptance, and I think I did pretty well on that front, but I say that less to boast—"

"Less is the operative word here," Remus puts in, nodding. 

Sirius nods for it as well, smiling the whole time he tries to get more of it out. "I say it more because you're not going to be waking up to the same ice queen and I don't want you to think you will, " he puts down. "She wants you happy, she saw you were happy all over this past term, and she's going to come back swinging, and I mean that in a good way, not a bad one." 

Remus smirks there. "Well, I didn't think she'd chase me around the yard with a swinging broom somehow." 

"That was so Lyall of you," Sirius hisses sidelong at him, lifting the joint to take an amused pull off of it. 

Remus huffs grand, shutting his eyes. "It really was," he contends. "I'm a dad at twenty-three and I don't even have a kid." 

"I like it," Sirius returns lively, tapping Remus so he'll know there's a pinner waiting for him. 

Remus gives an accepting sigh, opening his eyes and taking it back from Sirius. "She was nice to you?" he checks, pulling off the joint with his gaze quite unmoving as he keeps it on Sirius. 

"She was so nice," Sirius nods, choosing to grin there. "Eventually." 

Remus blinks once, lets the cloud out, and clears his throat. "What?" he asks politely. 

"Bit lippy at times, but so was I," Sirius offers. "The thing is, she couldn't wrap her head around the fact that she might not have cultivated a relationship with you that would be freeing enough for you to correct her on pronouns, and it just got a bit heated because I couldn't not rep you and the amount of stressing and worrying you'd done about that in itself, so I used a bit of tough love on her, but I don't know, are you mad?" 

Remus stares over at him while holding in a new haul, waits a beat or three, and shakes his head, letting his lungful go. "No, I'm not," he replies. 

Sirius nods once, nudging him. "Turns out I'm ready to bat for you even if it's against your mum," he offers, and Remus nudges him right back, ducking his head through a reluctant smile. "But that's not where it ended whatsoever, OK? It's like I caught a glimpse of her going through the stages, at first it was meek sadness, then it got defensive, sure, but it went from there into missing the signs, her confusion about that, and then to the what ifs, so 'what if I'd done this or that better,' which didn't necessarily shock me, only it did when she landed on, 'what if I hadn't been too busy for him,' and specifically she was talking about it in terms of your dad being sick and her juggling it all but feeling like she'd left you behind, and you would not have wanted me to let her keep on that road, hm?" 

"No, never, no," Remus returns on a dime, handing the roach back over to him. "That's your reward; finish him." 

Sirius snorts, taking the last haul off of the pinner and holding it in to make it count, but by the time he's letting it out, he thinks he ought to be a little more transparent about another point of possible contention. "OK, so, at one point, she did get really, really caught up in your younger, more confusing years," he starts, unraveling the dead filter while he talks. "Specifically the preteen years and further on to your Awakening and particularly the loneliness got her so pained, and I wanted to be honest with her but fair, too, so I didn't want to say, 'no, it wasn't like that at all,' because that's just not fair to you, so I tried to talk about the loneliness and the othering, and wanted to highlight that you don't have to come from my background to be able to feel so alone it, and it felt right at the time and like I was doing right by you and your experience, and I did tell her to ask you about it and get to know that time for you better, but I'm sorry I spoke for you there." 

Sirius looks up from the unravelled filter he's just holding onto now and catches Remus looking left and right, a frown etched on his lips. "I'm not?" he raises, sending a half-smile, half-frown over to him. 

Sirius does a similar eye movement. "Is that because you're very newly high?" he checks. 

Remus looks up and out at the moonlit yard ahead of them, breathes in, and breathes out. "Not exceptionally," he answers, looking back at him again. 

"I made sure to say it wasn't all broody and that you never experienced joy through those years," Sirius tacks on. "I told her to ask you about _Maurice_ because you get so cute when you do and your eyes go a-popping—"

"I can't help it," Remus puts up, smiling wryly. 

"I know you can't, that's what makes it so pure and sweet," Sirius puts down. "I thought she could use a bit of sweetness that actually came about at the time your were so confused." 

"Then what's the issue?" Remus whispers. 

"I didn't run it by you first," Sirius expresses. 

Remus squints over at him. "What were you going to do, pause and run up to check with me and run back down?" he asks. 

"Not speak for you at all, maybe?" Sirius raises. 

"To me, it looks like you helped conceptualize what I'd already unloaded on her without warning," Remus raises. "So, maybe you did me a solid there actually?"

And Sirius officially starts to lose steam. "That was my intention, but I'm just checking that I didn't fuck up with it," he offers. "I keep doing that with you, and you're my favourite, and I don't like it when you're unimpressed with me."

"Alright, you know what, I actually think this is rather sweet, so don't ruin it," Remus comes back, turning in more toward Sirius on their shared step. "It's a nice feeling, knowing that you do hear me when I talk, and that I didn't just imagine you were present for all those conversations we had." 

"Of course I was, you dink," Sirius huffs at him, smiling away. "I listen to you." 

"Well, it's nice when I get reminded of it in places I didn't expect," Remus sends back, smiling too. 

"Well, then I'm glad," Sirius returns. "I didn't want you to get blindsighted if she did come to you and bring it up, especially if you're trying to disarm a bomb or something and really can't handle it." 

Remus pitches forward, curling in and writhing through his mirth. "So thoughtful," he tosses out. 

"That's me," Sirius allows, ducking his own head through a bout of snickers before he takes in a good, long breath of fresh, country air. 

Remus lifts out of his curled position with a push for fresh air himself, looks over at Sirius with a smile that's almost too fond for Sirius to go and pretend it isn't; those eyes are so warm. "You did good," he extends, turning to leave a tender kiss on Sirius' lips and pulling back from it with a contented breath through his nose. "Did she really say we're one for the books, or was that you and creative liberty?" 

"No no, she said it verbatim," Sirius insists, excitement welling back up in him. "She liked the anniversary date, too, and I might've told her a little bit about Christmas and the get-together because she wanted to know how it happened, but I did omit any mention of your slutty, slutty ways." 

Remus' snort echoes out over the yard. "I should hope you did," he returns. 

Sirius nods diligently. "Don't you worry," he assures. "I did tell her you planted one on me and kickstarted it, but that's just the truth." 

"Wow, you really did get to talking," Remus observes. 

"Oh, we sure did," Sirius maintains. "You wait, soon enough she and I will be a couple'a gals twittering away while you and Lyall share amused but bemused glances over your mugs." 

"I can't wait," Remus extends, his fond smile back right where it was he sways back and forth a little on the spot. "Thank you, I could say that a thousand times and it wouldn't be enough."

"I'm so glad I didn't go out the front," Sirius shares. "Look at all we'd have missed, and if you were going to sleep a little better just with Lyall on our side, think of how good you'll sleep now, hm?" 

Remus brightens with that sentiment, and then he gives a gratified noise. "I want to do that," he puts down. "Can we kiss a bit first, though?"

"Yeah, we can," Sirius returns at once, lifting off of their shared step and draping his side of the quilt over Remus’ shoulders while he’s still exposed to the elements. 

He heads up the stairs and into the a-frame with that, looks round the main room now that there’s lamplight to utilize and spots a bin tucked in by the far side of the desk in the room, and moves to drop the filter into it. He looks round at the door as Remus shuts it with his back and stares hazily into the middle distance. 

“FFFFFuck,” he drags out, making quite the face. “My toothbrush is up there.”

At first, Sirius only dissolves into stitches, but then locates a possible solution a few beats further from there. “Wait,” he puts out boisterously and Remus braces himself strongly, “your mum told me she put extra toiletries out here in case I’d forgotten something.”

“Did she?” Remus raises brightly. “What a sneaky mum.” 

“A bro without realizing it, really,” Sirius raises it, garnering a snort out of Remus for it as he heads for the hall. “I didn’t see anything in the cabinet earlier, but lets see in here.” 

Remus gasps. “I did see one in there,” he shoots over at him, quite psyched about the memory finally coming back.

Sirius sends him a _pfft_ over his shoulder as he opens the hall closet. "Bit late on that one." 

Remus sends him a pronounced shush. “Fourth down, it’s a tiny little one.” 

Sirius peers into it and follows Remus’ directing, spotting a travel-sized toothbrush on the third shelf down from the one at his eye level and reaches in for it, holding it up like the Olympic torch before Remus takes it up, swiping it out of Sirius’ hand and heading for the loo. The two of them stand at the mirror, smiling, smirking, and making faces at each other while they get their teeth brushed and sorted out, and then it’s back to bed for them. They don’t settle in quite yet, but Remus decides to settle down on Sirius and snogging him silly is a prime use of their pre-sleep time, and the only time Sirius objects to that is when they’re both starting to show signs of drifting and he feels an odd bit on preemptive FOMO waft over him. 

Sirius leans up and sticks his face in the crook of Remus’ neck, breathing him in and humming lightly. “Don’t let me sleep in too late,” he bids. 

“You sure?” Remus asks. “I think you earned it, personally.” 

“I don’t want to miss anything snoozing away out here,” Sirius expresses. 

Remus turns his head and presses his lips to the top of Sirius’ head. “OK, I won’t,” he assures. 

-

Sirius blinks awake some hours later with _Billie Holiday_ crooning in his head, and while that’s not a bad way to wake up at all, it being obvious;y daylight in the cabin has him starting up in bed, living out visions of it being so far past noon that it isn’t even funny, but he braces his palms down hard on the bed on either side of himself as he looks around the room on high alert and a bout of snickers to his left suggest Remus found that specific part exceptionally funny. 

Sirius peers accusingly over at him sitting up in bed and laying over the comforter with his legs crossed at the ankles. “You said you’d wake me,” he sends him. 

“I was waiting for nine,” Remus defends easily. 

Sirius looks for the clock on his bedside table and wouldn’t you know it, they’re about ten minutes out from there, looks back over at Remus and takes in the dampened head o’ curls beside him. “I see you’ve been up and about,” he observes.

“I woke up around six and I wasn’t getting back to sleep,” Remus offers him. 

“Really?” Sirius asks, half-grimacing. 

“Not in a bad way, I was just very much awake,” Remus tacks on, smiling over at him. “I’m just wired, I suppose.”

Sirius nods, humming to accept that, and has a gander over Remus’ clothing picks and neither his shirt nor his jeans seem to belong to Sirius, so that must mean he’s been up to the house already. “Anyone else up yet?” 

“By now, maybe,” Remus shares. “It was about seven when I went in, but it was quiet as a mouse.” 

Sirius hums sleepily for it. “I suppose it is Saturday,” he raises, reaching behind his head to pull the elastic holding the last remnants of yesterday's bun together, and gives quite a note out over the state of his hair as he pulls his fingers through it. “Alright, I need to do something about this.” 

“Shame,” Remus replies, just smiling away over there. 

“Have you just been chilling here?” Sirius asks, quite impressed.

Remus lifts his phone from beneath a ruffled mound in the comforter that Sirius’ body is creating. “I was talking to Lily,” he offers. “She’s about to head to work so we’re done now, but we were going back and forth for a while there.” 

Sirius hums a bright note for that, digging himself out from under the comforter. “Is she all up to date now?” he asks, scooting himself toward the end of the bed. 

“Well, she knows we’re somewhere in limbo, but with good promise,” Remus shares. 

Sirius nods through a substantial yawn, pushing himself off the end of the bed. “Oh, uhm, Clustsertown came round right as I was trying to give James a quick rundown, and he was already not too pleased that I wasn’t going to be on long as is and I said I’d dedicate an hour to him at some point today,” he extends, giving into a stretch at the foot of the bed, and Remus offers a lenient hum for it, waving him off. “I might sneak off for a bit and give him the full scoop, but I’ll do it before we go to the market and whatnot.” 

Remus hums an abrupt note there. “Oh, my mum’s got a late lunch with Do later on, so we’ll probably be getting the car mid-afternoon around and you won’t have to rush it or anything,” he extends. 

“Even better,” Sirius returns, heading for the hall and into the loo. 

“I need a tea, do you want me to make you coffee?” Remus calls. 

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Sirius calls back, lifting his right leg and footing the toilet seat up. 

After that’s over with, he gathers up his tote and brings it into the shower with him, deciding this one will have a major focus on his hair, so he does that first off and leaves the conditioner in while he gets his body all rinsed and silky-smooth before rinsing his hair out completely. He breathes in more lemony goodness, basks in the warmth of the shower, and pushes the shower rod down just before the point of pruning. He foots sudsy water closer to the drain after the water’s shut off, packs his tote back up so Remus won’t heckle him later on for leaving his essentials strewn about the admittedly sparse shelving space in the wee bathroom, and grabs his deodorant out of it before zipping it up and sticking it upright on the ledge in the top right corner of the tub. He leaves the stick on the edge of the tub, tugs his towel down from the far end of the curtain rod, and alerts as Remus’ voice sounds from the doorway to the bathroom. 

“I’ve good news, and some not so great news,” he declares. 

“In that order, please,” Sirius bids, giving his legs a good rub down.

“Well, I brought you coffee _and_ pie,” Remus offers, and Sirius gives a bright, enticed trill for it, “but my dad’s truck isn’t in the driveway, so I’ve a strong sense he’s already gone to get the mower.” 

“That little shit,” Sirius returns, pushing the shower curtain aside and stepping onto the bath mat. He looks up and over at Remus, who’s taken to lingering in the bathroom doorway with his tea in hand and aiming a circumstantial smile back at him. “Do you think he’d try to make a huge fuss if we tried to pay him back for it?” 

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Remus answers diplomatically, choosing to take a sip there, his eyebrows rising with it. “Is that really going to stop us?” 

“No, it’s not,” Sirius returns avidly. He gives his body a final towel-over before he dips forward to collect his hair up into the towel and twist it up to sit perched on his head. “He also badly needs new guitar strings, so when we’re out later I’d like to pick a pack for him.” 

“Does he?” Remus asks, piqued.

“Oh, yeah,” Sirius offers, laughing for it as he reaches back for his deodorant. “His D-string split right in half while he was trying to tune it, and I’ve a feeling the others aren’t doing so hot either, so giving him a new set might just be for the best.” 

“OK, we’ll put that on the list,” Remus says, smiling behind his mug. “There’s an ice cream parlour I thought I’d take you to as well.” 

“Ohoo,” Sirius trills, rolling the deodorant on, “I’m really getting the royal treatment.” 

“They make really good stuff,” Remus passes along. “My mum gets a pint of the mint chip one they offer as a treat, and that’s her absolute favourite thing in the world.” 

Sirius pops the cap back on the stick and puts it away in the medicine cabinet. “So, the list is, mint chip, you, Lyall, and knitting,” he lists, using his hands to showcase the tier list. 

“Yeah, just about,” Remus allows.

“She wasn't downstairs?” Sirius asks, grabbing Remus’ jumper off of the minuscule counter space he left it on and stooping to pick up his discarded briefs off of the floor.

“No, but her car is still there, so she’s got to be here,” Remus supplies. “I don’t think she’s up and around yet.” 

“Well, we did gab into the night,” Sirius offers, bringing his sleep clothes with them with him as he moves for the doorway, leaving a smooch on Remus’ lips as he slips past him. “Good for her if she’s slept in.” 

“I hope she got to sleep at a reasonable time,” Remus raises, reaching his arms around Sirius’ waist and walking with him down the wee hallway. 

“Oh, she looked tuckered; I’m sure she knocked out pretty soon after she went up,” Sirius assures, leading them into the main room and over toward his side of the bed to get to his suitcase. “What should I put on my body? And don’t say ‘clothes,’ that’s not the answer I’m looking for.” 

Remus smirks, letting go of him to have a seat on the bed facing him. “You’ll look good in anything,” he answers, going for a bit of tea.

“Well, that’s not going to help me choose, is it,” Sirius raises, but he does feel warmer in his cheeks. He kneels down in front of it, sifts through a few choices, and comes up with two options for shirts that he’ll be happy to wear both around the house and to town eventually, and holds them up for Remus’ input. “Alright: black but light and blousey, or white but cotton?” 

“Well, since you hardly feel the elements, material isn’t much of a factor, is it?” Remus raises. 

“No, I suppose you’re right,” Sirius allows, tipping his head once toward him. “Disregard that bit, then; what feels right to you?” 

“Well, what are you going to wear for trousers?” Remus asks. “That’ll help.” 

“I was thinking the fucking Chinos, if I’m honest,” Sirius smirks, lifting the folded pair of black pantaloons out of the suitcase. 

“Oh, then you have to go with the white,” Remus returns promptly. “It’s done.” 

“See, you’re my muse,” Sirius gives him, pulling a new pair of briefs out of his suitcase. 

He gets dressed fairly quickly, but the towel around his head slips and slides through his attempt to get his shirt on over it, and then he just lets his hair be free of its confines in order to officially get the shirt on. Air drying it is, he thinks, and really, the damp strands hanging down around his neck are rather refreshing once he does them fly free. He brings his towel back to the bathroom to hang it up, heads back to the main room, and gives an enticed breath as he goes for the coffee and pie combo sitting on the desk waiting for him. 

“Did you have pie?” he asks, having a sit in the chair and scooting it on an angle so he’s not completely facing away from Remus. 

“I did, but much earlier on,” Remus supplies, giving a smirk there. “Although, in the time between when I had my slice and when I went to get yours, a slice definitely went missing from the pie, so I’m thinking we’re not the ones choosing pie for breakfast.” 

Sirius hums a bright note at the idea of Lyall being that much of a fan of their work, shoulder-shimmies as he picks up the fork hanging out on the pie plate, and has himself a great chunk off the point of the pie. “It’s funny,” he raises, a few beats after it, “I know we had a little taste of it last night, but I couldn’t really even taste it at the time?” 

“No, me neither,” Remus puts up. “It was a shame because you did so good with it.” 

“Hey, you’re the one who found it, I was just following directions,” Sirius raises, reaching for the mug of black coffee on the desk and gesturing it toward Remus with a bright smile on. “It’s like you know in your bones when I’ll want black and when I won’t.” 

“I really just feel it out depending on the previous day,” Remus shares, smiling from over on the bed.

“Hasn’t steered us wrong yet,” Sirius awards him, going for a sip off it. 

The slice of pie isn’t long for this world in that it belongs in Sirius’ stomach, and Sirius is adamant that it goes where it’s meant to. Once he’s finished, he pushes out of his seat, happy with the way the dessert pie turned out, happy Lyall wholeheartedly agrees, and niccing to get a cigarette in him, but he ought to bring the plate in first and maybe top off his cup. “Is there more coffee?” he asks Remus, getting out of his seat. 

“Oh, I made a whole pot,” Remus assures, pushing off of the bed.

“Perfect,” Sirius returns, reaching to gather up the dishes. 

“Wait, sunblock,” Remus reminds him. 

“Bug spray,” Sirius returns, leaving the dishes and grabbing both off of the desk. 

Remus moves up by Sirius' left to leave his mug by the dishes. “I did the block already,” he forwards. 

Sirius lets him have the spray before him then while he works on covering as much open skin as he can manage by himself, and once Remus is done with his modest spritzing he helps him Sirius out with the back of his neck, and goes and smears some underneath Sirius' shirt and over his shoulders because he's Remus and he worries, and once Sirius gets the bug spray back he unleashes a whole cloud of it on his body.

“Remind me to swipe another bottle,” Remus mentions, eyeing Sirius’ display. "We're probably going to run out by tomorrow otherwise." 

“Let’s just grab a huge one while we’re out,” Sirius offers up. 

“You know what, at this rate, we’ll destroy their supply quickly,” Remus agrees, moving for the pile of worn clothes Sirius started last night. “I’m thinking of starting a load.” 

“Oi,” he halts him. “You can carry them up to the house, but I’m tossing them down that chute, you hear me?” 

“I hear you,” Remus echoes, giving him a keen smile as he piles various items into his arms and straightening up with it. “Can you stick my sunnies on me?”

Sirius reaches for them on the desk and opens them up, slipping them on for him. “Give me one more sec,” he bids. 

He drains the dregs of his coffee, leaving his mug on the desk to free up his left hand to get the door open, and lets Remus go on through it with his armful before he tucks the mug underneath his right arm in order to free the same hand and get the door shut behind them. He follows Remus down from the a-frame steps and across the yard, walking backwards for a few steps to get another glimpse of the property and sighing wistfully over just how green everything is. 

He swings round again and Remus into the garden and up to the house from there, finding it odd to stroll inside the house and not hear music playing from the kitchen when it was so much a part of the afternoon and evening prior. Remus turns back once they’re inside and leans his head in closer to Sirius. “Can you push them up?” he asks. 

Sirius gives light hum, tucks his mug under his right arm again, and reaches to prop them up on Remus’ head, and Remus turns his head to give Sirius’ left wrist a quick kiss in thanks. Sirius follows him into the quiet kitchen with his stomach all in a tizzy, leaves his dishes on the sink for now, and holds his hands out for Remus’ pile with an avid smile on. 

“OK, you go toss them and I’m going to get the washer loaded,” Remus bids, leaving the pile with him and heading for the basement door. 

Sirius goes through the dining room as Remus heads down the basement stairs, and the two meet pretty well in the same spot just at different heights of the house. He opens up the door to the chute, putting a lot into each of his tosses and giving out sound effects to go with.

Greatly satisfied, Sirius heads back to the kitchen and goes to give his pie plate a wash, digging the dish soap out from down below the sink. Billie’s back to croon at the front of his mind as he goes, and he doesn’t see much reason not to hum and sway to the swanky tune as he dries the plate off and figures out which cupboard it goes in.

He sticks the plate away, sways his hips back and forth as he moves to grab his coffee mug and brings it back toward the percolator at the meeting point between the countertops, turns to point at the basement doorway as Remus ascends to the foot of the stairs, catching the lad’s avid smile and presuming it’s got something to do with approval for this morning’s tune. 

”_For you,_” he croons at him, doing his best Billie as he beckons Remus toward him, “_maybe I’m a fool, but it’s fun._”

Sirius reaches behind him to pat for the handle of the coffee pot, bringing it out of the percolator and around in front of him, pausing to give Remus a chance to take over from there, but Remus snorts, shaking his head. 

“I can do that this early,” he denies, but he does move in to hold Sirius at the hips and match his swaying, so that’s just a fine compromise in itself. 

Sirius keeps right on with it, holding the pot and his mug out and to the right to avoid a problem while pouring the cup. “_People say you rule me with one wave of your hand,_” he quavers, keeping a half-eye on Remus and a half-eye on his mug, “_darling it’s grand_—” 

A singsonging voice trills from the what sounds like the stairs. “_They just don’t understand._”

Sirius and Remus both gape/grin at the same go. “Did the crooning wake you?” Sirius tosses up.

“Oh, no, it was time,” Hope returns, the stairs creaking every other step now that Sirius isn’t performing. 

Sirius leaves a warm kiss on Remus lips before turning to put the pot back in its spot, and Remus gives his hips a parting squeeze before letting them go, and in moments Hope is turning into the room from the dining room, her gaze going right to her son. 

Remus’ expression says a lot in one go, as does Hope’s, and Sirius hides his visage behind his mug as Remus goes right to his verklempt mum and gives her a massive squeeze. Sirius watches over the brim of his mug as Hope’s hands lift to grasp at Remus’ shirt near the bottom of his shoulder blades, and hears whispers of love from over where he is, and genuinely that would have been enough to know she took his homework assignment to heart, but then he hears Hope push out a tight instruction. 

“Get over here,” she implores, and Sirius stands to attention, leaves his mug on the table on the way by it, and pads over as instructed, coming in on Remus’ left to squeeze into the embrace and tossing his left arm over the back of Hope’s shoulders. 

Hope pulls back enough to look up between the two of them, her eyes overbright as her gaze lands on Remus. “I like him,” she says warmly, “it’s just a shame he’s not a looker, hm.” 

Remus seems to startle himself with the laugh that comes out of this throat. “I know, but you just can’t have it all,” he returns thickly. 

Hope looks right to Sirius, who’s merely a blob of human mirth at the moment. “A Billie fan too, hm?” she raises, smiling up at him. 

Sirius works to cut his mirth off prematurely. “I’m a Remus fan,” he amends. “But Billie’s OK, I guess.” 

Hope’s laugh really is just lovely the more he gets to hear it. “Oh, he’s a keeper,” she says, pointing up at Remus, who seems to not be able to quite handle what’s just happened despite being debriefed to expect joy and laughter to follow along shortly for he lifts his hands up between the lot of them and just covers his entire face with them, and maybe the poor guy just needs a moment or two, and frankly, so does Sirius now.

“OK, I’m just going to give you two a little time,” Sirius motions, leaning in to leave a kiss on the shell of Remus’ incredibly rouge left ear and giving Hope a distinct but keen nod before he goes to grab his coffee off of the table. 

He gets a warm smile from Hope on the way out of the kitchen, practically glides out the back door, and takes in a gargantuan breath as he goes down the porch. He makes it to the garden before he lights up, and makes it to the yard before the tears start, but it’s those good tears again, he’s got his vices, he’s got a stellar view of the property, and he’s just going to let them fall as needed. He finishes up his cigarette, stuffs the end of it in a pocket, but his tear-fest doesn’t last long past that point,and the reason for that is a bright red truck quite abruptly rolls up from behind the shed, does a quick turn around, and backs up cleanly on the right side of the shed, and Sirius smirks grand, has to admit he’s a huge fan of the method chosen, and sips off his mug as he watches the passenger door thump open and Lyall slide out of the front seat. 

He hoists himself to the ground and looks round, spotting Sirius on the outskirts of the garden and gives a massive beckoning. “Come check her out,” he calls out, displaying his hands toward the bed of the truck. 

Sirius heads over there with his coffee in hand, padding up to the cargo bed as Lyall pops the door down, and there’s a fucking red Cadillac of a rider mower just chilling in there with a big red gas canister nearby it. 

Sirius barks out a laugh. “Love her, but did you just walk in and say, ‘I’ll take the floor model and that’s my final offer?’” he raises. 

Lyall snorts. “No, see, I had a think on it, and yes, I could have gone to a box store, but in times like these it’s important to remember to give Bubba a shout first,” he explains. 

“Did he just have one laying around?” Sirius asks, and there would be harder things to believe than that. 

"No, not him, but he knew a guy," Lyall extends. 

Sirius nods amusedly. “I get the feeling that’s not the first time anyone’s said that.” 

“Good intuition,” Lyall forwards before giving the new lady a tap on the side. “In any case, Bubba made the call, set it up, and the other man's an honest sort; owns farmland not far from here, but he upgraded to a fucken beast of a mower and was looking to sell the ol’ girl anyhow, and look at her: a beaut, just one model behind her going one, and the man let me hop on and give her a spin, and she rides so smoothly. You’ll see, we’ll get you going on it, too.” 

“I’d be honoured,” Sirius extends, then looks over his left shoulder toward the shed. "What are we to do with her?" 

"I don't fucking know, Sirius," Lyall sighs. "If you come across a landfill anywhere nearby, let me know." 

Sirius smirks as he goes for a sip off his coffee, giving a finger-gun with his free hand, and points toward the new lady in Lyall's life. “Was she comparable to the going price in store?” he asks.

Lyall gives a snort for that. “What’s the opposite of highway robbery?” he raises. 

“Sainthood?” Sirius offers, squinting. 

“Then it was that,” Lyall extends. “Bubba rang back with the man’s name, address, model details, and pricing, and I could have laughed him right off the line for what the man was asking for her, but the Bubba’s Friends and Family Discount had already been arranged, the shit — and the guy wouldn’t take any more of my money either, so that’s two shits I’ve spoken to today already and it’s not even noon yet.”

As much as Sirius is enjoying storytime with Lyall, he hasn’t a clue how to gauge what the fuck the price would have been. He could ballpark it, use the going store price as a cap and go down from there, but he comes right out and asks him, Lyall’s going to laugh him right off the property, so he’s definitely going to need Remus as backup and he'll have to put the investigation on pause for now.

“Do you want help unloading her?” he asks, sticking his mug off to the far left side of the cargo bed before giving Lyall a wry smile. "Or wait, sorry, do you want to try lugging her down all by yourself; I don’t want to be the third shit today, do you know what I mean?” 

“You’re already the third shit for that one,” Lyall barks back.

There’s something so lovely about the amusement on Lyall's face, that there’s no legitimate bite to his bark, and it’s all been so lovely with him from the moment Sirius set foot out here that he’s helpless in sidling up to Lyall and going in for a bear hug. It’s definitely a maneuver of the risqué variety in that he can tell for a moment or three that Lyall’s not sure what’s to be done, but then clap he gives Sirius’ back isn’t as stiff as it could be, getting surprise-hugged seemingly out of nowhere. 

“Hey dad,” Remus says, and Sirius glances to the right and finds both him overlooking them from the railing on the veranda with a keen smile on, “we’ve been together since Christmas, but thank you for trying to help out with it.” 

Sirius presses his lips together and then Lyall does move much quicker than he did with the back pat, but it’s definitely backwards and definitely comes with a whole whackload of finger jabs aimed at Sirius’ gut, and now he knows exactly Remus got those from; it’s come full circle. 

“You _are_ the third shit,” he sends him, jabbing Sirius again. 

“What does that even mean?” Remus puts in. 

“I told you I wasn’t running from you,” Sirius returns Lyall, pointing up at him. “I was trying to get those two so we could fucking tell you already; we were planning to over dessert but we couldn’t keep either of you in the same room as us—” 

“Oh, that’s not good enough,” Lyall returns. “You let me go on and on—’ 

“He was in shock you even said it, dad,” Remus sticks in, smiling from above. “Happy shock.” 

“He’s right, I was,” Sirius echoes. 

“Then you’re both shits,” Lyall returns, pointing at the two of them in turn, “three and four.” 

“Who are the first two, then?” Remus asks, lifting his hands quizzically. 

“Mm, Bubba and the guy who sold him this,” Sirius passes him, pointing up at Lyall’s sweet new ride.

Lyall alerts over talk of his baby. “Where’s mum?” he asks. “She’s got to see this.” 

“She’s making herself breakfast since the rest of us already had pie,” Remus passes along. “Sorry, did I hear that right; you got it from ‘a guy?’”

“One of Bubba’s friends, come now,” Lyall huffs to him. 

“Oh, well, that’s just fine, then,” Remus replies, dropping his raised brows. “Did you get it for a good price?” 

“He got Bubba’s Friends and Family Discount,” Sirius passes along, smiling after it. 

“Ooh,” Remus trills, looking over at his dad and giving an easy scratch beneath the bridge of his sunglasses. “What’s that mean in values?” 

“What are you doing?” Lyall demands. “She was a steal, that’s enough.” 

“Oh, but you said you wanted a gift too, didn’t you?” Remus raises, smiling kindly.

Lyall sputters wildly, flying his right hand at the mower. “That’s not a kitschy pair of dice, is it,” he states. 

“Ohhh, go to art installation; they’ll work extraordinarily hard to convince you that’s a pair of dice,” Sirius puts in, reaching for his coffee mug out of the cargo bed.

“I don’t even know what that fucking means,” Lyall returns. 

“That’s the name of the game for those kinds of things, I hear,” Remus extends. 

“Quit distracting me,” Lyall returns. “We’re not doing this.” 

“Yes, we are, Dad,” Remus replies plainly. “We’d decided to do it at store price even, but since Bubba took care of that, let us take care of the rest, and tell us the amount you paid for her; it’s that simple.” 

Lyall’s quiet for a moment, looks to Sirius sipping off his coffee brightly, and points at it. “Is there more of that?” he grunts. 

“Oh, there’s plenty left,” Sirius assures. 

“Good, we’ll deal with her after that,” Lyall returns, stalking off toward the garden presumably to get back into the house. 

Sirius looks up at Remus as Remus looks to him. “He’ll tell my mum and we’ll see if she’ll tell us,” Remus instructs. “And if she won't, we’ll pay Bubba a visit.”

“I love your mind,” Sirius forwards. Remus ducks his head through a smirk, lifting it again to aim a sunshine smile down at him. “You look good.” 

“I feel good,” Remus echoes. 

The corners of Sirius’ lips twitch. “You coming down here or am I going up there?”

Remus nods his head once, requesting Sirius come to him, and Sirius climbs right up to the veranda ledge with finesse he earned many years ago when hopping fences was just one part of a successful Friday night, and he’s glad to see that it’s not gone anywhere. 

“Sirius,” Remus startles, but a laugh escapes him anyway. “I thought you were just going to go around.” 

“Nah," Sirius returns easily, swinging one leg over the railing before boosting the other one over the beam. 

He hops down onto the porch and tugs a snickering Remus in for a mother of a kiss, and the best part about it is Remus gives it all right back to him.


	25. Chapter 25

The two of them put a pause on their canoodling to smush their foreheads together and smile like goons at each other while Lyall makes his way through the garden below the porch, but they both alert as Lyall’s comes trudging up the steps. “Wait a tic — Sirius?" he calls out, definitively holding the belief Sirius would still over by the truck by the way he pitches his voice and right reeling as he spots Sirius up on the porch. “Did you leap up there?” 

“Practically did,” Remus offers amusedly, doing a swivel around on his feet to face the porch stairs as Lyall makes his way toward them. 

Sirius moves in behind Remus with that, hooking his chin over Remus’ right shoulder. “It was a cross between a climb and a vault,” he offers, sneaking his arms around Remus’ middle. 

“Wily,” Lyall calls it, heading up the porch stairs and reaching his right hand out toward Sirius. “Christmas.” 

“You heard right,” Sirius assures, throwing up a keen smile. 

Lyall stops at the porch landing, his eyes going into a squint while his expression heads into a rather wry one. “Had you already been pining by then?” 

“Like a tree,” Sirius affirms. “Months of it, even.” 

Remus gives a huff there. “I pined after him for longer than he did me,” he inserts. 

“Two weeks at most,” Sirius returns before looking toward Lyall again. “We danced around each other and missed our respective signals all through the fall, so by the time Christmas came around we really were at the heights of our suffering and the dam couldn’t hold any longer.” 

“Were the tickets an act in courtship, then?” Lyall raises, looking like his whole world just set into place. 

"Well, listen, I won’t pretend that I didn’t hope with some part of me that the tickets would get me on an even playing field with him," Sirius cops to it, giving Remus' middle a jostle, "but overall I was just trying to do some good for this one; I knew he couldn’t get home for Christmas and had already invited him to our little shindig, but rather than just fill the void that way, I thought stepping it up and bringing you two to him to come along to said shindig would be a far better option. Am I going to complain that my brilliant idea did end up getting him to quit dancing out of my reach? Of course not; that's a lovely bonus.”

Lyall’s mouth goes into a funny little twitch before a sheepish half-grimace replaces it, and it’s like staring at Remus 2.0 again. “I’m really sorry about that tantrum, then,” he offers him, giving a light shuffle on his feet. 

“Oh, please; it was nothing,” Sirius pardons, nodding his head toward Remus. “I was used to his behaviour by then so I wasn’t going into it thinking there wouldn’t be some push back, but Hope stayed on the line with me so it all worked out.” 

“Yes, well, she can’t hang up on a telemarketer,” Lyall supplies. 

“I have gathered,” Sirius returns brightly. “I prefer to focus on the moment where Remus found me outside my home after you three arrived and scolded me so heavily for arranging the deal without his prior knowledge that I genuinely thought he was cutting ties with me on Christmas eve of all days, and then he went and snogged me in a fitful frenzy instead—" Sirius pauses to send Remus' newly pointed expression a sweet smile, "—sorry, is that not what happened, _Honeybun?_" 

“Does everybody need to know the full set up?” Remus raises. 

“Yes,” Sirius puts back emphatically. “That’s the magic of it; what a left turn.” 

Lyall lifts his hands to wave them around for attention. “Wait, wait, wait,” he demands, pointing toward Remus with an air of pride, “_you_ made the first move?"

Remus spares his dad a smirk underneath Sirius’ bright bark. “He was bold, got to give him that,” he offers. 

“I do want to point out that I wasn’t scolding him so much as I was absolutely bouldered by the gesture and I didn’t know how to handle it,” Remus puts in kindly. “He’d been very kind to me up until then, but the tickets were the absolute last straw and I couldn’t stop myself from expressing my gratitude for the gift; he just loves leaving that part out.” 

Lyall sends out a profoundly flat laugh. “Just like you left this whole thing out of every one of our conversations since then?” he raises. “Seems to me you’re quite the match by those standards.” 

Sirius feels Remus takes an inaudible breath in, but it comes back out with the sound on. “I know it’s been some time, but I wanted to tell you two in person, not over the phone or in a letter — or on Skype, so don’t even try pointing that out,” he tacks on, reading Lyall’s puff up quite well. “I wanted to do it in person and I wanted him to be there for it, but how often do I realistically get to visit? It had to be after I got out of term, and this was the best week for the both of us.” 

“Sorry, were we not visiting _you_ over Christmas?” Lyall ponders. “I seem to remember us spending the whole of Boxing day with the two of you, or was that all a dream?” 

Remus gives a grand huff. “We were a day old, dad,” he returns. “I wasn’t going to go making announcements that early on; I didn’t want to scare him off.” 

Lyall gives a snort. “I doubt you’d have done that somehow.” 

Remus gives an ever-so-slight nudge under Sirius’ chin for a little bit of help. “Mm, that’d have been early for me as well,” he sticks in. “I told him to tell me when he was ready to, and he did go and pick the time, the place, the occasion, the whole thing, it just didn’t go the way we wanted it to, as we all know now.”

“Fine, so it didn’t,” Lyall lets land, but the lingering issue for him continues to do just that, “but _you_ didn’t have to let me harp on and on like a—” 

“Yes, I did,” Sirius insists. “I bolted out of there to get him and Hope, yes, but that was after you got so close to the truth that it was physically painful for me to sit there and have you be a literal hair away from the target, but before that I needed to hear what you had to say.” 

Lyall sighs grand. “What I had to say was misguided, Sirius,” he stresses, making a face all over again for it. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Remus assures. 

“You called it,” Sirius echoes after him. “‘You’re one smitten lad,’ you said, and I agreed vehemently for that and wanted to see where you were going with it,, that’s all.” 

“You made him so happy, dad,” Remus tacks on, and like the resident cherub he is, he reaches up to pose his hands underneath Sirius’ visage for a bit of show-and-tell. “This face shone over the two cents you gave him.” 

“His did, too,” Sirius puts in. “The both of us were positively glowing.” 

“Because you knew something I didn’t,” Lyall puts in begrudgingly. 

“We weren’t up their chortling over it, dad,” Remus denies. 

“Whooping, more like it,” Sirius amends. “You were so nice to me about it.” 

Lyall gives into a squint. “Why wouldn’t I have been?” he raises. 

Sirius goes to speak right as Remus does, and the two of them lock eyes sidelong before Remus waves for him to go ahead. “Well, I’m definitely a man,” he supplies, “who was harbouring after your unavailable son as far as you knew, and you didn’t even blink.” 

“Why should I have?” Lyall doubles down. “It’s all just people, isn’t it?” 

As refreshing as it is for Sirius to contend with what the shiny side of the coin looks like compared to the muckier one, Lyall’s clearly not going to get it if he’s missing the link between the two. “Yeah, it is,” he lets land, “only not everybody sees it that way, and you can take it from me, my father wouldn’t look me in the eye for years after he found out about my interest in people, as you so eloquently put it.” 

“And the next time he did, it was to cast him out on the street,” Remus comes in. “That’s what he’s working from, so whether it—”

Lyall certifiably fumes and fires off from there. “Well, that there’s a pussy,” he tosses out. 

Remus grabs for the railing on his left to hold onto through his mirth while Sirius simply ducks his face down behind the line of Remus’ right shoulder and holds onto Remus’ middle for dear life, but then Remus starts leaning a little too far to the left for comfort when he’s running the risk of ending up in the shrubbery down below the railing and Sirius gives his best attempt at rightening him, but their mirth appears to get Lyall stewing even more. 

“What’s funny about this?” he lobs them. “Why’ve I got to act anything like him?”

“You don’t, dad, but it's refreshing to have it be that much of a non-issue for you,” Remus keeps at it. "It is now and it was for him last night, so with that in mind, can we really hold it against him for letting you say your piece?” 

“Well, not anymore, we can’t,” Lyall snaps, tossing a hand toward Sirius. “Where is he, hm? London? You give me his number and I’ll gladly have a word or three.” 

Sirius comes back up for air, leaning his chin back over Remus’ shoulder with a watery smile. “His body’s certainly there.” 

“He’s long gone, dad,” Remus says, and Sirius hugs him tighter for the Hail Mary he throws after it. 

Lyall doesn’t seem to find the state of things quite so satisfying, his visage hardening over in real time. “Does your mum know about this yet?” he demands, pointing between the two of them. 

“I — yes,” Remus answers. 

“Great,” Lyall returns, trudging up the porch away from them and around the bend. “Sirius; raincheck on that lawn.” 

“A—alright,” Sirius calls after him, looking left at Remus. “Well, I think we’re off his shit list.”

Remus tilts his head back and forth, staring at the spot his dad once stood. “It stands to reason,” he allows, but the echo of the back door floats back their way just then. “Hell’s shaking, mind.”

Sirius gape/grins sidelong at Remus for the thousand pound vitriol he’s showing for Sirius’ dear old ‘rents, but Remus walks a thoroughly bouldered Sirius over to the window to the den to peer into the room. “Oh, he’s going straight for her,” he details. 

Sirius snickers, squinting past the flair on the window to get a peep inside, but the den’s empty now and from this vantage point he can’t see much of the kitchen, so they must be positioned somewhere beyond the doorway. “Poor girl,” he raises. “Just trying to make her porridge.” 

“She hates porridge,” Remus passes him.

“The complexities to your mum’s taste just get better and better,” Sirius passes him, but his new smile falters when Remus wiggles out of his hold and turns a careful smile toward him while he wrings his hands at his middle. 

“So, I might’ve told my mum you didn’t come from a supportive home during my vomit session, and so I really wouldn’t have had much right to complain about you giving her details of my own days of yore,” he raises delicately, wringing his hands together, “but you ought to know that if he’s indeed gone to her to rant about the putrid state of the world, he’s picked a person who’s already got some base knowledge of where you come from but I didn't clear it with you before I gave her some of that background information.”

Sirius steps in to stop Remus' fiddling by simply giving his hands a hold. “They were going to have to know, Remus; I get whispy-eyed over being given a quilt,” he raises, and Remus reworks his mouth around a smile. “And wouldn’t you know; I told her a bit about them myself and she reacted similarly to how he did if a little more understated." 

"She did?" Remus checks. "I couldn't tell what she thought of it." 

Sirius gives the hands underneath his a firm squeeze. "She wanted to know where the fuck they were before finding out they’re in the ground," he puts up. "Those two are quite a pair in that sense, so you're right to think that he's likely just gone to the exact right person to huff and puff about injustice.” 

Remus relaxes his shoulders as he turns Sirius’ hands over and lifts them to leave a kiss on Sirius’ wrists in turn. "Are you happy with the that went?" 

“I'm rejuvenated,” Sirius answers, wholly and completely charmed by this lad. 

Remus tilts his head back and forth evenly, pushing a half-smirk through his nose. “Well, I suppose I should have figured what with the vaulting and all,” he raises. 

“A definite side effect,” Sirius allows. "I'm great, Remus; all three of you are treasures." 

Remus lets go of his hands to move in close for a tight hug — or at least it seemed like it for upwards of ten to fifteen seconds and then starts leaning his chin further over Sirius’ right shoulder than would be comfortable to anyone and seems to glance around behind Sirius from there. “You checkin’ me out back there?” he checks. 

Remus smirks nearby Sirius’ ear. “I’m trying to see if you’ve got your pack on you,” he explains. 

“I sure do,” Sirius says, reaching behind himself to pull his pack out of his back left pocket. “Did you want one?”

“Well, my dad's fired up and my mum's weepy, so I can’t really say how long they’ll be in there,” Remus offers. “We had a bit of an apology spree in there I apologized for effectively sewing her mouth shut and since they missed each other this morning I’m sure they’ll have a lot of information to corroborate on.” 

Sirius nods for it. “We’ll give them a wide berth for now, then,” he assures, pulling a cigarette free from his pack. 

Remus hums an affirmation as he looks around them, but ultimately he decides on sitting over in the veranda. “Might as well sit if we’re going to be sitting ducks,” he offers, having a seat in the chair on the right.

Sirius lights the cigarette for him since he might as well, strolls over and passes it off to Remus, and leaves his pack open on the table between the chairs before he climbs back over the porch railing. 

A _pfft_ echoes out from behind him. “Again?” Remus raises.

“My coffee’s over there,” Sirius explains, hoisting himself to the grass below the side of the porch. 

He pads over to the cargo bed and grabs it, bringing it back to the deck and reaching it up over the railing, and Remus leans over to take it for him, kind lad he is. Sirius hoists himself back up onto the ledge of the porch with his newly freed up hands, boosts himself up over the railing, and vaults over it again, landing on the porch and taking his mug back from Remus. 

“Not too many more times, alright?” Remus raises, smiling around the filter at his mouth. 

“So, like, four more times?” Sirius raises, moving to take up his old spot from the night before.

“Ideally that’s your last one,” Remus supplies, reaching his cigarette over the railing and flicking a bit of ash off of the end. 

Sirius smirks, nodding for it as he sets his coffee mug on the chair between his knees. He reaches for a cigarette of his own, lights that, and leans back in his seat, looking out toward the outskirts of the property. “I’d suggest we fuck off for a while and maybe hike around up there a bit after these, but I don't want Lyall to think I ditched him," he raises. "He even said I’d be allowed to ride around on her and everything." 

“Oh, well, in that case, we have to hang around,” Remus offers him, lifting his cigarette toward his smile. 

Sirius grins over at him for the understanding, looks past Remus toward the railing not far from his left shoulder, and gestures with his cigarette. “Do you mind being my ashboy?” he raises, and Remus understandably eyes the very non-existent pile of ash atop Sirius’ newly lit cigarette. “Not yet, just in general.” 

Remus nods amidst his lungful and speaks once that’s out. “This doesn’t really help us now since we’re a bit stuck out here, but there’s a little brass ashtray in the second cabinet if you’re walking into the dining room from the hall if you’d want to knick it at some point,” he forwards. 

Sirius gives a trill around a new haul, leaning his head back to exhale it. “There is?” 

“Mhm, it’s more decorative these days but I doubt either of them would mind if it got used for its intended purpose,” Remus tacks on, and Sirius gives a light shoulder-shimmy for it. “You know the lamp to the right of the couch?”

Sirius squints as he pictures the sitting from from the vantage point of the bay window where he sat just last night, pictures Lyall on the couch, and completes the image with the lamp. “Sure, yeah,” he prompts, lifting his coffee mug to his mouth with his free hand. 

“Well, the ashtray goes with that in a set,” Remus forwards. “The lamp’s got a brass base with a little tin built into it that perfectly fits a twenty pack.”

Sirius swallows his sip right quick. “Does it really?”

“Mhm, it’s from the '50s, I believe,” Remus extends. 

“Another keepsake from the grandparents,” Sirius surmises, holding his cigarette over the deck table toward him. 

Remus hums in affirmation as he takes it in his free hand and guides it over toward the railing to give it a light tap. “Yeah, from back when it was the form to offer a cigarette to your guests and such,” he caps on it. 

Sirius smirks. “I can’t wrap my head around that.”

“No, now you’d just get strange looks if you started passing a pack around the room,” Remus extends, handing the cigarette back over to Sirius.

Sirius takes both it and his pack up off the table. “Looks like we’re all here,” he gives in an old timey accent, fanning his pack around in front of them to a group of invisible guests ahead of them, “everybody take one.”

Remus falls into a bright bout of snickers. “You sounded like an announcer at the races,” he returns. 

The beat goes on like that, the two of them shooting the shit while keeping a respective distance from Ma and Pa Lupin, but Remus does put out a deep sigh somewhere past the half hour mark, giving into a grimace. “Our clothes are just sitting down there sopping,” he shares, halfway agonized, halfway amused. 

“Ah shit, they definitely are by now,” Sirius concedes, giving into a laugh when he’s not really sure what else to do for the moment. 

“Why is my kitchen so centrally placed?” Remus puts up, laughing himself now. 

Sirius piques there. “Ooh, I know what to do,” he raises, reaching over the table between their chairs to tap on Remus’ right arm, “you skirt around the front, slip in there quietly, then go take a tumble down the laundry chute and climb back out the little window down there.” 

Remus snorts, sinking further into his chair. “Well, that’d be one way to avoid the kitchen,” he placates, "only I don’t know how well I’d fit in there these days.” 

Sirius snickers freely at the image he’s got of Remus crawling inside it and getting stuck near immediately, but then that does bring up a question that he feels needs answering. “Does that mean you took a tumble through it as a tyke?” he asks, sinking down in his own chair to match Remus’ stance. 

Remus gives a bright trill. “Do you know what, I do remember looking into it after tossing something in when I was nine or so and thinking, ‘I _could_ probably get in there and land in the basket,’ but I talked myself out of it on the off-chance the basket wasn’t there or I’d get stuck halfway through and have to call out for one of them to come get me out of there.” 

“That’s such a kid Remus thing to do,” Sirius celebrates. 

“Well, I am the resident worry wart,” Remus puts up, leaning his head against the back of his chair.

Sirius shakes his head. “The fact that you considered it is also very you,” he passes him. “I’d have glommed right onto you as a kid, I can just feel it.” 

“I hope you would have,” Remus raises, lolling his head more toward Sirius. 

Sirius gives him a strong _pfft_ in return. “It’s not even a question,” he maintains. “You had a sneak streak a mile wide and I’d have loved kicking it with you if I’d had the chance.” 

“Well, I wonder if you’d have found me a right bore, but if you did hone in on that I suppose you might’ve fanned that side of me more,” Remus lets him have. 

Sirius shakes his head no. “That's poppycock; I'd have been able to suss out that you're a sneak with my exceptional deductive skills and I’m sure I would have gotten you into a little bit of trouble once or twice, but d’you know what I wouldn’t have done?” he raises. “Sent you down into a possibly demon-inhabited basement alone.” 

“Oh, not a chance,” Remus returns, smiling wide. “You’d have come down there with me for sure.”

“In a heartbeat,” Sirius puts down. 

Remus breathes in quietly, his head lulled toward Sirius while leaning back on the frame of his chair as he aims a keen smile over at him, but that peters off slightly as the back door opens and closes at the other end of the porch. The two of them alert with footsteps headed their way, look right, Lyall comes around the bend with Hope in tow. They make their way over to stand in front of Remus and Sirius, Lyall reaching his hands into the front pockets of his slacks while Hope crosses her arms carefully over her front, the both of them looking like they’ve taken a tumble through a washing machine themselves. 

“This is a bit harrowing,” Remus mentions. 

“Honestly,” Sirius echoes. “Crack a smile, you two.” 

Hope has a moment there where it seems a smile is just holding off of being a reality while Lyall focuses more on his son. “A decade, Remus,” he highlights, hanging his head on a tilt. 

Remus’ shoulder line goes rigid. “In fairness to the both of you, I didn’t tell anybody about it until last year even; Lily was the first person I spoke it to, so I really wasn’t going around spilling it to everyone else but you," he offers. 

“That’s still a long time, kid,” Lyall comments. "I'm not about to click my heels over not being the only two who didn't know about it."

Remus sits still with that, nods for it after a beat, and breathes in before giving a shot at speaking. “I didn’t know you’d be this good about it back then,” he puts up thickly. 

“We know that, hon," Hope comes in, "and that’s on us." 

Lyall takes his right hand out of his trouser pocket and waves it fast to block both Remus and Sirius’ vehement objections. “Quit it,” he instructs. “Clearly we dropped the ball somewhere along the way and it won’t do any good now pretending we didn’t.” 

“To be fair,” Sirius comes in again, though he raises his right hand as request to keep speaking, “so many balls were dropped along the way.” 

Sirius stops short there, lips quirking as he realizes what he’s just done. “And lifted, hey?” Lyall zings, and good Cunt does Sirius try to mask his amusement only Hope’s bright little laugh doesn’t help him much in that regard. 

“Alright, loved that and all, but now I’m going to go literally anywhere else,” Remus declares, making to push out of his seat.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Hope denies, her previous amusement out the window. “You sit.” 

Sirius looks between the mum and son stand-off until Remus gives a stewed breath and sits back down not really all that long later, but it sure felt long. “Here’s where we are with it, Remus,” Lyall continues, “we should have made it much more clear that you could tell us anything but we went and assumed you knew that instead of making sure that you did, so that’s what we have to sit with but I can think of a fair few opportunities along the way where it would have been just splendid if you’d have piped up and corrected one of us, so we’re all going to be atoning this morning.” 

“You know what, I think that’s a great idea,” Sirius puts in, reaching his left hand over to set in on Remus’ right hand white-knuckling the arm of his chair, “but in order to fully grasp why Remus felt he couldn’t correct you in those times you’re thinking of, we’re going to have to bring in a key player who definitely added some complexity to the situation—”

“I know,” Hope puts up, looking toward her son heavily. “I know I did a lot of assuming—"

“Oh, no no, Hope,” Sirius comes back quickly. “Wasn’t calling you out; that _is_ another point to consider, just not the one I was going for.” 

Remus gives out a tumultuous breath. “He means Tom, mum.”

Lyall takes in a breath of fresh, country air. “_Tommy, can you hear me?_” he talk-sings, blinking over at Remus with an expectant smile on. “That Tom?” 

“Not that one, no,” Remus returns just as brightly. 

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Lyall puts up. “You never mentioned just how close you two got, did ya.” 

“Well, I’m about to,” Remus puts back, “but he’s not out, so if I’m going to get into that side of things then it can’t leave this family; can I just ask that, please?” 

“Well, who the fuck are we going to run to with that?” Lyall puts up.

“I’m not saying you’re going to go about town like a couple gnomes with a secret,” Remus retorts, and Sirius just cannot with this fucking family. “I’m saying it because if you didn’t know that it’s something he doesn’t want out there then it could just slip out one day and then before we know it the whole town and their dogs know; that’s what I don’t want to happen.” 

Sirius works really hard to hold back on asking where exactly the dogs have been, meanwhile Hope puts herself back into the mix. “It won’t, hon,” she assures. “We’ll be good; promise.” 

Remus nods for it and breathes in long. “We started in year nine after I’d been tutoring him and had fancied him myself for quite some time, but we agreed not to go pulling attention onto it and keep it between us — to everybody, but our parents were included,” he tacks on. “We dated in plain sight and on our friendship was really the best decoy we had, so we’d go on hikes out on the trail, meet up here to work on assignments, and sometimes he’d come and meet me off of work once I got in there and we’d come back here and spend time, and that’s really what it was like for the good years; we were a secret, yes, but not a horrible one at least to me, but then shame hit Tom a lot harder than it did me, and we were on and off for six years until we eventually soured; it wasn't it the most freeing and open situation to be in, so we can look back and wish I’d been smarter or better about correcting misinformation about me, but that misinformation protected us for years, and I didn’t feel I could or had the room to speak on it once things got rockier between the two of us.” 

Hope nods, and well, now Sirius knows where Remus gets his heightened level of focus from. Lyall, on the other hand, has the left side of his lower lip tugged into his mouth with an impressive wonky brow going on beside Hope, and it’s really very odd for Sirius to be sitting beside his boyfriend while two distinct halves of the man are standing just across from him, waiting on bated breath for Remus to keep going, and that gets Sirius unsure of whether Remus feels he’s finished with his rehashing or not. 

He’s quite torn on the matter himself; his brain’s telling him if that’s all Remus has to say on the matter then that’s exactly how much he’s willing to share about it while his body is telling him the opposite, and oftentimes Sirius' body does tend to win out on his decision making. “Remus,” he prompts, way low down.

Remus nods minimally a few beats later. “I really think we both could have gone down the same path, but didn’t by the way we handled our own reservations with it,” he offers. “I’m saying this with a lot of hindsight to go on, but I know I internalized the negative messages I was getting from him, at school, and by way of almost being muted as a person, but I was able to box that up and push it aside when I was with him because the good years were just that; I didn’t feel ashamed or that we were unnatural, but going toe to toe with others on that wasn’t something I was prepared or willing to do, so I threw myself into our thing because it was the purest thing I knew at the time, but in senior year Tom became utterly obsessed with the idea that we were unnatural and that we’d eventually have to quit acting out and find ourselves some girlfriends and we ought to start sooner rather than later.”

“Well, fuck him,” Lyall tosses out, and the abruptness of it sends the three of them jolting, “he’s a pussy, too.” 

Sirius nods emphatically for that sentiment while Remus pushes out a breathy laugh beside him. “Well, that I’ve come to with time and distance,” he allows, his mouth quirking quite a bit as he points across himself toward Sirius with his free hand, “and this guy.” 

“I do my best,” Sirius tacks onto it.

“More than,” Remus rewards him. He's quiet for a good five to ten seconds and that pause calls Sirius automatically squeezes Remus’ right hand if it’ll help him push on with it, and after a few slow beats it seems that was more or less the right call when Remus lifts his fingers and threads them in with Sirius’ just above them and keeps them held tight that way. “It’s easier to look back now and wish he’d just let me be after that and I might’ve been able to avoid a lot of quicksand, but that’s just not how it happened; I'm sure he thinks he tried his best to be what he thought he had to be, but on my end I suddenly didn't have my would-be boyfriend and best friend for most of my last year at school while he tried his best to fully embrace ladies and new friend groups, and it wasn't until a little before graduation that he halfway opened the door for us again, and it’s embarrassing as shit now to say it but I was elated about it at the time, truly I was, but it was never the same as it was: it’d be pockets of months where I wouldn’t see much of him at all but I’d see him out and about with a girl from this class or that one, and then pockets of other months where he was coming round all the time and that would feel like it used to be, and it went on like that until I got two very brief moments of bravery when I cast my net out further than I intended to for uni, and when I picked London instead of Cardiff like he wanted me to go, and those moments were born out of frustration during pockets where I couldn't count on him, and we sort of half-saw each other until I was slated to leave and he ended it fully then, and we really haven't kept up since and that is for the best, but it was a pattern that was sporadic, unreliable, and on his time and not mine, so I didn't have a voice just about any of it."

Sirius squeezes Remus’ fingers tightly again while Remus gestures his free hand toward his misty-eyed mum listlessly. “So with all that in mind, if you asked about any female prospects in my classes during the good years with him, I went right along with it but didn’t specify anything, and once I got in at work and Angela and I hit it off well there and more at school because of that, you’d ask about her with a definite twinkle to your eye and it reinforced that I was at least covering my bases enough not to be sniffed out and I went with it again," he describes, making a more pointed face there, "and I definitely leaned into that much more in senior year when I really was with her a lot more than I saw him, and I leaned into it the more I got pulled into her friend group, and after graduating I leaned into it some more, so it wasn't the best I could have done by any stretch and I know I fueled those assumptions for a long time; Dorcas was honestly the first I started pushing back on because I had all these plans with Sirius in mind, and I know how late I was in trying to filter his name into conversation more and more and I know you didn’t mean any harm in not quite seeing that I was doing it more and more recently, so I’m sorry it took me so long to get the ball rolling on this.” 

Hope makes a tight, verklempt noise in her throat that’s not unlike a few choice ones Sirius managed to get out of her just last night and shakes her head numbly, but after a few beats it appears that’s about all she’s got in her for the moment. 

Sirius looks left and doubles down on the weight he’s putting on Remus’ hand when he sees the degree of Remus’ new frown, but the action seems to jar him into moving onto his dad next, who Sirius has got to admit is looking more and more perturbed by the second. “And you, dad, really do have a strangely perceptive streak about you, but it’s just slightly off the mark,” he raises, a budding smile starting up as Lyall gives a curious double take. “In senior year you noticed that Tom hadn’t been around our house quite as much and asked where he’d been and I said school was intense and our schedules were just piled right up because it was a lot easier than the reality of it, and even when you were in hospital you’d still ask how he was doing and I’d give as much and as little information as I could so it wouldn’t get too curious, and we’d started up again by the time you were released so I wasn’t looking to disturb the peace with him or with you two by making any sort of announcement, and I kept that up the longer that sporadic pattern of ours went on, and I’ve definitely kept up with that since I’ve been away when it was easier to pretend that we’re just a couple of schoolmates growing apart because of life-routes and distance than it would have been to say we had a much shakier history than I let on, so you’re right, I didn’t correct the record for a long, long time — until last night with mum and this morning with you, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get the stones to do it but I am trying to fix it now—” 

“I don’t want your fucking sorry now,” Lyall cuts in. 

“Well, it’s yours anyway,” Remus returns. 

“Keep it,” Lyall doubles down. “I’m not interested.”

Remus sends a dragon breath through his nose. “In any case, I know it’s late in the game and that’s got to hurt the both of you in different ways, but it’s really thanks to Sirius that I’ve come to the point where I feel that I can be more open about it,” he showcases. “In the last couple years since I’ve been away I’ve debated the when, where, and how of telling you two, but I kept hitting a wall with it and feeling that I’d have to wait until I had something far less fickle and much more comforting to carry alongside news like this, and I found that in Sirius — and to be fair to myself for once, after all those years with Tom, I absolutely need someone who pushes me up and up and up and that’s Sirius’ specialty; I’ve never met anyone who relishes in my growth and happiness like he does.” 

Sirius’ stomach feels a lot like it got punched with a bouquet of flowers and it’s certainly odd to feel that immense feeling right as Hope loses her whole and entire shit, bursting out a righteous sob and letting go of her middle to rub frantically at her eyes. He looks to the other two and catches Remus and Lyall sharing an identical grimace with each other before the latter reaches over to soothe his left hand at Hope’s back, and Sirius has avert his gaze to the porch floor beneath his feet out of sheer survival when those two are fucking comedians even the most sordid of times. 

“Mum, that was a good thing,” Remus calls to her gently. “I'm lucky I found him; look what I have?” 

“I’m happy for you,” Hope gives out, sniffing hard. “I just hate that we couldn’t help you through that — any of it.” 

“You did, mum; you both did,” Remus insists. “I took comfort anywhere I could: I took it here, with you two, with my school work and actual work, with Angela and her group, and unfortunately sometimes I’d take it with Tom, but believe me, I don’t look back at my teen years and only see the difficult parts of them; even when I couldn’t talk about what was weighing on me, I still found so many different things to lean on.” 

Hope takes in a big ol’ breath there. “_Maurice?_” she prompts, a hopeful expression on, and Sirius rather thinks that’s the right sort of anecdote that needs to be shared right about now for everybody’s sake. 

Remus gives a breathy laugh, nodding for her. “I sure did lean on that,” he affirms. “I’d read about it in year seven or so, really early on in secondary but I had such trouble tracking it down because I was not at our school library and I swear to you every time I went down to the main one somebody always had taken it out, but it did come through work a few months after I started there, and oh, did I snatch that up as soon as I saw it.” 

Lyall takes in a quick breath through gritted teeth, lifting his gaze to the porch roof overhead. “Which one’s that?” 

“Forester,” Remus supplies, watching him keenly, “_Room with a View_.” 

“_Mm,_ mhm,” Lyall returns, dropping his gaze with newfound clarity. “Alright, I’m back.” 

Sirius can’t help a fond little laugh, but thankfully it doesn’t overlap Remus’ bright trill when that is absolutely necessary to be heard. “It’s one of my true favourites,” he extends. “It was a period piece he’d written with a high focus on repressed Edwardian era queer men just trying to get on with both it and the class structures they were born into.” 

“Just your kind of thing really,” Sirius grins. 

“I mean,” Remus allows, and it is a shame that his shades are blocking out some of the purest eyes on Earth, but Sirius has to admit the light coming off of Remus’ sunshine smile is blinding in itself. “I found it had such scathing commentary and grit to it but took on the themes with such nuance and patience, and with such heart and hope for a better time that I could feel seeping out of the pages, and it was all so comforting to read out of a novel written so long ago, and when I finished it I probably could have flown from my windowsill if I’d given it a go, but instead I just hugged that book to me like it was literally mine, and weirdly enough, some of the themes bore a spooky similarity to what I’d soon be going through myself; it felt as if Forester sat down one day in 1910 and thought, '_I’m going to pen a novel for Remus Lupin specifically_and I went back to that book time and time again when I needed to feel seen by somebody and that just so happened to be an author from a literal century ago who just knew me somehow; wouldn't you know it.” 

Remus looks round at the rest of them once his soliloquy comes to an end, is certainly met with quite the bouldered silence, but Sirius can’t help but revel in the fact that Remus turns an impish smile toward him as he seeks reassurance. “Was that too much?” he asks via the right side of his mouth. 

Sirius lifts his free hand for an OK symbol. “Just right,” he sends back out the left side of his own mouth. 

“But a bit too gay?” Remus surmises. 

“_Just right,_” Sirius repeats, gyrating his OK symbol for emphasis. 

“What?” Lyall puts up, clearly having heard the both of them. “Isn’t — is that not the point?” 

“Nevermind, dad,” Remus says goodnaturedly, waving it off with a small, sheepish laugh. “Only I felt like I gave a book report in front of the wrong glass with that silence.” 

“Oh, honey, I just needed to breathe,” Hope expresses, lifting her right hand to clasp it over the center of her chest resolutely. 

“OK, do that,” Remus grants, smiling differently for her. 

“And maybe borrow that book if you’ve still got it somewhere,” Hope tacks on. 

Sirius doesn’t think Remus’ smile could get any sweeter. “It’s upstairs,” he shares, squeezing Sirius’ hand before letting it go to push out of his chair. “I’ll grab it for you.” 

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be right this second, hon,” Hope insists. 

“Well, it wasn’t going to be right this second,” Remus clarifies, standing up. “We’ve got a laundry load just sitting in the washer waiting to be switched over and I’ve got to get that done before our clothes start to mold, but I’ll get it for you once I’m done that.” 

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Sirius puts up, his memory jogged all over again. 

Remus waves Sirius’ grimace off with a smile before reaching a hand out to a parent each. “I love you both, I’m sorry I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt much sooner, but I think the best way we could make up for lost time would be to treat this fine young lad behind me like the absolute upgrade I assure you he is, and if you can do that and I’ve a good feeling that you can, then there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to be let in to this section of my life," he raises, setting a sea of fire going in Sirius' stomach. "What do we think?” 

Hope sighs long and hard for that. “Oh, we’ll see,” she extends, but her smile betrays her sardonic tone. 

“You’ve really never given us a more difficult task,” Lyall tuts, picking a string of hair or lint off of the left shoulder of Hope’s blouse. 

Remus tips his head toward them in kind, leans down to leave a kiss atop Hope’s head, and slips around her to give Lyall a boulder of a hug before stepping back. “OK, I have to switch that over or I’ll explode,” he asserts. 

“Can I help any?” Hope asks. 

Remus gives her a wry little smile. “I can probably handle the job myself, but come with,” he bids, pointing to his dad next. “Get to that lawn, sir; it’s getting a bit out of hand.” 

“I’ll toss you out there if you’d like,” Lyall offers. 

“I’m OK, thanks,” Remus returns kindly.

Hope takes in a quick breath there. “Hold on, hon,” she bids, moving over to the railing and giving a coo for the new addition to the family, and soon Lyall’s joining her both over at the railing and in celebration. 

Remus looks to Sirius in the meantime and moves in to crouch down in front of Sirius in his seat, and Sirius scoots forward in it automatically, clasping his hands over Remus’ knees. It’d be a lie to say that Sirius is hearing virtually anything coherent on his left as he returns the keen smile he’s getting from Remus, but he’s got a strong feeling Remus is close to if not just as caught up in tunnel vision as he is. He pushes himself to stand as Hope turns from the railing, reaches over, and gives a quick sweep of his right hand through Sirius’ fringe on his way past him in a rather lovely, hands-on declaration of _bye for now_ before he and Hope head off and up the porch and around the bend quicker than Sirius can tone his face down. 

“Wow, kiddo,” Lyall observes, eyeing him once. 

“He’s everything,” Sirius insists, flying a hand toward the direction Remus left in. 

“Mhm,” Lyall hums in return. 

Sirius reworks his mouth around a budding smile. “So, Hope and I got into a discussion late last night about bits of queer culture that Remus and I glommed onto in our disparate youths, and that’s where she got the _Maurice_ talking point,” Sirius shares. “And of course Remus went and found his solace in a piece of lit, who are we kidding, right—” he pauses to smile up at Lyall after he snorts real good, “—but can you guess where I might’ve found mine?” 

Lyall tosses out a quick, sharp laugh. “Give me a harder question next time,” he returns, and Sirius drums his feet on the floor of the porch jovially. “You know, I’ve still got that Live Aid shirt kicking around here somewhere, and I’m thinking it ought to go to you.” 

Sirius sits up rod-straight in his chair. “Are you kidding me?” 

“Do I ever kid?” Lyall raises. 

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Sirius counters.

Lyall shakes his head no, laughing there. “It’d hardly fit me these days, but I think it’d be just right on you if you don’t mind secondhand,” he mentions. 

“Stop that, it’s better that way,” Sirius chides, grinning ear to ear. 

“It’s yours,” Lyall tosses him, turning for the stairs and waving for Sirius to follow. “Let’s get that lawn done first and I’ll have a look around for it.” 

Sirius gets out of his chair quickly, but he gets a look down at his bare feet and thinks things are going so smoothly with Remus that maybe, just maybe they don’t need to have a blazing row over the loss of one of Sirius’ toes. “Let me put shoes on and I’ll meet you there,” he calls to Lyall, who waves him off and keeps on down the steps. He grabs his empty coffee mug and brings it inside with him while he's at it, leaving it in the top left-hand corner of the sink and going to stand at the top of the basement stairs. 

“I’m leaving my coffee cup in the sink for now,” he calls down. “It’s merely on standby and is by no means something I left there for one of you to do, are we clear?” 

“You’re good,” Remus calls up. 

Sirius heads back to the closet nearby the back door, nabs Remus’ loafers again, and drops them on the floor before slipping them on his feet and booking it back outside. He takes the excitingly new exit to the garden to come out closer to the truck and pads toward Lyall, who’s just re-capping the gas canister. 

Lyall looks over his right shoulder as he leaves the canister aside on the bed. “Ready, Freddie?” he calls over. 

Sirius might lay down to rest eternal here, but what a place to do it. “Almost,” he answers. “Can I float something toward you first?” 

“I’m not telling you a single fucking figure, Sirius,” Lyall denies. 

Sirius smirks, shaking his head. “That wasn’t it,” he insists. 

Lyall gives him a wry gaze. “Fine, shoot.” 

Sirius tips his head to him in thanks. “I’m sure it’s bold of me to assume you’ll want to get anywhere near the guy as of ten minutes ago," he raises, opening his hands to splay them rather plainly. 

"Well, you're right, I had little intention of it," Lyall affirms. 

Sirius points starkly at him. "Love that, and I know that would take a huge load off of Remus' shoulders because he's not going to ask you to quit talking to Tom about how he's doing these days," he raises. "That's not Remus' way of tackling discomfort; it's more like, don't tackle it and hope it goes away on its own." 

"Got him," Lyall stick in. 

Sirius presses his hands together gratefully for the jesting tone of it all. "We both know how well you mean when you find yourself giving anyone around this town updates about your quality kid," he puts down. "And I know I can't control small town charm and all, but I'm still Remus' soldier and I do have to bid that you don't even stop when you see Tom around — go tenfold about how great your kid is to everyone else instead, but leave him out of it: he’s not a good guy, and it’s not that he’s closeted or struggling with it; evidently I’ve taken up with someone who’s taken his own time with coming out, but the difference between the two of them is that Remus has a conscience equal to the mass of the Earth, whereas Tom is an anvil and that's about it.”

Sirius catches the ball of rage that appears to float up through Lyall. “I’m going to run that kid the fuck over,” he stews. 

Sirius lifts his hands for a fair pardon. “I want him crucified," he cops to it. "It’d make _me_ feel better in the moment, but it would spin Remus right out because he’s better than all of us, and to that point, so if you want to help out you can do that by helping freeze the guy out for Remus; sake." 

“He’s frozen, Sirius,” Lyall puts down, “but I still wouldn’t mind popping him at least once.” 

Sirius nods heavily. “Believe me, I understand, but I think keeping Remus' spirit in mind and blacklisting Tom is another way to go about it, and I’ve a feeling that’ll hit him harder than our fists could,” he puts up. “So, here’s what I’m posing: Tom’s off to Cambridge on Monday and he’ll be gone for the week, but he’ll be back and I don’t know when he officially leaves again, but I assume it’ll be closer to the start of term, so that’s plenty of time for him to make sure he runs into you, and since this is his home I’m sure he’ll be back to visit for many years to come so I think it’d be a wonderful thing if from here on out he never got to know a single thing about how any of the Lupins are doing; the thought of that alone brings me insurmountable joy.” 

Lyall gives Sirius a funny face. “I get some joy out of that one myself,” he passes him.

“I was hoping you would,” Sirius says, glowing underneath the sun’s rays overhead as he displays his hands toward the absolute babe beside them. “Do I get first dibs?”

“Oh, you’ve earned it, kid,” Lyall returns, and Sirius thinks _he_ could probably fly if he flapped his arms enough, but thankfully Lyall keeps going before Sirius, Lyall, and the new girl have the chance to find out if Sirius would give it a shot or not. “Oh, but if you want to smoke, I suggest you do it now and about six feet away from her because I already gassed her up good.” 

“I saw that, but no, I’m good on that,” Sirius assures, moving in on Lyall’s right to help lug the mower down to the ground. 

“Alright, well, the blades are up so you can just turn the key and ride her on over there,” Lyall raises. 

Sirius climbs up onto the mower with that and slides into the raised seat. “What’s the plan, how far out are we going, and where do you want me to hop off and let you take her for a spin?” he lists off. 

Lyall turns and lifts his right hand over his eyes to look over the property. “See that tree?” he offers, pointing toward it. 

“Shit, yes,” Sirius returns him, “Remus said that’s usually where quits are called; that's my bad.” 

“Oh, no, listen here, not anymore,” Lyall assures, giving a loaded grin. 

“Ooh, are we going turbo on all this?” Sirius hypes, gesturing out toward the expanse of land. 

“Well, our side for certain,” Lyall extends. “You’re to hop off once you get to that tree and let me handle the rest of the field from there — oh, and so you know, that’s a crabapple tree—”

“It is?” Sirius puts out, quite enticed. “Remus never said.” 

“Oh, don’t eat them,” Lyall warns. 

“I wasn’t going to,” Sirius says, in a tone and with an expression that’ll make it abundantly clear he was going to do just that.

Lyall snorts for it. “The face you’d make would be a riot, but I wouldn’t chance it if I were you,” he extends. “They’re much better for apple fights anyway.” 

“Apple fights,” Sirius repeats, blinking thrice at Lyall in prompt. 

“Mhm, Remus and I used to line up a bunch from a distance and lob ‘em at each other,” Lyall passes him before pausing short. “Which sounds a lot worse than it was — more like a snowball fight, but with fruit.” 

Sirius snickers wildly. “Why are you two the best, though?” he puts up. 

“Don’t ask me,” Lyall says. “I mention it because I wouldn’t chance going around the base of the tree with the old girl, but I feel this one should chop the strays up with little trouble, but perhaps go slow when you get there, test it out with one, and if it doesn’t chop up in due time then forget about it and the tree will look like it’s got one giant leg warmer and that’ll be that.” 

“Deal,” Sirius returns, reaching to start the mower, and ooh la la, she does ride smoothly; Lyall wasn’t embellishing about that one bit. 

Lyall stays nearby the mower in the first few rows Sirius works on, giving him pointers on how to turn her, and Sirius goes ahead and pretends he’s never turned a steering wheel before because Lyall just hanging around really is what Sirius would like him to be doing, at least until Sirius gets a fair ways out into the field and the next time he looks over he doesn’t see Lyall anywhere. However, the truck’s gone too, so that suggests he's gone and brought it back around to the front and Sirius turns the mower to the left and brings her back down the next row, and on and on from there. He looks up and over that way again a while later and spots Lyall setting up a sprinkler on the left-hand side of his wife’s sanctuary, and Sirius cannot handle the tier of wholesome that this man he is; it’s really just such a treat. 

He keeps on with it, doing as bid and going slow once he gets to the crabapple tree, but the new girl can’t be stopped by a couple of stray apples, he’s happy to report. He lifts his right hand into the air and waves a thumbs up around until Lyall gives him one back and starts heading over his way, and Sirius goes around and around the base of the tree until Lyall gets to him. 

“She’s yours,” Sirius chimes, hopping off. 

“What did you think?” Lyall raises. 

“Ridiculously fun for a chore, I’ve got to say,” Sirius offers him, stepping back from the mower. 

_Shania_ rings out of his back right pocket just as Lyall’s getting comfy on the mower and sends him into quite the real “That’s just me,” Sirius alerts, slipping his phone out of his pocket. 

Lyall snorts, settling in. “Haven’t heard that one in a while,” he comments. 

“I hear it every time James texts me,” Sirius forwards, thumbing his passcode in and opening the new message up. “We had a phone chat planned, but he’s prematurely vying for it to start already.”

“Well, I’ve got the rest anyhow,” Lyall bids adieu, giving the new girl a rev before taking over where Sirius left off. 

Sirius heads back toward the house, gives a look toward the yard, and decides to make the push back to the hammock, starting across the field toward it as he dials for James and only making it a couple steps before he picks up. “Bonjour Monsieur,” he greets. “Can you talk yet?” 

“Your timing’s actually perfect,” Sirius affords, heading across the field. 

“Brilliant,” James calls it. “Now, I know I’m a few hours behind on the developments, but I’m not going to lie either, I know a lot already, so I’ve made myself a glass of Party Punch because it’s apt and it’s cinque-a-sept somewhere and I’ve a few talking points prepared that I’d like to get off my chest.” 

“Like, written out in gel pen on a sheet?” Sirius checks. 

“No, just in my noggin,” James clarifies. “A) you live inside a sitcom.” 

“Literally,” Sirius affirms. 

“B) of course the fucking Lupin’s are impossible to control for longer than an hour,” James continues. 

“It’s the Lupin way,” Sirius calls it. 

“C) love love love that Remus just vomited it out to her at the end of a fucking gooey monologue about your laughs of all things,” James puts up. “That man is in fucking deep, am I right?” 

“I’m trying to think of a time you’ve ever been more right,” Sirius awards him, grinning like a goon. 

“D) I hear you’ve been over there playing social worker, and I have to say I’m fucking impressed with your candor,” James gives him. 

“Well, listen, they’re all gorgeous little sweethearts and all they really needed was a little guidance and reminding,” Sirius delivers, but he’s shoulder-shimmying like mad.

“And lastly, I know that Lyall threw a curve ball into the game and championed this ahead of time, but I want a full oral presentation on that starting now,” James instructs. 

“OK, OK, OK,” Sirius trills, hyping himself up for the assignment. “So, do you know about how we sort of took a parent each for a while there?” 

James tosses out a laugh. “Yeah, during the Great Lawn Fiasco, mhm,” he assures. 

“Yes, good,” Sirius accepts. “So Remus takes Hope and I’ve got Lyall, and Remus blurts it while on the porch with her, but I did not know that at the time so I herd Lyall into the house and we go off into the sitting room, and we’re in there shooting the shit, talking about music and Remus and more music and more Remus, and then he goes ahead and calls me the fuck out on my extreme love for his only son, except he doesn’t make me feel like scum for it, doesn’t curl his lip, doesn’t suggest I move along real quick or pack my shit and go — no no, he tries to help me out in his sweet, Lupin way.” 

“What a fucking king, though,” James sticks in jovially. 

“The one and only,” Sirius echoes. “So he goes on to say he sees similarities between me pining like a tree after Remus, and him and how hard he pined for Hope before they got together, and she’d been seeing someone else and unavailable for a while after Lyall knew she was his one at least and my man Lyall was proud about sticking it out until she came online as well, and those two are fucking magical together so who am I to take that away from him, but he’s telling me this and I’m pretending I totally didn’t know that already—” 

“‘Course, gotta find out where he’s going with it,” James puts it. 

“Well, we share the same brain clearly,” Sirius rewards him. “So he starts Remusing real hard soon enough, and I mean thinking out loud, right, telling me he’d like to advise me the same and suggest I stick it out and wait because it worked out for him, but then he backtracks and gets caught up in whether that would be fair to suggest to me when there is a difference and a sexuality issue, so he’s going, ‘oh, but can I even suggest it,’ and ‘is that fair to you or would it make you miserable if he couldn’t return those feelings, and I swear to Cunt Almighty, he ended his spiel with the sentiment of, ‘but wouldn’t it just be great if he could, though?’”

“_And then a hero comes along..._” James croons.

“My thoughts,” Sirius accepts lively. “And the thing is, Remus told me that Lyall’s pretty well hands off — oh, shit, I forgot to say it beforehand, but you’re going to need this for the whole thing to hit right, so, while we were preparing dinner it became quite clear that Remus had not told either parent that his place his being subletted to Dorcas—” 

“Are we even slightly surprised?” James puts up. 

“No, not even a smidge,” Sirius says, “which is why it was mad to witness him just tell them in a moment of ambiguity? It all happened so fast, but they were asking him about flats in Paris and Remus has been so good about not letting himself get too antsy about that, but it worries him, you know, so they’re tag-teaming him about something that Remus doesn’t have the answer to and he starts getting real clipped with them, so when the sublet question came up he just went and said Dorcas is looking after it, and that got Hope feeling quite right about that whole thing, and then Remus went the fuck in, James; just popped _off._” 

“It’s always zero to turbo in seconds if you fuck him off just right,” James raises.

Sirius hums in deep agreement. “That’s the thing; he’s like a bear in the body of a woodland creature; poke him too many times and he’s going to rip that outer skin off and bite ya,” he expresses. “It’s exhilarating, but far better to watch it happening when he’s not fucked off at you, am I right?” 

“You are,” James supplies knowingly. 

“So he starts spewing facts, putting down the word _friend_ like it’s an F-bomb, and goes as far as to announce that he and Dorcas did snog it out once but he wasn’t interested in anything further and now they’re just good mates—”

“Oh, Cunt; _Remus,_” James champions.

“And there’s Hope looking right shocked, but Lyall’s over at the end of the table just reacting to it all and that part got him chirping away,” Sirius keeps on, “and eventually Hope gave up the goat because how do you come back from that, but Lyall starts chirping _her_ and saying, ‘I was right, I was right,’ and I’m losing it because I’m just over the moon that he was never all that convinced the two of them were an item, but then he goes and says, ‘the boy doesn’t date,’ which was exactly what Remus fucking told me about how his dad would razz him about perpetual singlehood since he’s been in London, but gender has never made the cut in terms of commentary from Lyall, so the reason I’m putting that out there that he’s usually so hands-off unless he’s razzing Remus about his status, but then there he is, hours later, contending with me and how much I fucking sing for his son, gives me the thumbs up and goes as far as to try to help me out with it — I just — that’s the highest compliment I could have ever got out of the man?” 

“OK, I’m his biggest fan, please know that,” James puts down, “but I don’t even know where you go from there; what did you even do?” 

“Oh, I bolted out of that room to get Remus and Hope in there with us so we could actually just make Lyall’s fucking night, right, but Remus had already fled the scene after his own word-vomitting and was dealing with the fallout of that,” Sirius supplies. “I don’t want to misrepresent anybody in that situation because yeah, it was rough at first and Remus was hurt by her freezing on him and wanting all the complex answers at once, and in turn she was sandbagged and thought she needed those answers all at once despite it not being the time for them at all, but overall? It really was like I was dealing with two Remuses, one after the other.” 

“Oh, well, then you’d have been in your element,” James raises. “No wonder you did so well.”

“I feel like that’s what it was,” Sirius allows. “We’ve had a great rapport since the first call I ever made here, so once we got going and the initial spooks wore off we got it back and it was a really good conversation, and this morning she’s been just lovely to me and to Remus and _to us_, so it’s a moving thing still, but it feels like it’s really looking up.”

“Yeah?” James probes, and Sirius can hear him grinning over there.

“Mm, there’s a strange vibe about it all,” Sirius offers. 

"Strange good, strange bad?" James clarifies. 

“Good, definitely," Sirius gives him. ""They're such a batch of characters; one moment everyone’s weepy and serious and the next they’re tossing quips at each other and laughing some of the hardest parts of it off, and I don’t know, can you imagine how much I rather like seeing that sort of thing?” 

Sirius’ already budding smile intensifies as James snorts for that. “Oh, I can just,” he returns. "How's Lyall been about it?" 

"He's so fucking funny,” Sirius passes him. “Remus came out onto the veranda and told Lyall over the railing that we'd actually been going since Christmas, and he was far more fucked off about how I didn’t stop him before he got too far into his spiel than he was about anything else."

James gives an amused trill. “As if you were ever going to."

Sirius pushes a laugh through his nose. “We very told him that and he came around on that one pretty quickly,” he assures. “He’s just so unbothered by it otherwise and it’s so refreshing to get to see someone who doesn’t even entertain the idea of this being anything other than two people who just happened to couple up.” 

“Yeah, he’s getting a gift,” James decides. “Ask him what he likes and I’ll send him a nice package.” 

“He’s married, James,” Sirius chimes, and James cackles on the other end of the line. “But no, if I do that he’ll just say he doesn’t like anything, but don’t you worry, Remus and I have already started with the pampering; Hope’s got her gifts and we’re working on Lyall’s; we were going to get a replacement for the old mower for him but he went out bright and early this morning and got it himself, so now we’re trying to get him to let us pay him back for it so it can be from us, but as soon as we sort that out I can stick your name on it if you’d like.” 

“I'd love it if you did that, yes,” James puts down. 

“Done,” Sirius deems it, giving into a mild stretch and letting it go with a thoughtful breath. “Well hey, we’ve still got some time; do you want to see the Lupin abode?” 

“Yes, yes, yes,” James chants.

“OK, let me jump off and I’ll get you on video,” Sirius directs, pressing to end the call right then and there. 

He switches apps, dials James once again and has just enough time to deem his own reflection on his screen more than presentable before James accepts the call, and the two of them give each other massive gape/grins as if they hadn’t just seen each other Thursday. “Is this what complete and pure acceptance looks like on you?” James raises. 

“I believe it does,” Sirius chimes, getting himself off the hammock one handed. “OK, there’s a lot to take in out here and you ought to know that now.” 

“Known,” James deems it. 

“Perf,” Sirius says, turning the camera around to show off the yard from left to right, “so this is yard; the hammock I was just on, over here’s the garden, and—” Sirius pauses for dramatic effect and turns around to showcase the property to him, “—all this is theirs; can you believe?”

“Jesus Cunt,” James puts out. 

“Mhm, it’s arresting,” Sirius allows. “So green too, and there are trails back in those woods and a waterfront down one of them that’s quite the sight; I won’t take you all the way down there now, but you’ll be getting snaps in due time and you’ll be thanking me for them.” 

“Oh, I’m going to be,” James raises. “Reminds a bit of Lily’s parents’ place, but much more sprawling.”

“I’ve yet to see any woodland creatures which I’m none too happy with, but Remus assured me that I’ve got to bide my time and let them come to me,” Sirius mentions, moving the camera to showcase the left side of the property. “So, that over there is what got sold off; I’m not all that sure where the line starts officially, but somewhere past the shed was what I was told.”

“They really had a lot to work with,” James expresses. "I get why they'd pass some of it off." 

“And yet, there’s still so much of it left,” Sirius snickers, and there he turns the camera back to the field and smiles behind it as he tries to get Lyall into the frame. “And over there, we’ve got our once and future king buzzin’ around the outskirts of the woods with his new mower.” 

James snickers like a fiend over there. “I can't see him that well; is he happy?" he trills. 

“Oh, he’s so proud of it,” Sirius assures, moving toward the a-frame steps and practically skipping up them to open the door. “OK so, this is where we’re staying; technically I was put up in here first, but Remus said he was going to move his stuff down once the jig was up on us, so he’ll be officially joining me down here in due time, but look how cute this is?” 

James gives a throaty noise as Sirius does a 180-spin around the main room. “Oh no, I love it,” he puts up. “Lucky lads; get you’re own little cabin to yourselves.”

“Mhm, it’ll come in handy,” Sirius echoes. 

“You fuck in there yet?” James checks. 

“Yeah, we did,” Sirius returns plainly, showcasing the bed. “This thing did us very well.” 

“Then throw petals all over it and say they're from me,” James celebrates. “Did you knock anything off the list?” 

“You know what, we haven't,” Sirius offers him, turning the camera back to himself, "but see, that time in here was balls to the wall, and he got me in his basement earlier than that and agreed to roleplay a little with me even, _and_ he let me going down on him on the train ride here, so I have no rights as far as complaints go." 

“Excuse me?" James enunciates. "The train?” 

“You heard it here first,” Sirius affirms, heading out of the main room to get to the hallway. "We tossed his quilt over the action, but still, I'm so fucking proud of him?" 

“That absolute scarlet woman,” James tosses up, scandalized. 

“Hey, you're going to let him be whatever he wants to be,” Sirius returns, taking a left down the hall. “Now, here’s the kitchenette; fairly straightforward stuff, but wait for it—” he hovers his phone in front of the mint refrigerator, “—look at that bad baby.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” James returns. “Where even are you?” 

“The greatest place I’ve ever known,” Sirius answers, turning round to head up the hall, but he turns for the main room again. “There’s a cute little bathroom at the other end of the hall, but that’s all fairly straightforward so I can show you some of the house next?” 

“Show me,” James requests heartily.

“Alright, give me a sec to get back out there,” Sirius says, heading back through the main room to get outside again and padding across the yard to get to the garden. “So, this garden was Hope and Lyall’s little project this past spring and it has three exits to it: one leads to the hammock and the a-frame, another leads out to the shed, and one leads up to the porch stairs, and look: cobblestones.” 

Sirius does a long sweep over the path and then does a twirl around to showcase the haven he's in. “Why is it so perfect that the Lupins would have that, though?” James puts up.

“Because they’re all perfect storybook characters,” Sirius gives him, taking James a little ways down the second path. “Over here is even a little loveseat.” 

“Oh-ho,” James trills as Sirius shows him it. “You snog there?” 

“Not yet, but we’ll see what happens,” Sirius extends, backing up and taking James up toward the porch steps, showing off the garden some more as he heads up the path to get to them. He heads up the stairs, turning the camera to the right and facing it toward the veranda area. “Behold the spot where Remus had his famous oopsie-daisy, _and_ where Hope and I did some intense bonding last night.” 

“Ah, thank you for showing me it,” James extends. 

“Well, I can't show you the home without showing the heart with it," Sirius raises, taking him around the bend in the porch and down toward the back door. He opens it with his free hand, slips inside and backs it shut behind him, and foots Remus’ loafers off of his feet in turn, hearing vague twittering from the kitchen. “Give me a sec, kay?” 

“All good,” James replies. 

Sirius moves for the kitchen with the camera facing down, stops in the doorway, and smiles at Remus sitting at the table with a laundry basket at his feet and two-thirds of the way through a folding job by the looks of it while Hope’s at the counter pouring tea from a pot into two matching cups. 

Remus looks up at him while folding Sirius’ good jeans in his lap, giving him a curious smile. “Is it alright if I give James a little tour?” Sirius raises, waggling his phone. “I’ll leave the upstairs out of it; just down here.”

Hope looks over her shoulder and exchanges a quick smile with Remus before the both of them wave him off in near-unison. 

“Thanks,” Sirius returns, giving two shoulder-shimmies. 

“_Is that the boy?_” James champions.

“One room at a time, monsieur,” Sirius bids, turning away from the doorway and Remus' display of stitches to focus on the den. 

He shows off the armchair, the couch, coffee table to James’ various _oohing_ and _ahhing_, and giving a sweep over the (do not) shag carpet but leaves any commentary on that out of it given the present company inside the kitchen. “The chill vibes in there, though,” James mentions.

“I mean,” Sirius echoes. He does a spin in the other direction, showing off the telly and the computer, but he saves the best for last and thinks he ought to give the attraction an appropriate introduction. “Now, they’ve got one hell of a bookshelf in here, so breathe in now ‘cause you’re about to get the air punched out of you.” 

James audibly takes in a breath in anticipation and Sirius grins as he wooshes the camera over toward it. “Oh, you weren’t fucking kidding,” James puts up. 

“Mm mm,” Sirius hums for a no. "Isn't it just perfect that Remus would have that in his home?" 

“It’s no wonder he became such a library goblin," James raises it. 

Sirius gives out a bright trill in agreement, but he hears a substantial throat clear out of Remus from the kitchen. He moves over toward the doorway again to find Hope’s taken up the spot across from Remus, who’s taking a pointed sip of tea which doesn’t help make him any less of a library mole frankly. “Alright, James: Hope’s kitchen is a whole other dimension,” he prefaces. “You will have no hope in surviving this, but you still need to see it.” 

“I’m ready and willing,” James assures. 

Sirius does a quick roundabout in the kitchen to show off the room, starting with the counters, dipping the camera to show off the flooring, and sweeping the camera back up to showcase what the table and chairs add to the room all the while James whoops and hollers on the other end of the chat. 

Remus leans into the table to speak toward his mum. “Do you think he thinks it a bit too bland?” he raises thoughtfully. 

Hope gives a bright trill in her throat, going for a sip of tea. “I love your kitchen, Hope,” James tosses out. 

Hope coughs and very quickly swallows it down. “Thank you,” she calls up. “It’s more a preservation attempt than something I came up with myself, mind.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” James doubles down. “It’s top tier aesthetic.”

“Good thing,” Remus passes her. 

“Well, thank you,” Hope extends. 

Sirius shares a quick smile with Remus before going ahead and marching the phone around the edge of the table to frame him in the dead center of the camera. “Have a look at this handsome lad,” he bids James. 

“You look ravishing today,” James forwards. 

Remus half-cheerses him with his mug, a twist of a smile on his lips. “It’s that post-coming out glow, you see,” Sirius tacks on. 

“I had that feeling,” James offers coyly. “That said, that shirt’s not doing him a disservice either, let’s be honest.” 

“No, absolutely agreed,” Sirius makes known. “Good choice on that one.” 

Remus looks down at the deep blue polo he’s got on, giving his head an even tilt. “It’s nothing fancy,” he puts up, looking back up at them curiously. 

James huffs. “_Lupins._”

Sirius snickers on the way out of the kitchen. “Mhm, can’t take them anywhere near a compliment,” he echoes, moving the tour along and giving a sweep of the camera over the dining room table before giving the room itself a showcasing. “This is the dining room; it’s exactly what it says on the tin, but still super cute—" he pauses there, giving a second glance back toward the cabinets, "—hey, Remus; should I grab the tray?” 

“Mm,” Remus affirms. “Left one, and I think it’s on the second or third shelf.”

“Which is?” Hope asks. 

“The ashtray,” Remus supplies. 

“Oh, third one,” Hope calls over. 

“Thank you,” Sirius chimes, opening up the door on the left and swiping brass tray off the shelf, blinking down at the weightiness to it and moving the camera down to showcase the carpeting below. “And this room is where the wall to wall carpeting starts up on this end of the house, see?” 

Sirius brings his phone down to showcase the carpet around his feet. “Oh, that looks too soft,” James decides. 

“It is; I could easily sleep on it if I felt the need to,” Sirius passes along, moving out of the dining room and into the hall. “It goes all the way out here, up the stairs to the hallway up there, and over toward the front of the house, too, and I hear the Lupins might be taking it out in the near future and I find that tragic to think about.” 

“Honestly,” James echoes. “I mean, it’s probably a lot to vacuum, but still; aesthetic.” 

“I hear you, and I’m with you,” Sirius extends, and then he thinks he ought to show off the bathroom down here since it’s really more an experience than it is a typical loo. “Speaking of aesthetic; check this bathroom out—” he heads into the room, gives a sweep around it with the camera, and a resounding _YOOOOOOOOO_ echoes in the little room, “—absolutely the reaction necessary for this, thanks much.”

“Can you take a snap of that room?” James asks. 

“Oh, definitely,” Sirius assures. 

“Good, Lily would fucking love that as a template for her lower level one,” James raises. 

“Oh shit, she would,” Sirius concedes. “They’ve got a stained glass window in here that adds to the whole experience with the rouge tint to the lighting, but you could find framed ones around to sort of recapture the essence that’s happening here.” 

“Good fucking point,” James forwards. 

Sirius heads back out into the hall, bringing the camera over to Hope’s little area in the hall. “This is Hope’s workspace; I'm in love with it,” he details. “So far since I've been here she’s had this tote bag filled with yarn and needles and whatnot that she’s moving around from place to place with her, but this is the mothership, and look: cute little cubbies."

“There’s more yarn there than anywhere I’ve ever seen,” James puts up. 

“I know, it’s incredible,” Sirius echoes, moving down the front hall and into the sitting room. “Now, this is the famous room in which Lyall gave me his stamp of approval, so it’ll go down in history as a Good Room.” 

“Best Room,” James calls it. 

“Here’s the piano,” Sirius showcases.

James trills happily on the other end of the line. “Played any yet?” he asks. 

“A single, solid note, but we’ve been busy as bees since we got here,” Sirius offers, moving to show off the rest of the room. “There’s the bay window in here; Remus has one up in his room that’s a bit smaller but just as cute, and over here is Lyall’s area, and then over here is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Sirius gets himself over to the mantel and focuses the camera on the framed photo of wee Remus and a big ol’ pooch. “No,” James puts up. 

“Yes,” Sirius puts down. 

“That’s too much,” James decides. 

“That’s what I said,” Sirius returns gleefully. 

He looks right and glances down the mantel, spotting another frame at the other end of it, and pads over to it, hoping it’s another Remus-themed one and fuck, is he right about that; the placement of the two frames could very well be a nod to the passage of time for the one on the far left shows Remus as a little bean whereas the one on the far right shows Remus as a veritable beanpole in a cap and gown, and Sirius might’ve cheered with all the power in his lungs over getting to see a candid grad photo of Remus, it’s the two other subjects on either side of him that cause Sirius to pause. 

“Give me a sec, kay?” Sirius raises, sticking his phone down on the mantel and barely registering the response he gets. 

He studies the three wide smiles captured side by side, looks to Angela on Remus’ right to Tom on his left, and spares a few long moments on the way Remus’ arms are tossed over either one of their shoulders, and Sirius’ heart breaks a bit for that absolutely elated boy at the tail end of his self-assessed worst year to date and all he had to show for it in that captured moment. He’s got his diploma, his mum and dad, the latter out of hospice and cleared to join in on festivities, his buddy/beard on his right, his quasi-boyfriend back on his left; Sirius can see it in all corners of Remus’ face that he must have felt like he was finally on top of the world in that moment. 

Sirius takes in a tight breath, caught tight between two distinct camps; he’s livid that Tom dipped out on Remus at the worst time imaginable and only turned up a little before that photo was taken, but on the other hand he finds himself morbidly grateful that Tom wasn’t there to whisper in Remus’ ear; if the present day version of him can’t even muster up the ability to be genuinely happy for Lyall’s recovery, Sirius can’t even imagine what Tom could do with some bad news hanging over Remus’ head, and looking back at Tom again comes with a bolt of something up his spine, but it sure isn’t envy. 

He breathes in long, putting himself back into the room he’s in and the video chat he’s on. “Hey, sorry about that,” he says, lifting the phone again.

“That was like, a thousand seconds,” James puts up amusedly. 

Sirius gives him a half-frown. “I guess I needed a more of a minute, then,” he amends.

“What’s happened?” James asks, nodding toward him.

Sirius leaves the sitting room with that, looks back down the hall first and over toward the front door next, and ultimately decides the front will be the quickest and easiest to get to. “I’m just going to go out front, hold on,” he says, moving through the entryway and tucking the ashtray between his left arm and side to get the front door open. 

He goes for the steps, taking a seat on the top one, and sets the ashtray down beside him before emptying his pockets of the wee collection of butts and dropping them into the tray. From there he starts up a new cigarette from his pack, puffing off it to light it, and refocuses the camera on him. 

“We ran into Tom in town yesterday,” he offers, shooting a stream out the right side of his mouth. 

"What?" James shotputs out, taking one fuck of a face journey. "Where? When?"

“Here’s the scene,” Sirius prefaces, “we’re at the grocery ahead of dinner picking up the fixings for it and _Walking on Sunshine_ comes on in the place, so we start zumbaing in the dairy aisle and I mean Remus was putting that effort in and looking so happy; just elated and having the most fun, not giving a shit about anyone other than the two of us—” 

“I’m loving this,” James comes in. 

“Oh, hold it,” Sirius prefaces, “if this isn't some sort of metaphor for Remus never getting to fucking relax and just be for a bit then I don't know what is because that fucker turns the corner into the same aisle right as we're dancing about and strolls up to chat Remus up like that's even slightly acceptable, and then he’s pulling him into a whole-arse catch up conversation riddled with smarmy, ‘I got into Cambridge’ energy about him, and it was all awful to watch but also incredibly informative because I feel like I literally saw six years of what Remus had to deal with in just five minutes with the way the guy talks to Remus: it's address topic about Remus that should be positive, put a compliment in there, and leave a backhanded one at the end, and if he can he'll plant something in that he knows is going to get Remus' anxities up he fucking will and he’ll fucking smile while he does it, too.”

"Fuck that guy," James expels. 

Sirius hums starkly in approval, pausing to take a quick haul off his cigarette. "He brought up Remus’ term plans which he got out of Lyall probably weeks back now, but then he got weird about it, like Remus going and doing a term out in Paris after going off to London is somehow indulgent as if he’s not going to fucking Cambridge soon?” he raises, giving James a face on camera. “Like, what’s the problem; Remus can’t have anything? It can be only him?” 

James shakes his head, making a plainly unimpressed face. “So, still a shit and half,” he surmises. 

“You still haven’t heard the half of it,” Sirius assures, giving him a brow raise. “He had the gall to bring up Lyall’s health since his recovery, and it’d be one thing if he fucking meant that he was happy to see him doing better, but he wasn’t; he literally just brought it up to be a little piece of shit, slam dunk on Lyall, and treat it like it’s a fucking miracle that he’s doing so well now, and he says that to fucking _Remus?_ That's the fucking ticket.“

“What a fucking cunt,” James firebreathes. 

“_Pfft,_ there it is,” Sirius echoes, flicking a bit of ash off the end of his cigarette into the tray. “One thing I’ll note here; Tom clearly didn’t see Remus snarking him back to be in the cards for him, and I know Remus didn’t do a lot of shutting him down in the past because he’s well told me that, but seeing the look on Tom’s face and how quickly he started backpedaling and only making it worse was incredible in itself, but seeing Remus get him for it was just phenomenal; I love that man so much.” 

“Good, I’m glad he didn’t take that shit,” James returns. 

“Mm, and Tom’s heading to Cambridge this week to scope out flats so I’m guessing that’s why he went ahead and asked whether Remus has got one yet where he’s going,” Sirius puts up, grinning widely, “and he just fucking would not let Remus be with it; he’s just negging him about it and going on about how nervous Remus must be not having a place to stay yet, and he fucking — I hate him, James. Why? Why do that? Stop trying to get in his head, Remus is already fucking there.” 

“Aw fuck,” James puts out, falling into a full-faced grimace. “No wonder he got so riled up with them about it.” 

“Literally couldn’t have been the worst time for them to start asking about it,” Sirius confirms. “Of course they didn’t mean anything by it; they’re just curious and they want their kid safe and sound in a new city, but no fucking wonder Remus has such a fucking hard time with timing and signs from above, you know? Just such bad timing — that could be the summary of all time with him and to reign him back from the ledge gets harder and harder to do because I want to help restructure how he sees things, but it’s a tough one when these things happen.” 

James nods, giving into a deep pout on the other end of the chat. “He’s doing OK now?” 

“Well, you saw him,” Sirius puts up. “He’s fucking glowing in there.”

“As he should,” James lobs back. 

“The fact is, the flat thing is going to bug him until he knows he has something, but again, he’s trying so hard not to panic,” Sirius forwards. “At this point I’m pretty close to just renting a place nearby his school he could stay in just to give him a break on that venture, but who knows if he’ll let me do it, right?” 

James gives another grimace, but it’s hard to land it when he’s smiling the whole way through it. “Well, look,” he starts, “yeah, he’ll probably block you on it, but maybe you’ve got to suggest it as the absolute fall back plan and maybe just having that as a promise in the distance could help make him feel a little less desperate to take just fucking anything that would work.” 

Sirius looks off in the distance and back at James after a few moment’s pondering. “That’s a good one,” he forwards. “Thanks for it.” 

“Oh, you know me,” James valleygirls, “I just like to help.” 

“Yeah,” Sirius accepts, working past the pit that just now entered his gut. 

“Alright, well, what happened next?” James prompts. 

Sirius blows a long, drawn out raspberry. “The guy triples down on the audacity, asks whether Remus has a new number in Londontown — which he already fucking knew so fuck him twice,” he tacks on pointedly, “and then he goes and hands his phone over for Remus to plug it in for him; doesn't ask for it, just hands it off to him so Remus just has it in his hands, and he can either chuck the phone back at him or exit the situation by complying and getting out of there—"

"Oh, no no no," James shoots out, grimacing hard. "What was he thinking?" 

"Remus?" Sirius checks. "Well, obviously option A would have been lovely to see happen and very cathartic for him, I’m sure, but have you met Remus?”

"Well, I wasn't coming for Remus, ya dingus," James corrects.

Sirius cannot say he isn't relieved to hear it despite the method. “Well, I had to check,” he insists. “I know it looks shady, and I definitely had a whole meltdown about it later on so I really can attest to how it looked, but he was so sorry about it and he turned it the fuck up for me all evening, and don't even get me started on this morning; I’m a huge fan of that lad and I'm just so fucking livid that Tom put him in that situation. 

“And for him to do it in front of you, too," James tosses out. 

"Oh yeah; brass balls," Sirius affirms. “Remus says he was showing his length a little there, which to be fair he did do a few times in that five minutes alone so I’m willing to give him that, but it’s not as if something has to be one thing and one thing only, right? I think it was a two birds with one stone sort of thing."

"I've a really hard time imagining you let him walk free," James theorizes, giving him a coy gaze. 

"Oh, I hunted him the fuck down, trust," Sirius maintains. "The bitch didn't even get out of there ASAP? I mean, I hoped he hadn't scurried off too quickly so I could hound him, but then I found him perusing aisle five like he hadn't just committed a few dozen faux pas in five minutes, but his eyes sure shot open when he saw me coming for him and I bet he did wish he'd gotten out of there sooner, I'll tell you that much."

The right corner of James' mouth pulls up into a half-smile before the left corner joins in. "Well, the pitbull was on the loose," he offers. "How hard did you smack him?"

Sirius finishes up with the haul he'd gone for and tries for a light but credible response. "Well, I did slap him up real good for putting a finger in my face and acting like he'd be the one dolling out orders, but that was the height of my hands' involvement," he offers. "I went for the tear his life apart without having to administer a sock route." 

The face James pulls there suggests that ain't it. "Not trying to take that away from you here, but what he did was grounds for a curb stomp." 

"Well, I don't know what to tell you other than I didn't curb stomp him," Sirius returns, lifting his shoulders once. 

James squints at him. "The guy made a move on Remus right in front of you," he doubles down. 

"Yeah, I was there," Sirius reminds him. 

"How am I way more fucked off about this than you are?" James puts up. 

"Umm, because you're obsessed with us," Sirius highlights. "And you're not, by the way, but I wanted him to listen to me. I'm not saying he wouldn't have deserved it, but I was a lot more focused on telling him exactly the sort of piece of shit he was and still is and to not fucking try me again, so if you could remember for a second that I'm still the pitbull you just called me a minute ago I think you could lay off of me for not knocking him out." 

James huffs long. "But it'd have been so good," he puts it, anguished. 

Sirius turns to put out his cigarette in the ashtray and waits until all stray embers have been crushed out to continue. "Nevertheless, beating the shit out of the guy would have made things a whole lot worse," he maintains. "I really scared Remus with the David fiasco and I'm not about to do that again." 

James sticks a skeptical look on. "Did you, though?" he raises tightly.

"Yeah?" Sirius sounds out. "He was totally spun out by that." 

"I don't know if he was, Sirius," James floats to him, his eyebrows going up. "He had his game face on in there; it was thrilling to watch." 

"Well, I'd love to say I say it myself but I got left in the car," Sirius makes sure to mention. 

"Well, see, you loved it; what are you so pressed about?" James returns. 

"I can't only celebrate his on-switch; it comes at a price," Sirius puts down. "And your point doesn't stand; he wouldn't have felt he had to go in there if the threat of David pressing charges against _me_ wasn't looming over his head, and on top of that he didn't go in there and beat the shit out of David on my behalf, did he? No, he handled himself without raging out on the guy and I could learn a thing or two about not blowing my lid so much." 

"Ohh," James drags out, blinking once, "you don't think you're getting a little ahead of yourself there?" 

"It's not fair to keep doing that to someone like Remus," Sirius puts down. "I can't keep acting out the way I do or he's going to wake up and realize the kind of liability I can be for him—"

James goes right into a prime reel. "In what world would he do that, Sirius?" 

"_This one,_" Sirius insists. "He loves me, and if I keep going around acting like I've been he's going to walk one day, and the very least _you_ could do is not actively encourage me to act like that and then hide me behind a wall of excuses for forever and ever." 

"What the fuck is happening?" James comes in. 

"I just fucking said it," Sirius comes back. "At least Remus pulls me up and makes me want to do better, and you could learn a thing or two about _that_, I'll tell you." 

James does the thing where he's clearly unhappy with Sirius but his face remains unobtrusive, and if that isn't some classic James. "Do you want to go for a kip or something?" he raises.

"Why don't you go take one?" Sirius retorts. "You're the one coming for me for not curb stomping Remus' ex just because you wanted to live vicariously through it."

James takes in a long breath that Sirius also should try to do himself now that he's just made a whole point about doing so. "You know I'm not actually coming for you." 

Sirius sits stewing for upwards of ten seconds focusing on breathing patterns. "We dealt with it, James," he presses. "Remus and me? Golden age has begun. Remus? Doesn't want to hear from the guy again and is right sick of being his caretaker, and now that Hope and Lyall are up to speed on the fact that those two were once a flame and do not keep up anymore as a result of how badly that went over I've talked to Lyall about blocking Tom out and not giving him any more information on Remus because that shit bothers him to no end, and Lyall is happy to ignore the guy from here on out. I haven't talked to Hope about it yet but something tells me she's not going to want to stop and chat with him anymore either, and unless Tom is the biggest, dumbest fucking — oh, fucking fuck, fuck, _fuck_." 

"That took a turn," James comments. 

Sirius' galaxy brain activates so thoroughly that his whole body seems to come online in the span of a finger snap. "I should have just taken the number off of his phone," he puts down, dragging his free hand up through his hair. "I've been going around sewing everything back together and trying to get the house in order, but I can't just close all the windows but leave the front door wide open — I mean, what am I, a rookie?" 

James presses his own lips together there. "It's almost like taking the pacifist route—"

Sirius' eyes flash. "You are not helping," he hisses at him. "I stand by not getting caught up in two blunders in under a week, thanks much, I just wish I'd fucking taken it back from him when I had the chance; this is Remus we're talking about, Tom's not going to listen to me, he's just going to wait it out and try again once the spooks wear off, and then I really am going to have to ride on up to Cambridge and fuck him up like I said I would or he's going to think I'm a joke." 

"Hey, I'll drive you up," James puts up. 

"You are not helping me whatsoever," Sirius hisses at him. 

James sighs long. "Alright, fine, was it incredibly short-sighted to let him walk out of there with it still on him?" he raises. "Yes, ma'am, but you can still deal with the problem." 

"He leaves town Monday," Sirius puts down. "He's going to be gone the rest of the week." 

"Is it Monday?" James raises, and Sirius presses his lips together feebly. "Go get that phone, chuck it on the ground, make it explode into shards — or better yet, whip it _at_ him, but at least get the number out of it before you chuck it back at him as that would be another rookie move." 

Sirius takes in a tight breath, looking tapping his screen to get the time displayed at the top, and they're pushing noon already; his galaxy brain intensifies as he connects quite a few dots in a row and in the next moment he's bolting up from the steps. "I've have to go now," he alerts, pressing to end the call. 

He zooms down the porch steps, freezes there, and looks back at the ashtray he almost left in his wake but can't think of where to stick it except for underneath the steps and out of sight. He dashes across the front of the house to bolt up between the house and the shed, hears a cough that most certainly belongs to Lyall, and skids to a stop just past the shed, doubling back and finding Lyall tucking his new lady away in it. 

"Hey, quick question," Sirius prefaces, bracing his hands on either side of the doorway out of sheer exhaustion from that sudden sprint, "where does Tom live?" 

"Did Remus take you to or near the watering hole?" Lyall calls, working the mower up against the wall on the right. 

"The one you were at, yes," Sirius affirms. 

"Well, it's a few blocks down from there," Lyall extends. He dusts his hands off with an air of a job well done and turns to look over at Sirius, but he clicks his tongue hard a true beat later. "Oh, what'd he do now?" 

"He's leaving town Monday, but I can't let him get away without getting to him before he goes," Sirius puts down. "Remus and I were going to hang around until Hope gets back here before we head off but the rest of the day is booked up solid, and we're not even going to be in town tomorrow so this, right now, this is my only shot and I'm—" 

Lyall sweeps his hands once for Sirius to move out of the doorway. "Let's go," he bids, just like that. 

"Are you sure?" Sirius checks. 

"Well, I wouldn't walk it if you're in a crunch," Lyall says by way of answering. "It's just a hop and a skip from here with a lift." 

Sirius lets go of the doorway to press his hands together in a stark thanks. "You're the best," he champions. "I owe you anything — literally anything you want." 

"The freedom of the open air," Lyall tells him, gesturing for Sirius to move out, but he's smiling this time around. 

Sirius nods dutifully, moves out of the way and back up toward the front, not even bothering with shoes for his feet when he's not even that certain he isn't hallucinating how easy that was to organize. He heads past the front steps again, passes by Hope's car, and makes a beeline for the passenger side of the truck while Lyall goes up on the driver's side. 

Sirius climbs up and into the truck, getting across from Lyall, and reaches for his seatbelt to pull it over himself. Lyall wrangles his own belt on, puts the key in and starts up the engine, but whatever station he was last on appears to have decided that 11:52 and the moment they're getting going is a perfectly reasonable time to be playing _If I Die Young_. 

"Um, can we—" Sirius starts, pretending like he's turning a dial, "—not with that one?" 

Lyall certainly doesn't seem to mind, reaching to cycle through a few channels that are mostly static until he falls on one that isn't, only that one's busy putting out _Die Young_ by one Kesha, and this would be funny if Sirius wanted to have two crises eating at his brain at once. "Nope," he denies, shaking his head once.

"Tough crowd," Lyall observes, cycling onward. The next station he falls on that isn't simply white noise very appears to be churning out the initial, rapturing pound of _Du Hast_ and Lyall turns his head to Sirius. "Too much?" 

Sirius gives into a bout of snickers despite himself. "That's perfect, honestly." 

Lyall nods once, a wry smile on as he gets the truck pulled around and heads down the driveway toward the road. "Are you planning on sharing anything else or should I just drive?" he raises. 

"He made a move on Remus," Sirius provides. 

It's a good thing that the driveway is a very straight arrow for Lyall whips his head toward him right quick. "Wh—" he sputters. "In the last hour?" 

Sirius shakes his head feasibly. "No, he did it yesterday," he confesses. "We saw him in town while we were at the grocery getting pie fixings."

"And he made a move on him there?" Lyall checks. 

"Dairy aisle," Sirius shares. "It's going to sound so juvenile and ridiculous of me—"

"No," Lyall denies, making a left out of the driveway and onto the highway. "What'd he do?" 

Sirius gives out the breath he took in. "It's as Remus said; he's in a new chapter of his life and a much better place than he was when he was with him, but Tom still managed to get Remus to plug his newer, London Town number into his phone before he sauntered off, and I know what it sounds like," he insists. "I know it's just a number and Remus can rightfully ignore anything that comes in, but Tom actively played on Remus' kindness for fucking years and he did it again the second he had the chance to, and me? I chased him down to put the fear of God in him so he'd know how big a mistake it would be to mess it would be for him to use it and I checked with Remus after the fact and he's quite convinced I'd have scared him off and that Tom would've asked you or Hope if he wanted to have the number at any point before now and that he might've just missed he mate, but come on, that's too easy, and you know what I actually should have done while I had the chance? Get the fucking number back from him; _that_ would have been direct action, and now, because I didn't do that, Tom's locked himself in to be able to pester Remus whenever the spooks of me hunting him down wear off and whenever he fucking feels like it as per his patterns, and Remus does not want, need, or deserve the guy dragging him down and getting in his head anymore. _It's enough,_ so that's that, I know how strange a request this is, but I'mma need you to run me over there so I can confiscate that number before he leaves town with it and I don't get another chance." 

Sirius opens his eyes there, finding Lyall looking sidelong at Sirius. "OK, do that," he extends, "only are you sure you don't want me to pop him one ahead of time? I'd call that some direct action too." 

Sirius takes in a careful breath. "As cathartic as it would be, Remus wouldn't want us riding on down to rough up his ex on his behalf," he reiterates. "I know it like I know anything." 

"Well, I think we just established that the kid's a little too hold-hands-and-make nice for his own good," Lyall mentions. 

"Well, yes, we did," Sirius lets him have, "but if we're being honest, I really need to do this without annihilating him and that isn't something I'm very good at, but I have to try a lot harder than I have been because I don't want to be what I'm from."

Lyall's quiet for the next stretch of road and rolling hills, but he speaks again as they come upon the bridge Remus took them over just yesterday, and shit, this really is going much quicker with the truck at their disposal. "I respect that, Sirius," he forwards, "and forgive me for this, but I'm just not sure I can picture the kid handing the phone over without a bit of force thrown in." 

"Oh, I'm going to force him to," Sirius puts down, lifting his right hand in assurance. "He's going to do whatever I say, you just have to trust me on that." 

Lyall gives a glance his way as he takes them out the other side of the bridge, tossing his head toward him. "That's a lot of gumption." 

"Funny," Sirius puts in, "Hope said I had moxie last night." 

"Well, that too," Lyall returns. "In. Droves." 

"I'll take both," Sirius assures, working his mouth around a wry smile. 

It isn't much longer before Lyall makes a left turn off of the highway and takes them down the street Sirius recalls Remus taking them down to get to the main, and it's right turn before they're on the picturesque street, but Sirius hasn't got it in him to watch the bustle of the passersby when his whole body is too busy thrumming with anticipation. That hum goes twice as hard as Lyall turns off the main a block past the watering hole and down a good three more blocks before taking a right onto a more residential street, and Sirius sits up straighter in his seat, on high alert. 

Lyall pulls the truck in on the left and stops just behind a driveway that's got what has to be the infamous Audi sitting in it and Sirius eyes the deep green vehicle outside his window. "Should have stopped for an egg carton on the way," he raises. "That windshield's looking a bit too clean to me." 

Lyall puts up a flat laugh. "I'd love to see it, but you'd get one thrown before the alarm would start up," he offers.

"Balls," Sirius laments, sizing up the house beyond the car and finding the blocky, trendy look of the place wholly off-putting compared to the rest of the veritable cottages on the rest of the street. "Woof; that's fucking ugly." 

"The Audi?" Lyall raises. 

"Nah, that monstrosity behind it," Sirius amends. "It's like I'm staring at a beachfront house in Belize."

"Mm," Lyall returns monotonously. "Never been, but I think I agree; there are more and more ones like those popping up these days, but they were one of the first in the area to erect something that out of place."

"I like yours a thousand times better than I already did," Sirius passes him. "Just putting that out there." 

Lyall gives an even noise in his throat. "It's a fixer-upper for sure, but we won't be doing something like that with it," he extends. 

"You'd better not," Sirius returns, unbuckling and slipping out from the strap of his seatbelt. 

"Want me to come with?" Lyall asks, reaching for the key in the ignition. 

"No, I've got it," Sirius assures. "And I may even ask you to pull the truck up and out of view so he doesn't see you in the background and have a whole fit about it." 

Lyall gives quite the scoff for that. "Why should I care if he's uncomfortable?" 

"Well, we don't really," Sirius amends, "but Remus said it: it doesn't leave the porch and I don't want him getting shit on at any point for sharing what he damn well should have with you two." 

Lyall takes a long breath in through his nose. "Alright, I'll pull up," he relents, "but if he throws one punch I'm coming up there; that's the deal." 

"Deal because he'd never," Sirius grants, feeling all sorts of warmth in his stomach as he reaches to open his door. 

"You didn't bring shoes, Sirius?" Lyall tosses him, snorting up a storm in there. 

"There wasn't time for shoes, Lyall," Sirius hisses back, a goon grin on his lips as he turns to look up and into the truck, giving into a sheepish smile there. "I just hope he's home and we didn't just drive over here for nothing." 

Lyall gives a glance toward the time on the dashboard and while Sirius can't see it from this angle he can't imagine it's been very long at all when the drive certainty did come off as a hop and a skip, but that still doesn't mean the guy's home for noon hour. "Well, somebody's there," Lyall raises, gesturing behind Sirius toward the car. "If he's not, find out where he went and we'll go there." 

Sirius lifts his free hand to tap the end of his nose in understanding, shuts his door, and turns for the driveway, miming a jaunty kick to the left headlight of the Audi and getting a quick, double-toot of the horn in seeming reply before he pulls the truck up the road. Sirius skips up the rest of the drive through a bout of snickers, looks toward the window in the front room as the curtain moves aside, and stops still as Tommy McGee looks right out at him, alerted by the honking it seems. Sirius gives him a hearty wave, heading up the front steps and stopping on the front stoop with an expectant smile on, but Tom only sizes him up through the glass. 

A standstill of about five or so seconds creeps on before Sirius reaches up and fuses his right forefinger to the doorbell, letting it ring and ring and ring while Tom whirls around and makes rather quick work of getting to the door. 

"You're such a fucking—" 

"I wouldn't have rung the bell at all if you'd come to the door," Sirius cuts him off. 

Tom huffs, stepping out onto the stoop and pulling the door shut behind him. "Really, you're making house calls now?" he puts up. 

"Sure am," Sirius affirms, lifting his right hand toward him. "Give me your phone." 

Tom drops his gaze before it lingers on Sirius' bare feet and there a supremely duped expression clouds over. "I genuinely have no clue how he can handle someone this extra." 

"Oh, he loves it, don't you worry," Sirius replies, keeping his hand up. "Give me your phone." 

"I don't have it on me," Tom returns. 

"I bet you do," Sirius replies, giving a beckon with the same hand. 

"I'm not going to use it," Tom snaps, but it really doesn't have much bite to it when he's keeping all of this to a hushed whisper. "You made yourself quite clear." 

"Why hold onto a number you're not going to use?" Sirius raises, but when Tom still won't budge Sirius tosses a plain glance toward the shut door behind him. "Your dad home?" 

"This is extortion," Tom sounds out. 

"Nah, it's just business," Sirius mimics, moving a steady gaze back to him. "Give me your fucking phone right now." 

Tom veritably fumes as he reaches back into his left pocket jaggedly. "Insecurity doesn't look so good on you," he mention pithily, pulling his phone around front of him. 

"Pretty sure everything looks good on me, but OK," Sirius chimes, snapping his fingers to get Tom to hurry it up. 

Tom looks up from his screen, clicking his tongue. "Well, do you want the passcode put in or not?" he retorts, his right thumb passing over his screen. "I'm not about to tell you it." 

"His birthday?" Sirius surmises, and half of it had been in jest but Tom practically chucks the phone at him in reply so that seems like a fairly decent confirmation in itself. "You're way to easy; _holy_." 

He smiles freely as he breezes through the same interface as his own phone, bringing up Tom's contacts and pressing to get to the R's quicker, and while he could easily delete Remus as a contact in full he goes ahead and leaves Remus' name lingering in there, but that's more for him than anyone else. 

Sirius sighs wistfully, handing the phone back to him. "Cool, so from this moment on, when you see Remus and me about town, and you will see that, you're to keep walking and let him be and we'll never have to meet again," he puts up lightly. "Pretty good deal, I'd—"

"You know, he really wouldn't want you controlling him like this," Tom cuts in. 

Sirius' spine may as well have grown six inches in a single beat for how quickly Tom seems to realize that wasn't smart. "And why would you know what the fuck he wants?" he sends back. "I want him happy and that's a lot more than I can say for you."

"Keep your fucking voice down," Tom warns. 

Sirius tosses him a sneer, lifting his hands to wash himself from him and this shit. He walks to the end of the driveway, takes a swift left to head down the street, and finds Lyall parked a few houses down from there. He pulls out his own phone while heading for the truck, types out a quick _mission accomplished_ and fires that off to James, and gives a big thumbs up to Lyall through the window before giving the door a tug open. 

"How, Sirius?" Lyall calls over. 

"Oh, you know," Sirius raises, hoisting himself into the truck, "just worked my magic." 

"Is that really all you're going to tell me?" Lyall passes him, starting up the truck." 

"Yeah, I'm thinking so," Sirius affirms, pulling his belt back on, "but now that I got that out of there, we can keep in with Operation Remus' Happiness and he'll be a lot better off for it; what do you think? Is it walls up, Lyall?" 

"Tom, who?" Lyall puts up quizzically, pulling off the curb and down the street. 

"That's it," Sirius champions, getting cozy in his seat. 

Lyall takes a left at the end of the street, heads down quite a few blocks from there before taking a new left, and Sirius only just registers that he's been down this one before Lyall gestures toward Sirius' window. "Ever been there?" he raises curiously. 

Sirius looks out it toward a very familiar car shop and snorts. "Nah, never me," he returns, but since they're passing by and the question could come off naturally, he thinks he ought to get some intel to bring back for Remus. "Who's on today?" 

"Same as yesterday, except for Bill who only does weekends these days," Lyall supplies, and Sirius hums anecdotally in reply, but wiggles his toes down below his chair with the confirmation that Bubba will likely be there later on. 

Whatever tune playing over the radio that Sirius had no basis for fades out and Filter's _Take a Picture_ starts up in its place and for a strong moment Sirius finds it too close to home and too pointed in a wholly different way than earlier, but he sizes up the scene, the quality company he's in, and decides he ought to let it play. 

He registers that Lyall spoke after he’s already done it. “Hm?” Sirius checks. 

"Did you say something about Hope 'getting back' before?" Lyall reiterates. 

Sirius breathes thoughtfully, rolling back through his memory log. "Oh, yeah, I did," he affirms. "Do’s driving up and they’re going for a late lunch date, which is why—" 

"Ohh," Lyall comes in with new understanding, but then he gives out an amused smirk. "Why do you know more about my wife's schedule than I do?" 

"Oh, I only found out this morning from Remus," Sirius offers him. “It’s why I said I had a very small window to act because in a perfect world I could have waited for Hope to get back and Remus and I could’ve gone by there, but in this world Remus would not have cooperated.”

"Ohh," Lyall repeats, but this one's more deepened. He looks sidelong at Sirius there. "Was that something we're not to mention?" 

"Oh, I'll tell him about it," Sirius assures. "It’s funny because I learned through trial and error that asking Remus for permission before doing him a favour or getting something done on behalf of him, he’s going to resist it because that’s Remus 101, so sometimes I’ll broach a subject to test the waters and keep working on him if I’ve got more time to work with, but other times there isn’t a lot of time or I’m acting on the fly, and doing the thing ahead of time and then bringing him the conclusion after the fact just goes so much more smoothly, maybe because it’s already happened, but it also seems to be that he realizes that it’s a good thing in the end better than he would if I proposed it ahead of time and he’d have all sorts of scenarios to consider and cloud his sight; does that make a single lick of sense?” 

Lyall gives out a highly amused noise in his throat. “It sure does,” he puts in. “Hope’s the same way, only you’ve beaten me by figuring him out when it took me an embarrassing amount of years to realize that sometimes, you just have to get the thing done and she’ll love it once it is.” 

Sirius gives out a celebratory noise. “I mean, I’m still constantly working at that,” he passes back. “Lately I’ve been in my head a lot more and second guessing everything I do in regards to him: I’ve been doing this thing where I’ll have done a thing on behalf of him and then I’ll build up scenarios in my head where Remus is livid at me for getting it done without checking with him first, but then when I bring it to him and expect him to get upset he’s just the calmest, most relaxed bloke about it, so sometimes he’s the anchor and I’m the rafter, you know.” 

“Well, I certainly do,” Lyall raises. “I think the ticket proposal is a fine example of situations where Hope’s the one to come in and calmly figure the rest out after I’ve stomped off; it’s a back and forth.” 

Sirius beats the underside of his left fist into his armrest. “Yes, _exactly,_” he champions. “I’m really not too worried about telling him about it, it’s just that if I’d waited until we had the car and asked him to drive me on by Tom’s, he’d have insisted not to bother with it, that Tom has no ulterior motives and is probably just trying to reach out, probably just misses his mate—”

"Which wouldn't be true in any sense," Lyall comes in. 

"Mhm _Mhm_," Sirius affirms. "He doesn't realize the catch he is and a lot of that’s got to do with that fucker, but Remus wouldn’t even know if the guy was laying it on thick because that just doesn’t compute for him, and even if Tom did just want his mate back, that's not Remus' job anymore and he knows that; he said it himself, he needs people around him who lift him up and want the best for _him,_ not themselves." 

"Damn, kid,’" Lyall quotes, sending him a wry smile as he turns onto the main. “You got it.” 

This time around Sirius feels right happy to people-watch out of his window, basking with his own wry smile on, but he catches a glimpse of a little girl going along the sidewalk on a pair of rollerblades and that brings up a particular bolt of remembrance. "Hey, Remus told me about a certain rollerblading guitar man a little while back," he mentions, turning back to Lyall. "Was he lying to me or is that really something that happens here?" 

"Ah, mhm," Lyall affirms. "No lie." 

"OK, good, because if he'd been taking the mickey out of me with that," Sirius puts up, wagging his left forefinger pointedly. 

"No no, a right staple around these parts," Lyall tacks on. 

"He said that, too," Sirius delivers. "What I'm wondering is if he's got a schedule that he keeps to or if he's more, like, a northern lights type deal, or a sasquatch sighting..."

"I'm afraid it's more the second one," Lyall gives him. 

"So, not something you can quantify," Sirius accepts, if a tad begrudgingly. 

"No, it'd be very tough to do that," Lyall echoes. "Now, when the weather's nice, chances are high that he'll be out and about, but never the same time as far as I've seen; he comes and goes at will."

"Does he play well or is the guitar more of a prop?" Sirius inquires. 

"Well, it's definitely part of the whole shtick," Lyall lets land, "but he does play very well — and fast; I've seen him doing all these swivel tricks and not even slowing down, so he clearly has two talents for us to enjoy." 

Sirius snickers there, absolutely amazed by this. "Is he young, old, in the middle?" he raises. "I need to know what I'm to be picturing here." 

Lyall hums thoughtfully with the question. "Late thirties, early forties," he puts up. "White guy, definitely gets a lot of sun, has sandy hair about as long as yours is, maybe a little longer even." 

"Oh my," Sirius trills. "Hippy?" 

Lyall hums. "Beatnicky for certain."

"OK, objectively speaking," Sirius prefaces, "would you say he's on the fit side of things?" 

"Oh, sure," Lyall returns, and Sirius cannot handle how easy it can actually be. "Nothing to scoff at." 

"Incroyable," Sirius calls it. "Have you talked to him ever? Nice gent, I've been told." 

"Oh, he is," Lyall extends. "Though I personally have never heard the man speak."

"No?" Sirius returns, right piqued. 

Lyall hums a no. "Hope swears she heard him talk once, but I'm not sure I believe her," he quips.

"Oh, you're yanking my chain," Sirius returns him. 

Lyall pushes a laugh through his nose. "That last bit, I was," he concedes. "For the most part he keeps to himself, but you'll see him riding along while playing, he'll smile and tip his head to folks as he goes by, and sometimes he will go into a shop here or there—"

Sirius snorts. "Just rides on in?" he grins.

"No, he’s usually got a knapsack with him that he keeps a regular pair of shoes in, so he'll switch out of the blades if he's headed inside somewhere," Lyall forwards. 

"Ooh, he _is_ a gent," Sirius observes.

"Hope was in the bakery a while back when he wandered in and she said it felt as if she’d seen a dog walk on it’s hind legs," Lyall details, snickering there. “You just don't expect him to stroll into the bakery and order a half-dozen muffins like the rest of us, you know?" 

"Yeah, that he powers up from photosynthesis alone," Sirius affords him, and Lyall flies his left hand toward him in firm agreement. "So, what's he sound like?" 

"A man," Lyall shares, taking a right out of town and back onto the highway.

"Could've guessed that myself, _Lyall_" Sirius returns, sending him a load of air-punches. 

Lyall snickers wildly in the driver's seat. "Cockney accent," he reiterates.

"Ah, he's from the Isles, then," Sirius accepts. "How long's he been here, then?" 

Lyall squints out the front window. "Close to a decade now," he supplies. 

Sirius feels his phone start to go off in his pocket, but he reaches behind him to pause the ringer. "Does anybody know what his story is?" he delves deeper. "A name, whereabouts he might reside, what sort of day job he keeps?" 

Lyall hums noncommittally for that. "There are rumblings here and there, but nothing concrete," he offers. "For the most part the anonymity of it all seems to have been collectively accepted around here and rather played into in recent years; these days he's just various iterations of _guitar man_ and such, but I really couldn't tell you where he hangs hit hat." 

Sirius nods thoughtfully for that. "Nah, you know what, it's probably better not to know too much about him," he figures. "Finding out that he's a broker named Chuck who lives in one of those beachfront houses would soil the whole illusion, I should think." 

"That's it, yeah," Lyall accepts. "We have a running theory around the Lupin home that he must do some sort of freelance work just for how unpredictable his sightings can be, but that's as far as we've gone theorizing." 

Sirius gives out a wondrous sigh. "It's official; I cannot leave this hamlet without seeing this phenomena at least once."

"Well, the weekend's looking good and next week's supposed to be a right scorcher, so chances are with the way you two've been gallivanting around, you'll catch him going by one of the days ahead," Lyall supplies him. 

Sirius smirks. “Remus is so like you,” he serves him. 

“I hear that more than I hear just about anything else,” Lyall extends. “You’re going to have to be more specific.” 

“Good thing I always have specifics lined up and ready to go,” Sirius returns. “See, my London born and raised arse hasn’t been around a ton of wildlife unless you count the honkin’ racoon that hangs out by the dumpster out back of my flat, so it goes to say I’d like to see an impressive stag during my stay here, but Remus told me I just have to keep an open mind and let them show themselves to me on their time, and now you’ve giving me the hard sense that Rollerblading Guitar Man is similar in nature.” 

“That’s a fair assessment,” Lyall calls it, taking them back over the bridge. “Though for your stag concern, definitely keep your eyes peeled in the AM because some mornings, when it’s calm and quiet with a bit of fog rolling in, they’ll come right up to the yard.” 

Sirius huffs. “Remus told me that, and I yet still didn’t even think to look out for one this morning,” he lodges. 

“Well, there will be other mornings,” Lyall serves him.

Sirius lifts his right hand to showcase his crossed fingers. “I’m holding the both of you to it,” he mentions. 

“I feel fairly comfortable letting you do that,” Lyall extends. 

The rest of the ride back takes little more than a blink, it feels, and the only difference to the scene as they come up on the house is that Hope’s car is no longer in the picture. “Well, either she skipped town or Do beat traffic, I’m guessing,” Lyall puts up. 

“Hm,” Sirius observes, looking toward the time on the dashboard, but it’s only just passed half-twelve. “Not that I’m expecting it to be the former, but it’s early for a late lunch.” 

“Well, I would not be surprised if Do hit the road early,” Lyall raises, pulling the truck up to the end of the driveway and putting it into park. 

“No, I suppose not,” Sirius allows, reaching to unbuckle. 

Lyall pulls the key out of the ignition, scratching at the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Well, listen, did you just want to take the truck?” Lyall puts up. 

“Oh, no, we can wait,” Sirius assures, leaving his seatbelt aside. “We were well prepared to wait until mid-afternoon at the earliest.” 

Sirius opens his door, hops down to the ground, and turns back to shut the door only he finds Lyall still sitting in the driver’s seat looking right quizzical. “But the truck is right here,” he raises, pointing down with both hands before pointing them behind him toward the road, “and her car is out there somewhere.” 

Sirius snorts for all of that. “I just don’t want her to get back and think we were tapping our wrists the whole time she was gone,” he extends. 

“Well, I’ll tell you now she won’t think that,” Lyall puts it, reaching to open his door. “I’ll even tell her I forced the truck onto you.” 

Sirius smirks for it. “Can we tell her not to cut her lunch short on account of us?” 

“She’s got her very own phone and everything,” Lyall extends, reaching to open his own door. 

Sirius gives an amused sigh, heading round the front of the truck. “Well, I’ll bring it to the boss and see what he says,” he puts up. Lyall snorts this time around, hoisting himself to the ground before backing up to push the door shut, and Sirius falls into step with him as they head up to the house. 

Sirius waves to let Lyall open the door and go in first, but Lyall waves him onward instead, and soon Sirius understands why as Lyall takes a seat on the bench in the entryway to remove his shoes. Sirius hangs by the doorway just inside the front hall as Lyall leans off of the bench a little to drop his shoes on the mat and pull a pair of house slippers over toward him. 

Sirius watches him pop the right slipper onto the fashioned foot of his prosthetic, willing himself not to ask anything about phantom limb like he so wants to, and then a whole mad-rush of questions he’d love to ask come knocking and he has to press his lips together firmly. He’s certainly been given quite a bit of intel already, got various anecdotes given to him via Remus over the course of months of conversations and he’s got enough to have forged a steady timeline of events, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t think perspective from the source who just so happens to be one chatty fellow would be invaluable, he’s just not sure the foyer on day two of his trip is really the setting for it; maybe he ought to wait that one out. 

“Thanks again for taking me over there, hey?” Sirius puts up instead.

“Ehh, I always like a drive,” Lyall passes him, popping the other slipper on. “I’m not going to get _Du Hast_ out of my head for weeks, mind, so you could apologize for that.” 

“You know what, I’m not going to do that,” Sirius shares. “I needed that coursing through my veins before the altercation and honestly I think the authority I excluded is one of the reasons he handed that phone over to me.” 

Lyall gives a snort, pushing to his feet and heading past Sirius up the hall. “I’m going to have a look around for your shirt,” he announces, taking a left at the end of the hall and going for the stairs.

As much as Sirius takes supreme enjoyment out of the wording choice, he still can’t help huffing. “I don’t need it right this second, Lyall,” he raises. “You’ve been go, go, go all morning.”

“And?” Lyall puts up, not stopping by any means. 

“I beseech you to relax,” Sirius puts down. 

“I beseech you to fuck off,” Lyall returns, heading right on up undeterred. 

Sirius sends a long and lustrous _pfft_ back up at him, heads through the dining room and into a recently vacated kitchen, and studies the room for clues as to where his better half might’ve gone. The laundry basket that was once in there has been deleted from the room along with Remus, so it stands to reason that the boy’s must have brought their clothes back to the a-frame, but on the other hand Remus’ fraying copy of _Maurice_ sits on the kitchen table in a seeming offering for his mum so it stands to reason that the boy’s also been upstairs in the time they’ve been out of the house. 

Sirius finds himself rather hopeful that this might suggest Remus already moved his own luggage down to fully claim the a-frame as his place of residing from henceforth and he heads through the den and out the back door to do some further investigating on the matter. He heads around the bend in the porch, casting a look out over the yard as it comes into view, but no Remus yet. He ascends into the garden, takes in a deep sniff of florals and greenery as he’s going through, and smirks as he hones in on three birbs having a veritable riot in the birdbath, happy to see the garden fixture being utilized to the fullest degree. 

He heads out of the garden and crosses over to the a-frame steps, heading inside and brightening as he finds his deductive reasoning proved truthful in the end; Remus laying back on the bed straight chillin’ by the looks of it, his luggage sitting beyond him over on the other side of the bed and his sunglasses laying a little above his head on the mattress presumably where Remus pushed them off.

Sirius shuts the door behind him. “Someone’s been busy,” he observes. 

“Your stuff’s back in your case,” Remus extends. 

“You could have left something for me to do, you know,” Sirius mentions, gesturing to the new set of luggage in the cabin. “You had all that to bring down on top of the laundry.” 

“You were busy catching up,” Remus reasons. “I wasn’t about to plant the basket at your feet and make you finish up for me.” 

“Mm, that doesn’t seem like something you’d do at all,” Sirius lets him have, smiling brightly as Remus mimes like he's tugging Sirius to him by an invisible rope. 

He heads over to the bed to crawl up it and plant himself down on Remus’ left. “Good chat?” Remus asks, turning onto his right side to face him.

“Overall, yeah,” Sirius grants, using his right arm propping his head up. 

“He seemed happy for you,” Remus mentions, giving Sirius a keen little smile. 

“He’s overjoyed,” Sirius echoes. “For you too, mind; not just I.” 

Remus gives a light smirk. “I managed to suss that out,” he affirms, smiling fully at the end of it.

“Good,” Sirius puts down, reaching to toss his left arm over Remus’ right hip, giving a wee tap there. “I’ve two developments to update you on; are you ready for them?” 

Remus makes a show of bracing himself, and Sirius will not pretend that he’s grateful Remus is clearly in a stellar mood. “So, the way you tackled telling them the reality of the situation with Tom while also keeping a focus on the now of it all really set something in me on fire,” he puts down. “I love how forward thinking that I personally saw you being and that got me thinking about the steps forward from here, and I know you and I knew you wouldn’t feel so good about broaching the subject out of fear of being considered an ungrateful little arse so I had a chat with Lyall about sharing details with those he ought not to, and there’s a good thing and a great thing coming to you in that order: the good thing is that Lyall had written him off by the time the word ‘pussy’ came around again, so he wasn’t all that interested in stopping and chatting with him anyway.”

He pauses there to gauge from what place Remus’ amused noise originates; whether it be the wording Sirius chose or the general sentiment of it all, but Remus automatically skirts closer to Sirius on the bed and that gets Sirius a feeling that it’s a bit of both. “And the great thing is,” he continues, tapping Remus’ hip again, “he’s not even going to stop for the guy anymore, so Tom isn’t going to get updates on any of the Lupins all in all going forward so that’s no more Lyall updates for that guy to use improperly, and unless your mum’s the outlier and uncharacteristically decides she’s going to start giving Tom the Lupin family tea—” he pauses for a laugh of his own on account of Remus’ frank hum of denial, “—then your fam is in the clear and he won’t have shit on any of you going forward.” 

Remus reaches down with his right hand to trace it back and forth over Sirius’ hand still pressed at his hip. “Thank you,” he says.

“Hey, don’t even thank _me_; thank your dad,” Sirius puts down. “He’s been on his a-game all morning, and even drove me right over to Tom’s fugly house so I could take your number off his phone, so that's who the actual champ around here is.” 

Remus takes in a quick breath, giving him a series of wild blinks. “I’m sorry, did you want to try that one again?” he bids. 

“Sure, I can do that,” Sirius assures brightly. “It didn’t make sense for me to have been working to help get the guy blacked out and build this forcefield around you while leaving a massive hole right at the front of it; it just didn’t, so to make up for the fact that I left the front door wide open for him to bother you somewhere down the line, I went and made sure the door was shut.”

“When?” Remus puts up. 

“Like, a half hour ago now,” Sirius raises. 

“You just rode on over there, got the phone off him, and got rid of it?” Remus summarizes. 

“Your number, I did," Sirius clarifies. "Not the phone itself."

“That’s what I meant, you,” Remus returns. 

“Then yes, I did do that,” Sirius affirms, working on quelling a smile from forming too much, “but you don’t have to worry, I didn’t have to scuffle for the phone; after a bit of mouthing off to me he eventually gave it up, but now you’re in the clear and you don’t have to deal with any, _can you talk?_ texts that would have come into your phone in, oh, three weeks, is my guess.”

Remus takes in a careful breath, reaching to smooth his right hand over Sirius’ left hip, and Sirius knows what’s coming before Remus has to work his mouth around the words. “I know you feel that I’d have scared him off enough to bother keeping up with you, but I need you to believe me when I say that he was going to wait until the dust settled and his spooks wore off to try it,” he puts down. “I had my suspicions yesterday, I had them all through the drive over there, and got a full understanding of that when I showed up at his place and he boggarted your number like a dog to a bone; he even said, ‘I’m not going to use it; you made yourself quite clear,’ and then I was like, ‘why hold onto a number you’re not going to use, Einstein?’” 

Remus presses his lips together, but that doesn’t hide the fast rise of his chest or his amusement. “Did you say that?” he checks.

“Everything but the Einstein part,” Sirius supplies. “And — OK, so, I was in a rush and didn’t grab shoes before we went—” 

“_Sirius,_” Remus huffs, but that smile betrays him wholeheartedly. 

“Listen, sir; there wasn’t time for that,” Sirius puts in before heading right on. “And we get there, and I ask your dad to pull up the road a bit so Tom wouldn’t see him and go haywire on you for telling your parents about your own fucking life like the audacious sadsack he is, so don’t worry, he didn’t see Lyall at all, but after he opened the door and was like, ‘you’re making house calls now?’ like the smarmy little shit he is, he zones in on the bare feet detail and I shit you not, he went, ‘I really don’t know how he can handle someone this extra.’”

Remus makes a face like he’s just stepped in hot garbage. “And what did you say to that one?” he prompts. 

“I assured him you love it and went right back to what I came there for,” Sirius delivers. 

Remus breathes in through a nod, but he ends up shutting his eyes through a grimace. “Why was I ever under his spell?” 

“_Love is blind as far as the eye can see,_” Sirius croons. 

“_Deep and meaningless words to me,_” Remus echoes, only he opens his eyes there to toss a blank face at the far wall. “Wait, that doesn’t work for this.” 

“Shh, who’s going to tell?” Sirius raises. “The birds? They’re busy throwing a rave in the birdbath right now; they’re not listening in.” 

“Thanks for _that_ update,” Remus snickers. 

“Yeah, just full of them over here,” Sirius tacks on, but he readjusts his hold on Remus, holding him tighter as he works to finish this off on the right note. “I know you don’t enjoy confrontation and of course it'd be easier for you if we just moved on from that incident and looked forward, not back, but it wouldn't have been easier in the long run. And me letting him walk out of that grocery with your number still on him was an oversight on my part and I think I knew it deep down because I wasn’t convinced I’d done enough to scare him off, but I realized I could fix that blunder in the nick of time and I’m so glad I did? He’s not healthy for you and you’re so much better off without him trying to get in your head and that’s all he’d do, no matter what he wanted you back for.” 

Remus nods silently, his lower lip pulled into his mouth and his gaze heavy as he scoots down and in on the little space between the two of them on the bed. He reaches his right arm over and around the back of Sirius to pull him in for a squeeze and burrows his face into the crook of Sirius’ neck, letting out a massive breath that seems to take his whole body out for the moment. Sirius wraps him up instinctively, finding Remus’ face warm to the touch against his neck, and gives a glance over the reddened tint of the shell of Remus’ right earlobe to deduce that this is one overwhelmed lad, and maybe they can get away with staving off leaving the cabin for at least a little while longer.


End file.
